Have you thought about using the student's names (if you know who has signed up) for various units they'll be commanding? Might increase the immersion factor for them.
Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Low payoff? The ability to recreate DeanCo's "Monster Army Truck Race" scenario alone is worth the effort! See this thread for additional details.
You game designers just never get it, do you?
True, but Steve gave a pretty strong indication in this post that sales have declined from CMBO to CMBB to CMAK, despite your, my and aka_tom_w's efforts to the contrary.
Don't most game companies want to avoid longevity? If you are still happy playing the game 12 months later, you have less desire to buy the company's next game version that was cranked out 6 months ago. I thought this was one of the fundamental business problems of the CMx1 series - the long-lasting popularity of the early versions cut into sales of later versions.