I agree with you. This game can now be played by 10 y.o. kids. It’s amazing, because after reading the developers’ notes I expected a lot of troubles (less stamina, higher recovery time, less powerful thralls).
I have been playing for years and with my two lev 60 characters on 1041 and 6009 everything is a walk in the park. So I decided to give the game’s new combat mechanics a try, starting from scratch on 1035, where I reached level 20 yesterday. The only hard times I had were when I was wandering around with coarse armor and stone weapons. As soon as I crafted a slave-forged ceremonial (+10 health) and my usual set of weapons (short sword + shield) I became invincible.
Basically, there were situations I was very cautions when facing single-handedly, even with my lev 60 characters, but now???
I am sorry to say, but the changes to the balancing are an epic fail. I appreciate all the rest that came with Age of War - including the idea of forcing replayability tampering with the durability of legendary weapons - but as far as the combat is concerned, I would like the game to go back to the previous balancing.