Some thoughts on dreadnoughts:
They are more expensive compared to your GDP than they used to be. I could just constantly queue up dreadnoughts in my ports for 20 years if I wanted to without too much effort. Now, building 100 dreadnoughts requires that I raise taxes substantially to pay for them. I can afford it, but my POPs feel the pinch and I need enough tax efficiency to pull it off. If I am LF, there's a limit to my dreadnought spamming now.
That being said, if you "close the loop" and produce everything for the dreadnoughts yourself, then you are at least recouping the cost. If you have sufficient iron, coal (for steel and steamers), sulfur (for explosives in artillery), oil (for fuel), and rubber (for electric gears to go in telephones), you can sustain an industry devoted to supplying your dreadnought needs. Two of these resources (oil and rubber) are crucial for high end civilian industries, too, so intelligent empire building that would win you the economic race also secures you a powerful navy.
I don't know how to fix this, to be honest. Raising the cost of dreadnoughts further may reduce their numbers, but I can still build an empire that will make spamming them possible no matter what the price. I can build over 400 right now as long under LF if I have the right colonial empire, so even if you raise the cost by a factor of 10, I'd still be able to beat the UK or Germany prior to the war.
However, if you did raise the cost by a factor of 10, it would more closely resemble the costs of the actual dreadnoughts. Looking at some building costs, the historical dreadnoughts are still more expensive than the ones in AHD. And at a certain price, cruisers start to look attractive again.
