Either way boltar it shouldnt be incentivized to run a country with 5k acres and 1m spies OVER running a country with 50k acres and 9m spies.

You have less cash expense, less food expense, cheaper production cost to maintain, lower spy losses on failed ops, fewer buildings required to produce spal thereby lowering cost, and a better spy power.

That's clearly not balanced in the most remote sense. It literally incentivizes having a bad country. If you needed something like 4 or 5m spies on 5k acres, you'd merely be hitting the same production walls as the larger country does, and not just be able to easily steal teach from bots to maintain an absurd spal. Sin's rendition of Ugo's formula is spot on for a remedy.

I also don't think something that makes good players better at war and bad players worse at war degrades the war experience at all. This is absolutely not a case of something just to make war more difficult or something. It just means you will have a better chance of winning wars and distancing yourself if you are good at the game. And you should have to also be good to take down good players.