Game Balance, or the lack there of.

[NihilisticCow]

MP isn't exactly about fairness, it's about being able to counter what your opponent is doing whatever army he takes; some things should be harder to counter than others. Units don't need to be clones (though there are minor differences between lines, and more noticable between rifles, I think this is due to CA trying to keep the balance simple), they can't be unstoppable killing machines either, and there does need to be balance between factions, otherwise weaker factions just won't be used, and challenging games will only consist of the most cost effective units from the most powerful factions, which in itself just gets repetitive in playing against the same armies from the same factions all the time without a sense of variety or not knowing what exactly you're going to be facing.

The rock-paper-scissors idea is about giving people more than one option in how to play so enhancing creativity and making the game more interesting. Yes it does tend to be less historical, but I tend to see historical accuracy is what mods are ultimately for. MP has to be played on the vanilla version of the game, as there never has been any real wide consensus to play a certain mod online (excepting certain areas such as NTW) as different people have different ideas on what constitutes balance.

Arty has always been a bit of a mixed bag, make it too powerful and games come down to who wins at the random number generator, which is rather unsatisfactory. Yes of course this is somewhat different in SP.

Ultimately I see ETW as a game based on an 18th century historical background and CA's focus should be on gameplay itself not full historical authenticity. People will inevitably mod the game (or play mods created by others) for greater historical accuracy for single player anyway if that is what mainly interests them. It's not however something that greatly interests me. It's always a hard balance between all the people that play a game wanting different things.