Well, there's a decent chance we'll be able to find things that give us a free points worth of either a unit or piece of equipment(same for vehicles). Other than that not really.
Note that the behaviour of Cost Tokens has been changed, they now provide only a temporary cost reduction (a change made to reduce the risk of unstoppable snowballing, where tokens beget tokens which beget more tokens, and actual designs are irrelevant).
What I assume will still happen is that we regularly gain more V/U/EP- but so will XCOM, so that will only make the war more intense, not change the balance of forces.
I am hearing "XCOM logic" being thrown around a bunch by the same people who rationalize which region is best, which I assume "XCOM logic" makes fairly identical. It's just the world's HP... Unless maybe the GM can elaborate the gameplay differences. I don't see how any choice matters.
XCOM logic doesn't mean that things work identically to the videogame. It means that certain behaviours are constrained.
The choice of region definitely matters mechanically; it makes operations in that region/continent easier. So choosing South America, with its measly 2 regions, would usually be a poor choice. Beyond that, yes, the choice of region probably doesn't matter
that much. However, the mechanics of the game are somewhat obscured, so it's better to assume that things will work against us if they can- choosing Japan, for instance, is unlikely to result in penalties due to Japan being more densely populated... but it
might, so why risk it? Will XCOM have better luck finding our bases if they guess correctly where they are?
Maybe, so best to put them in places they are less likely to look.