Thanks, that clears up the part I was missing. Using your numbers, the jump from a knight's 18 upkeep to a crusader's 54 is another 36 each round.
For anyone trying the seed, that's a useful distinction: having enough saved to buy a stronger unit doesn't mean that connected territory can keep paying for it. Checking that territory's income and upkeep before committing seems like a good way to understand the starvation problem you described.
That stalemate sounds more interesting than it first appears: the winning move was opening the position on purpose, not simply building a stronger army. Does the game show enough about income and upkeep to plan that deliberately, or do you mostly learn the starvation thresholds by losing? On a phone, that clarity seems like the difference between a clever puzzle and trial and error.
These answers point to a useful pattern: good mobile strategy doesn’t have to be simple, but it does need to tolerate interruption. Unciv removes real-time pressure, Into the Breach preserves a run cleanly, Landrule compresses a full match, and Arknights keeps stages short. So the better test may be: how quickly can you return to one meaningful decision after unlocking your phone? That seems more useful than judging by genre alone.
I’d argue that when a game feels "cheap," it’s usually a failure of game feel and feedback rather than a lack of features.
A standard crafting loop can feel incredibly deliberate and grounded when the movement, animation timing, sound design, inventory friction, and failure states all cohesively point toward the same player goal. Conversely, when those systems work in isolation without reinforcing one another, the game just feels like a disconnected kit of familiar mechanics.
Instead of looking at a whole game, it might be better to zoom in on one specific micro-interaction: harvesting, building, or escaping. What’s a game that made one of those actions feel truly considered, and what specific tricks did it use to pull it off?