@taamvan:
all good points, there are tons of ideas about this in the House rules forum for all versions, tons…
I think the overarching problem is that any kind of research R&D special powers type stuff is either overpowered, too specific to be useful to all teams, or worthless. In order to balance out which ones you get, they turn to our old buddy d6, so that the one you get will fall into one of those 3 categories depending on who you are, so heavy bombers or nuke or whatever going to Russia isn’t all that great, its all dependent on luck.
There are also tons of ideas in the new variants of risk, (and axa etc.) that involve what you’re suggesting, that power ups are on the board, or are cards, or bonus units…the variation is endless. Just my opinion is that G40 Balanced Mod shows that you can add National Objectives to the game in a much more modular and balanced way to address problems you see or to make the game play more varied.
I have in my game a tech chart of 10 techs you can roll for after u roll a d6 break thru. Then u roll a d10 die and get the tech u rolled on dice. Like taamvan said it changes up game. You can buy a tech token for 5 icps. Also each country gets to draw a event card at the start of each turn for each country. In all the event card decks for ea country there is 2 get a free tech token cards and 1 card saying roll a d10 for a free tech. Once u get a tech you do lose all tech tokens. But as taamvan has said not every tech is good for you.
Also I have NA charts where at start of game the 6 countries get to roll 2 d6 die and what you roll is what 2 NA you get for the whole game.
If you want the pics of charts are in the Globsl War thread under 40 41 2nd edition post at top of page. Other wise I can post pics here if you want to see them.
You could use some of these ideas and try in your game. You could only give 1 NA for ea country too.