Yeah, we’ve been there and done that. Suffice to say, your argument that the stats are worse than they look, I disagree.
High pick rates for certain civs and low pick rates for other civs spike winrates in ways usually unassociated with the actual balance of the civ, forgetting civ matchups and map options in their entirety. Familiarity in a game this complex is a very important thing, and a streamlined strategy is a big boon.
Play rate is one of a ton of factors that fill into the overall winrate of civs, and it’s incredibly hard to account for all these metrics at once, practically impossible to isolate single causalities, which is why I continue to say Winrate is a terrible metric for being the primary justification for pushing buffs/nerfs. These charts give the benefits of the most superficial insights to those with no experience, and little else.