Yea, balance above and before all else would ruin the game in my opinion. I voted a little of both but that covers a lot of ground. One of the things I didn't like about M2TW was that it felt to balanced. There weren't dominant factions and/or units. Not saying I want fantasy units (I don't) but if a faction or unit had advantages and/or were superior, I'd like to see it represented in game to some extent. In MTW XL, I liked playing as a minor faction simply because it was so difficult to win (or sometimes even to survive - Irish)