Your level of argument reminded me of someone. It was almost uncanny. Then I looked into my post history, and I found out why.
It certainly appears you were JuanTheHunter . After a long back and forth you posted a game or two and man, it was pretty bad . Myself and @platypus_slayer1 had had offered to help at the time, but you seemed to think you were right. You were later shown pro opinions that Rods were in fact good, but you seemed to shift the goalposts.
It’s very simple, in games things are interconnected. In rock paper scissors if you said “let’s buff rock” you would inherently be talking about nerfing paper and or scissors. Spies currently exist as a hyper specialized unit with huge bonuses against Mercenaries, the two are closely connected.
A musketeer will be much more useful in a game where your opponent trains nothing but cavalry than a game where they train nothing but light infantry. Spies being bad in a game where your opponent trains no mercenaries is totally fine. You can use one as a scout for map intel (pros will actually do this sometimes) or not. What I’m obviously arguing is that they need to do a better job countering mercs and shouldn’t do better vs anything else.
Having said all that, I see no point in arguing with you anymore. You seemingly won’t change your opinion even when pros tell you you’re wrong.