As I’ve said before about BM, putting units on non-transports isnt functional because of two rules; 1) you cant bombard and land troops 2) you cant combat and noncombat. Because the bombarding ships especially have other duties, the Marines or whatever woudl end up trapped on those ships alot of the time because they have a more important duty (Cruiser can choose 1–fight, bombard, or land 1 man–you’d choose one of the first two in many situations).
In any event, its unrealistic. Soldiers were transported on large combat ships, but this affected their combat readynesss, and the troops were rarely deployed like that into direct combat. If they were, it was with the clothes on their backs (the slot/tokyo express)
This feels like trying to mess with one of the most interesting things about the game—the large difference between the teams. Each team values different units, and some are forced to use strategies that others cannot. USA’s high income (and the difficulty of destroying it) is offset by the fact that they have to buy transports to take land. However, the USA can’t grab much money by taking land, other powers can also help, there remains a perfectly rational strategy where USA buys few or no transports or troops, and puts all that $$ (in global) into warships. Those dynamics keep alot of choice out there. And still, with 200+ IPCs over 4 turns, you can build a pretty big fleet of any composition…
A reduction of 1-2 IPC wouldn’t be game breaking, alot of those savings would just go directly into the cost of building more troops to fill more transports. Taking them down to 5 would make them more viable to sacrifice, it’d help the Axis in the early and late game, and the US in the mid and late game, alot. I don’t think it would balance the game much, though it might change it.
Probably an even more historical and effective way to deal with this would be Lend Lease–the US can convert its resources down ratio to its allies, say 2:1. Whether this is in units, money, or convoys would be up for grabs.
It still doesn’t really address the key problems to the playout though, which is that russia is too weak and the 3 Axis together are too strong. That’s why the balance is in when Russia falls, not if.