The old pop cap was fine. I don't why sections cost 10 pop cap and shocks 12 that doesn't represent their strength.
Wouldn't have been an easier fix to allow to go over popcap when the army value would be smaller than 101 popcap after the unit is called in?
In that way you can still call in a Pershing at 84 pop even if your real pop is 84.5 (or whatever)
I think this is a much better idea than what they did. It might even be as simple as making the actual population limit 101/102 but still displaying 100.