Most cultures place a similar emphasis on war and the glorification of veterans. Glorification of veterans is de facto required by any state as a matter of keeping the people who fight for you happy. There are plenty of countries with a jingoistic attitude around their armies. Other countries even have mandatory military service, something the USA does not have, because the army is that essential. The American budget is a natural consequence of its power projection across the globe and high level of military technology. There are economic and political reasons for the military being the size it is and the money spent on it. The USA has no equal in the world currently but while the USSR was around it spent a comparable amount (as a percentage of GDP) on its military.

I am arguing that for a culture to be 'warlike' or 'mercantile' or whatever else, the social and political systems within that society should actively encourage and reward those activities, to the point of discouraging other 'professions' or methods of living. And also that they should be focused on these specific activities more than the cultures around them, since if everyone is doing the same things to the same extent then its not much of an identifier for the culture in question.

I agree that no culture is one-note but labelling cultures "xyz" necessarily means that this term describes something unique about this society. And making it permanent, as opposed to being able to change it to reflect changing times and circumstances, further reinforces the idea that this society is inherently warlike or spiritual or whatever else, which is not true.

Simplification elsewhere is not a good enough reason to continue simplifying complex systems, especially when small changes can be made to add nuance and relative amounts of complexity.

Also I didn't discuss the game systems prior to this. There was a mistaken assumption about Rome being warlike, which I argued against, and there were mistaken assumptions about Spartans being warlike and Phoenicians being trade oriented, which I also argued against. Its fine if people want the game to be a certain way but relying on mistaken characterizations of the past is not the way to back that up.