Seriously, half the posts here are basically "X civ is too strong, devs please nerf" or "Y civ needs buff, they are trash atm".

Folks, there are FORTY TWO civs in the game right now. It is impossible to make sure all of them have a perfect 50% win rate across all maps and skill levels unless you minimize the differences between each civilization which would make them all feel more generic.

I think it makes the game more fun to have civilizations that maybe slightly weak on Arabia, but have other interesting aspects that give them a unique vibe. The Chinese 3 villager start is something I that is really cool, and shouldn't have been reduced to 2 IMO just because it's really strong at the highest levels. If it really was being too much of a problem, then surely you could just ban Chinese in tournaments.

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Civ individuality is one of the coolest aspects of this game, and helps keep the game fresh and exciting with all the interesting unit combinations, and tactics that are possible for each civ and how they interact with one another. For this reason, up to a certain extent, civ balance can be sacrificed for maintaining civ-individuality IMO. Of course, I am not advocating for completely throwing game balance out of the window, but from most list of stats, even the so called "weaker civs" have a win rate in the 40ish per cent which is honestly not bad at all.

For comparison, a 40% win rate is what would be expected if you are playing someone rated 73 points higher than you. (Source: https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html#elo_diff=73) So would you quit games against someone who is 73 points higher rated than you, because "It's too broken of an advantage"? Of course not! Sure they have a slight advantage, but it's not like you stand no chance at all.

With that, I rest my case.