Right of the bat, yes, I've recreated some Advance Wars maps to play on, which have a lot more buildings on them than Wargroove usually does, meaning I just turned down gold per village to 50 which made it feel pretty fine and balanced with the prices of units. And there's the problem I'm having with the game in a way. If you have too many buildings, you can just recruit stuff over and over again without too much thought or trouble, yes, the good and stronger units cost more, but that's just not really enough in a way. It does fine for what they should, and functionality-wise, we basically have most units we should have, but it's only the base. I've only really played Dual Strike, however, the prices were far more spread with Neotanks costing 22k, Megatanks another heavy 6k ontop, making a single tank cost 28k, something you really have to go and wait for with cheaper units. I just don't have that feeling in Wargroove, the Dragons are really strong, but all 'counters' are cheaper, so for me, they just kind of don't feel worth enough for a full investment into them. I haven't played the game enough to super know just what everyone and everything does in every situation, yet from what I've seen and looked at the codex, etc., there's not really a 'lategame' unit or something to really pressure and stress your opponent out to make him get rid of it. Sure, Dragons and Giants kind of do that, but they don't feel significant enough, as well as since Commanders don't have unit-specific stats like "Infantry deals more damage" or anything, there's not really a commander based gameplan either, aside from playing around the groove. Now that very bit isn't a bad thing per sé, it makes them less restricting to one specific strategy with or without commanders active, meaning you can pick who you want, or just for unit-looks, so I can't really say what would be best or better for that. I'd enjoy both sides, but once the step is done, there's not really turning back either. Unless I'm overlooking something, I just don't see a normal castle recruited unit that's 'lategame' and costs a lot other than Giants, it just feels off for Riders to be the next best thing as a grounded unit to Giants, with everything else costing more being rather focused on ranged fire. Meaning, maps with only castles just feel very off in terms of units and it usually either comes down to spamming trebuchets or cavalry, and neither really tank a hit of the other.
The problem with units like Neos and Megas was that there simply wasn't much reason to ever buy them. Unless you were already winning and needed the extra punch to really seal it in. They're a newbie trap more often than not. They're so cost inefficient that you are almost always better off spending the money on other units that can do the same job "well enough" without breaking the bank. More regular Tanks, more Artillery, more Rockets. Even Md Tanks are difficult to justify purchasing outside of trying to hold a chokepoint where their raw durability makes it difficult for the enemy to approach, especially since one hit with an Artillery or a Rocket will pretty much nullify any usefulness they had to you. Wargroove, and Advance Wars before it, has never really needed a unit whose job was "the same thing the last guy was doing, but even meatier." Wargroove, as you mentioned, has Golems and Dragons, which is really all you need. They're very punchy and if the opponent isn't ready to counter them they will end the game. There's very good reason as to why Nuru is so feared.
A lot of it is map design though. When you have 1 Barracks and 8+ towns, what else are you going to do with your money? The maps are also often super small, so building a powerful unit in one place (or its counter) allows you to cover most attack paths..
I do know that they were on one side, rather overkill and on the other just not really efficient enough to truly warrant them, but it's the options that make things more interesting IMO, Giants and Dragons are there, yes, and Dragons are incredibly powerful, but from the games I played with some friends, Giants just never felt worth to build really, be it the amount of towns we had on the map for income or not, they mostly just died to trebuchet or other things, like Dragons, in a single turn. Exploring playstyles is one of the most fun things in these kind of games I feel, so having the most optimal go down to "Go recruit Dragons" just doesn't feel right. And in terms of ground units, Riders still are probably the only thing you'll need and want as a base, then ballistae and trebuchets, since Giants can't run far enough to easily slip past those unless you have a few, which at that point, you either lost or won HARD to be able to afford those so easily while fending them off. They're not the best things to go for, but simply having more than like 3 or 4 things to wantingly put money into is just a bit meh, and FoW vision is a different kind of issue in itself, which the Dragon also kind of dominates. It just comes down to stalemates with who has the better defense, rather than offense until there's a big enough opening for a Dragon to swoop in by, and it feels much worse for ground-only battles since you can't really circumvent the Trebuchets then. Maybe it'll settle for me later on in some games, but it just doesn't feel right at the moment. It might just be me, but I still wanted to voice an oppinion to spruce some thoughts for more variety in units.
