I dunno man I think they gave up. Strategus gives shit exp, no gold, and the "economy" never took off and everyone uses peasant armor and worthless shields yet buy the best loomed bows they can afford because they can be picked up and reused infinitely. Strat is worse then it has ever been.
I actually have to agree, the battles have never gotten better from the shit peasant battles at the start. So much tactical ingenuity is made defunct and it becomes a pewpew fest when an entire class (cavalry) is nullified. Our clan is one of the most actively trading clans and horses, even with more money, are just novelty items because theya re so ridiculously expensive. Lance and horse are both very very expensive and you can get 20 masterwork horn bows for the same price of 1 mounted rider. In strat 2 equipment was actually rather balanced in the first 90% of the game (before gold nerf), where rounceys were at least actively used but were by no means too common and you could afford lower end medium grade armor (think lamellar, cavalry robes), so ranged was not quite as powerful.
Basically the prices of all items need to be reduced by a 1/4th (with maybe ranged gear only dropping by half), back to the way they were and it can be like this again (though with an even more stringent budget) as gold production is still significantly lower. Its the problem with changing too many things at once - you jump from one extreme to the other (strat 1 to strat 3) and ignore the balanced version in-between.
This si all coming from ana rcher, so dont tell me its based ona bias for cavalry (my arch-nemesis).
