It was because low elo player TGs were dominated by ele spams at some point.
IDK exactly which, maybe it was just arena or BF, but there were several complains at that time.
I spoke against the change at that time, but probably the only way to somewhat “balance” the eles is to try to target-buff them for higher elos, give them some kind of micro utility that scales heavily with the players skills.
Also I think we also need to start talking about timings here aswell. Ofc a lot of people already mentioned that eles have problems getting started with the high food cost, but I don’t even think that’s all of it. Eles also - even on smaller sized maps - take longer to get to the target destination, that’s where knights shine. They can be produced immediately and move fast to the raiding grounds.
BUT I would step away from the kind of “easy” solutions like just increasing the movement speed generally cause that’s actually the one big difference between knights and eles. If we start reducing power of eles for higher movement speed we at some point will just end with a knight again.
I think The question is what advantage can Eles have over knights in the midgame? Maybe some kind of brainstorming would help there. Is there one single think that annoys you when plaing knights and you would like to have a unit that solvest that issue?
One example could be against walls + quickwalls - What would be if Eles would be specifically designed to overrun palisades + houses? What would be if they had some kind of ranged atk (or maybe extended trample damage radius or whatever) to damage the repairmen?
So, what is your heaviest “upset” when playing knights were you wish they would perform better?
Edit: I made my own topic for this now so it doesn’t convolute this thread, please answer here