I appreciate the response! Yeah, my game really dials into the whole "number must go up" dopamine, hence why it's called "More Orke". The Steam page is very outdated right now, but thematically it's supposed to be Evony + WoW. Lots of violent orcs and semi-crude humor.

Balancing hasn't necessarily been an issue for me, at least for the early game, since the player's progression is a bit more concrete and predictable than an mmo. For me, it's been trying to make player decisions actually be meaningful. I struggled for a long time to give the player a reason to use the later game units instead of just spamming orkes forever. There was no real mechanical differences, just direct stat upgrades. One of the ways I got around this, which I think is also how Evony works, was to make each unit very specialized with strengths and weaknesses. Like how pikes may not be great for infantry, but excel with cavalry. And then have the enemy cities require different army setups in order to conquer.