I've been thinking about the advantages and potential pitfalls of the Asymmetrical 4X concept, and something struck me. It started when I was thinking about ideal spell balance, especially the power curve that comes with the increase of shards. So I'm going to reuse that as my example to explain what's troubling me:
Imagine you have a mid-range direct damage spell. Let's say that it deals 20 damage + 10 per shard (bullshit numbers!). Let's say that on a tiny map, you're expected to finish the game with 3 shards, and on a huge map, you can accumulate 15 shards easily. Basically, at endgame level, when you face the SK himself with your stack of doom, your spell will deal 50 damage on a tiny map, and 170 on a huge map.
In other words, if the challenge progression is the same on every map, if you face the same monsters and bosses with the same stats, either huge maps will be too easy, or tiny maps will be too hard. Or both, if balance is adjusted for a perfect challenge on a medium map.
And it's perfectly logical. According to Frogboy, the game pretty much revolves around making a stack of doom (the composition of which may vary, of course !) and kicking the SK's butt with it. Huge maps have more resources to collect, so they tend to provide more opportunities to power-up that stack of doom.
In other words, I think it's extremely important that the increase in challenge over time is adjusted to the map size. That's not just an endgame issue; the SK and his lieutenant aren't the only monsters that should be tougher on a larger map. In fact, it seems to me that the logical way to proceed about this is to make the "increase in challenge power wrt. number of turns" the same on every map size, with the idea that since larger maps last longer, they'll have time to churn out stronger monsters and monster groups.
And every aspect of the game should be thought out with this idea in mind. For instance, sovereigns should all be able to follow the same power curve. If shard numbers are the only thing that scale strongly with map size, then magic-oriented sovereigns will outshine others on these maps, so it's important that commanders, tinkerers, etc. get opportunities of their own.
What's your opinion on this?