Well that confirms what I suspected that balancing was never on the agenda for M2TW v1.02
I suspected it wasn't as well, CA probably wanted to use players feedback from the leaked/official 1.2 patch now the shield bug has been fixed.

That's good to have a system, but in addition to that you should use feedback from actual multiplayer battles to fine tune it. That way the gameplay becomes something more than just figuring out the best units. I think that suggestion of making a separate era that emphasises playbalance and not a huge number of unit types and large number of factions is a good one. Then you don't have the monumental task of balancing all the units and factions. Those eras can be left as is for the majority of players who aren't interested in balanced gameplay.
I know Jason got some Spanish clans, think Mordred was involved, to test the balancing for LTc 2.3, and it changed quite a bit from the early versions to the balance seen in 2.3.