i find it funny that mr. Lusted didnt care to respond to:

Developers seem to have some kind of balance fetish. It is the bane of games today, the cry goes out on forums that faction X has an unfair advantage and developers rush to nerf it and surprise now faction Y is the next whipping boy.

It is unrealistic to try and create a rock paper scissors, if you want games with equality then have identical factions on a featureless map.

As gamers we want variety, but that is always going to create imbalance and no matter how much developers try and prevent it, any beneficial adavantage given to even the smallest numerical change will be magnified in play. It is a holy grail quest to go for both, either clone armies and balance, or variety and imbalance... given the choice I vote imbalance every time.