Economic scale is only acquired through user adoption I would rather have a larger reward for end of season and NO Rewards for playing the game than seeing an across field wipe that is imbalanced.
It is tricky though a bots cost is 0 in effect, while a user with level 1 caps will not be able to outmaneuver a maxed bot.
The incentive to have a bot rank higher to get a larger reward pool may make more sense, although pareto optimal is set to silver perhaps the best solution is to try to change the max card formula and have the reward tier set to around gold instead of having it set to silver.
A longer and more gradual rise to the maximum levels will allow cards to compete to Gold and perhaps let users have a better chance of winning to the maxed bots and eventually outgrowing them and beating them as an obstacle.