Ok in favour...

You can play Kingdoms factions against Vanilla factions if you select all as your era.

Balance appears to be much better and playing "all" is not as bad as it sounds.

Plus it is not as historically inaccurate as one might think. Archers were widely used way into the gunpowder era and one could argue continued to be superior for quite some time.

Playing in campaign mode I end up keeping and reinforcing "obselete" units way after they "should" be around. Simply cos they are better.

I don't think it is that historically innacurate for a general/ruler to train or maintain an old style of unit that suits a particular role on the battlefield.

It is important to note that, in Kingdoms, Gunpowder is way less overpowered as is Cav.

I would argue that "all" actually allows a lot more factions to become worthy of online play than era play does. More choice is good. I also noticed that some tighter unit restrictions appear to be present in "all." As if to make it a looser Late era.


Finally I may be wrong here but wasn't another Vanilla patch released at the same time as Kingdoms so we can still all play Vanilla.