The OP is kinda right. Tons of people love to whine that the game is only “knight/xbow” as if trash units, CA, siege, monks, UUs, didn’t exist. The only unit besides SL that is truely underepresented is the sword line after the early feudal age and castle age, but it’s quite a stretch to interpret this as “no strategy/unit variety”.
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I mean something in the middle between competing with knights and archers and being exclusively used to dunk on halbs, skirms, light cav, huskarls and eagles.
If it makes you all feel better historically swordsman were not prominent on the battle field. Your infantry was some kind of pole arm as it could counter calvary and other personnel better then a sword.
Check out this game between Yo and Nicov:
Vikings which are advertised as an INFANTRY civilization, made NO infantry. The barracks was only made as a prerequisite.
Chinese player made 1 spearman. Thats it! Now if this is the current meta for high level play, something needs to change. Theres no incentive to place infantry in rams, guard siege, take out buildings ETC because its not worth the resources or other units do it better.
Notice also that no chukunu were produced because again, arbalest upgrades are way cheaper and faster to mass from ranges.
So what is the point of having a barracks if you dont use them besides making halbs in TGs or you are playing Goths and are basically pigeonholed into making them!?
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Some players can go to mass Champions in 1v1 with top Infantry civs, in HC 4 for example we saw how crazy strong are the Japanese Champions.
And Slavs vs Goths must use Champions because Druzhina
Well chinese is an archer civ and archers counter infantry so its logical you dont make the unit your opponent is countering
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dont forget Bulgarians two handed swordsman, which just laugh at Cavalry.
Best two handed swords men ever
Just because there is a standard way to play team games doesn’t make it easy. It’s a test of skill and teamwork between you and your pocket/flank player against the enemy. Who can produce the most crossbow/knights who can take better engagements and do more eco damage. Who has a better economy behind that to support production. Just because you have to make knights as franks on a team game doesn’t mean you’re gonna win. You have to do that better than your opponent
hehe i wish this was so true and a filter.
I think you all fail to realize that the majority of the games population is lower elo people and that is who the game developers should be looking to please. Mutiplayer competitive in this game is secondary to single player and regular lobbys.
I fail to see your point.
Single players don’t need balance.
Low elo lobby games don’t need balance because literally anything works. I mean, will you nerf khmers in the real competitive play because they are a power house on the classic black forest ffa 800ish elo game? 
Yeah I don’t think soo too.
I do believe that the devs should pay more attention to people with competitive intermediate elo. But nerfing/buffing civs based on single player or lobby games is just silly.
They do that quite frequently. Who do you think wanted bearded axe in castle age? Who would find inca tower rush difficult? Who wants new civs? Who would think the new civ bonuses are cool? Who is campaign content geared towards?
Such elitist viewpoint 11
Arambai was nerfed because while double castle arambai wasn’t that effective at high elo, in the average players was just OP, and annoying to all players overall (Like Incas Noburu rush). the same fate will happen to the War Wagon.
And Cysion said they balance across all elo
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Those balances were great and orientated for wide range of elo players. Kudos for the devs.
I really doubt that they were thinking on the <800 lobby games when they balanced that. 
It’s the true, would you like that they nerf a civ just because their campaigns is way too easy? As I said its nosense.
I really doubt those were a recorrent strat on low elo games on lobby as well.
Don’t Burgundians get 25% bonus attack for gunpowder units though?
Handcannons are rather weak as infantry counter imho.
To kill halbs you make halbs or champs, to kill champs you make champs, or xbows/arbalesters.
To kill eagles you make champs. If you don’t have champs and you also lack other infantry bonus, then you might need HC, but it’s rather costy at 50 gold each, and dies like flies.
Imho there are really few uses for HC, even less considering its cost-effectiveness.
I dont think your saying what you think your saying lol
They do yeah, I made a handful and they slaughtered slews of Celtic halbs… so it seemed cost effective to me. Maybe they should have their gold cost lowered a bit if anything.
You kind of need a bonus for HC to work, or a very specific scenario… but that goes for quite a few units. They have a role, albeit small.
For civs like Franks tho, the only reason to make HC would be to stop TKs/kamayuks. Same with Goths. I guess you could argue the same against Searjants, but yeah its pretty niche for most civs. Heck, even when playing Burgs I don’t make them every game. Infantry in general is underused so there is no point in making HC.
When infantry do get buffed then HC will have a better role, which is another reason the militia line should gain extra PA.
fixed the typos
Np im not saying the sole reason is lower elo but a good bit of the changes are made to suit. To me lower elo would be the bottom 60% of players