Or just remove the Wealth cap as Steve himself suggested after doing a few other changes down the line?
That's certainly an option, although I'm not sure that this situation is a strong argument on its own to change the system.
(new topic)
I've been thinking a bit about ground combat due to the recent discussion in the 12 Colonies thread.
I think part of the issue comes from the naming system.
For the frontline, you have a binary option of attack and defence. Within this context, I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect that defence means the unit is passive until it gets attacked, and does not seek out enemies to engage.
However, as repeatedly noted, units in frontline defence will seek out and attack the enemy, indeed you can wage a whole war in this position.
Therefore it might make sense to simply rename those positions. I'm pretty bad at thinking of names, but frontline defence could become "limited offensive", "cautious offence", "offensive - trench warfare" or something better that someone else comes up with.
Frontline offence could become "all-out offensive", "blitz", "manoeuvrer warfare" or something better.
I think the other part of the issue is that the current mechanics mix where a unit is positioned within the army with whether the unit has an offensive or defensive posture.
Frontline, support and rear echelon are positions within an overall army. However under the current system you can't stop a frontline unit from attacking, your only option is to move it into a support or rear position. The position system is therefore being used to control whether the unit should attack or not.
I can think of 2 ways to resolve this: first by splitting posture from positioning and having them as 2 separate properties, the second is to add more positions to account for different combinations.
The former would require at least a partial re-think of how systems like fortification interact with posture and positioning separately. I haven't done this, so I don't have a whole new system to propose, but it might inspire other people to do so.
As a more limited change using the second option, I think that adding a frontline position which doesn't attack at all, but does return fire if attacked, might address the main complaints. You could call it "total defence", or "static defence", or "frontline - return fire", or something better.