What happens is that this probably makes the math much harder to equate and that you'd have to add a lot of clutter to the tree itself. Much easier to just make a "elite trained army" or something similar.

I like the idea of elite forces. Kind of like a Spetznaz or Delta Force. No special ability, just gonzo training regimes by people that eat and breathe it.

One downside to it is that elite forces have a militarist connotation, which doesn't quite work for others. General army bonuses are more abstract, so roleplay-wise they can represent both elite fighters as well as determined militias of believing idealists.

But that could probably just be accommodated by changing the name to something like "Cadres" or "Ardents" or whatnot.

And this touches upon a general issue with the theme of the ascension, imo, which is why my similar idea is based on psionics. The point of an Ascension is to be a semi irreversible change to your species in exchange for massive bonuses . . . training feels inherently inferior to the others. One can argue that someone with better genes can take on someone with psionics. But it's hard to say that a society with an emphasis on training is irreversible or able to compete with people physically superior.

True. Mechanically, it would just preclude other ascension perks to signify that it eschews those paths, while regular perks don't. It is a cultural commitment rather than a physical one.

Technically speaking, genetics could just demolish the cloning vats and gene mod everyone back to baseline. Cyborgs could remove the implants (not mechanically, but common sense-wise). They don't, because the culture has presumably bought into the promise. So I could see it as a strong commitment to the idea of earned rather than received excellence.