It’s a pretty easy claim to say that Age has a number of conflicting titles in the franchise. AoE 2 might be the most recognisable, but AoE 3 and even AoM or Online have their own playerbases (as you know!).
So what do the devs do? Do things “as they’ve always done it”, or do things differently because this is a new iteration of the franchise? Of course, the answer in my opinion should be contextual to each specific issue. There are better arguments for raising the zoom level by referencing past games than there is, say, for making the entire game 2D again (because the earlier titles were 2D). Right? This is an intentionally-extreme example, I know it’s silly. Don’t hurt me 
Walling with buildings is something that came to early RTS games unintentionally (or at least, by necessity of the technology at the time). If walling is so critical to the success of combat, raiding, scouting, etc, then it should be re-implemented in a way that doesn’t rely on assumed knowledge.
“do it how they’ve always done it” isn’t a convincing argument on its own. Nor is knocking people for allegedly being franchise “outsiders”. You prefer walling, sure. But that doesn’t make it a necessary mechanic for a modern RTS in 2021.
Just to offer up some ideas, perhaps building houses could have two modes. One is putting them one by one, like they look now. Another could be to click-drag a connected line (or quad) of houses - like how walls work. If walling is something that necessarily critical to the intricacies of combat. I’m honestly not convinced (as you can tell). But that’s just me.
Regardless of the RTS game, regardless of the franchise (and I have years of playing a bunch of them), being stuck in the past isn’t a quality that appeals to me. I want a game to evoke the feeling of the franchise for sure, but individual technical or gameplay-based things that only exist because tech 20+ years ago was more immature than it is now? I want people to come up with newer, more modern solutions that don’t rely on people knowing decades of genre history.