So Sturgia and Empire being low tier is perfectly balanced, then?
As i've mentioned in the thread, Aserai and Sturgia aren't very good at dealing with heavy armor, and playing Empire means you need to play perfectly in order to make the most out of some pretty average non-peasant units.
Yes, I am aware that peasant units can grab weapons off the ground if they don't think their native weapons are good enough, though every other peasant are just strong enough to be a workable unit if you're a late joiner. I cannot say the same about the Recruit, which honesty brings the rest of Empire down since all he'll do is feed kills to the enemy.
And this is somehow a perfectly balanced game.
I get that TaleWorlds insists on keeping certain design choices set in stone, though I wanna think that it's possible for factions to be balanced around those design choices. If the Varyag is to be the axe specialist, other units could instead have blunt weapons to make up for the Sturgian heavy infantry's axe specialization. And I still think we need a similar increase in blunt weapons for Aserai. Since the desert-borne culture won't be using any heavy infantry, i think game balance should dictate that their ability to kill heavily armored units should improve to compensate.
However, the fact that the factions I've mentioned have the problems that they have for more than a year likely indicates that a decently balanced game is not what TaleWorlds wants from their multiplayer mode.