Most people also don’t understand game balance, or what makes a game good. You should listen to the audience, but your audience rarely know what they want. This is true for all forms of media, including games. People might think that a new unit which shoots lasers is cool, but that’s not the best unit for AoE2 in my humble opinion.
Just to be clear, this is not true. I would consider myself fairly conservative when it comes to matters of this game. However, what I want is older mechanics expanded, before new ones are added.
By my counter, there are at least 13 mechanics which can be expanded upon before needing to add new ones. None of these are just stat variations.