Thats right.
I m happy that some units are better suited for town defense and some for open field fights.
But AOW:SM is the only game where a single Tier 3 unit kills 3 tier 4 units,
when the higher lvl units are able to attack and inflict damage to the lower lvl unit, so I dont count the ghost of AOW 1 because every unit (even one two tiers lower ) with magic /holy damage would most likly win while every unit without is screwed up. Call it a higly spezialised unit
I dont want to say that AOW:SM is a bad game or unplayable because of its balancing.
All I want to say that AOW was BETTER balanced and you might have lot easier game when playing ork than playing as hafling or frostling.
Example for good balancing in AOW:SM:
A multiplayergame vs a friend of me.
Undead vs elves.
Most fights: bone horrors vs iron maiden
Was quite interesting but after a few hours we stopped playing because there was no end in sight.
Everytime we fought in open field the bone horrors won, while fighting for towns the iron maiden won.