Upon reflection, the monetary figure was the telephone bill that came as a result of being connected to AOL for so long playing AW, at least in the beginning. It became pretty clear that even with AW, we'd be tying up the phone line for so long so we put in a second line to accommodate the internet.
Another thing that I always wondered was what the benchmark was that triggered a map reset. On one memorable occasion, the map was reset, the Bz captured TWI, MOG, and bellybutton within two hours, and then the Cz managed to capture whatever base was due north of MOG. The map was reset again by the time I logged back in about three hours later. I was never sure if it was just arbitrary or if there was a mechanism in the program to just reset after a certain country was getting kicked in the teeth.