[quote=@Little Bird]
I'm really just spitballing ways to maintain a degree of parity so that the map doesn't turn into a Monopoly board. 

As far as personnel expenditure on defense, I'm putting up the idea that sacrificing the requisite personnel can effectively counter an invasion without having to go into a drawn out battle sequence. 

I'm of the opinion that the Personnel really should have it's own functional identity, and yhat it and Wealth should have actions in which they can act independently of each other. (EG - The above suggestion, and making District upgrades a Wealth only expense). 

As I've more or less inquired previously, what's the point lf the personnel metric if it's just going to be used in exact tandem with Wealth and not play into the process of invasions and defense, etc? Would it not be simpler to just consolidate everything into Wealth and trust that no one is gonna pull a 'gotcha,' by having a full on army come around the corner in the middle of a battle? (Endgame scenarios notwithstanding; if we get that far into this I'd be dissappointed if we didn't have forces of 100s if not 1000s in a city-wide fire fight. 
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You realize without bodies, making a check to wealth means nothing? For example, if I have $100,000 to build a house but I do not want to hire a group of people to build that house. How is that house going to be built? How is that money going to actually be used? Having personnel a little distracted from wealth investments just makes sense. You need someone/some people at least to focus on whatever you are upgrading. 

You cannot upgrade an area and just think it'll magically be upgraded without anyone touching/working to get it upgraded. 

Now, I could see there being already established weapons/gyfts/etc... in a personnel and your character sending out troops to go fight another district/take other a district without expelling extra money. 

But to spend money, especially on something like upgrading/building. You need to actually have people to do that.