Thanks for the in-depth review! A lot of your UI bits are spot-on, and are on my list. We've got to get right-click hover icons and things like that in. There's so much that we've come to expect in an interface that all has to be put in manually! I tried out like 5 different ways of doing drag-and-drop before settling on this one. UI developers have my respect.
I have some thoughts on the cost scaling, but adjusting that is further down on the list than needed QoL changes.
The different NPC contact items will have more uses later on.
The military parts aren't very flushed-out right now. That update should come in the next few days (2025-09-05). The costs on those are meant to scale up, but there's another item coming in later to help with that. I may disable the scaling until that update is in.
The bug with the formation smasher has been fixed for the next update, it should work with any formation you put rounders into, so that you can see how it works with different rounders.
I appreciate your time, thank you so much for playing! There's more to come and I'm working to make the experience less frustrating while still keeping the puzzling aspects.