[Micah]

No one is going to know how strong a nation will be in this type of situation, so it will be hard to post meaningful bids, especially with the large number of nations available making it hard to be familiar with all of them.

I think putting too much effort into trying to balance something this large/ambitious the first time through is just going to end in frustration. Obviously any glaring holes should be patched up, but a point-by-point bid system isn't going to work outside of giving people the illusion of having control over what they end up with. People who play in this game are going to have to realize that things WILL be unbalanced, and deal with the problem accordingly. Diplomacy will be vital.

As for research - You're going to be stuck either hamstringing research-reliant nations early on or having everything researched very early, and I don't think there's any way to fix that without altering the geometric series equation (so low level things are still easy to research but high levels get really really hard). I think very difficult research would be the best way to keep the late game interesting though, and to me that's more important than early game (if you get blitzed and killed on turn 10 because you can't research the spells you need you've spent maybe 10 hours on the game, total...by turn 50 you've invested a lot more into the game, and since the turns take 2 hours each I'd want them to hold my attention instead of just turning into a phyrric gem-throwing contest.)