Your post together with TinSoldier’s makes me think that one motivation for the rebalance is to align player advancement with actual history. Before the rebalance, players were foregoing the advanced factory units because the older barracks units were working fine. But that’s not how real world history unfolded, so something had to be done. We may debate whether the rebalance was the right way to go or not, but we could agree something was broken given that the way our civilizations stagnated at Industrial Age units. For a game that places such stock in historical accuracy, this is a dead end and a real problem. I don’t think it was about avoiding any admissions about the rebalance.
I spent nearly two and a half years playing this game to upgrade my 'horseman' to a Centurion main battle tank in Atomic Age. In real life, it was one of the finest tanks ever built, with variants remaining in service today. The description for this unit in the game says:
"The development of the main battle tank (MBT) rendered all other tank classes virtually obsolete".
Watching my MBTs struggle to deal with the industrial French World War One FT-17 light tank, armed with a 37mm gun, on defence is all you need to know about how this game's developers have lost sight of any sense of historical accuracy and their own original vision for the game. We all accepted the tank's limitations in this game, the inexplicable inability to shoot over walls, the sacrifice of DPS for hit points because overall the game still made sense and it genuinely needed strategy, tactics and a variety of unique troop combinations to be successful.
Now it has taken a completely different, cynical, direction that has alienated a large portion of the player base. We all know that because a lot of us are playing less often and a lot of us are being attacked less often. Not all, but a lot.
I was experimenting with factory troops as a fairly recent Atomic before the rebalance. I'd just got APCs, I used a bazooka, I was looking forward to attack helicopters but, like many, I usually prioritised my oil for fighter upgrades and I didn't like to lose oil through having to retrain too many factory units lost in multiplayer. Like Manifesto, I had the choice about what route to take, about what troops to use. I enjoyed experimenting with paratroopers but missed the protection from my extra fighters and I started using a heavy tank because it made sense that a Tiger tank might be more useful in battles.
Everything, everything, about the rebalance pushes players to heavy tanks, machine guns and other factory troops to the exclusion of everything else. You only had to watch the Twitch feed and their hopeless attacks with a level 171 French account using heavy tanks and machine guns. The whole point of being French (apart from faster training times) was that their unique unit tanks were stronger and you could put that to a tactical advantage in battles. They don't even use the unique unit of that nation to demonstrate their own vision of 'best practice' in their game.
The original vision of this game is lost, torn up in pursuit of increased revenue from the existing player base or through the need for the new guy to prove that his approach is right no matter what. Or both.
There must still be people there who care about the history aspect of the game, who want to give players a rich gaming experience with different events based on historical battles, weapons and figures. But the ones in charge don't give two hoots.
