They could keep the rule book as it's expensive to make a new one and they could say the set only covers the basic rules. That lets them have less counter types. The damage counters should be the same but less. I don't know what fits proportional wise, but if they made Chesapeake vs Shannon about a fourth of the counters would be well enough I'd guess.

Keeping everything otherwise the same would mean beginners could buy this and then add a big starter and just add the new counters to the old ones without changing the balance.