What’s new? Seems kind of crazy to introduce a meta changing past to an old game like this that has managed to stay popular.
EDIT: case in point. Vikings, a civilization with numerous infantry buffs, was played as an Archer civ in practice because even with all their infantry buffs, XBow / Arbalest was considered stronger.
The biggest change this patch is a new tech for +1 pierce armor to the Longswords line, which can be researched in Castle Age. Furthermore, the entire line of infantry can upgrade faster, and cheaper. Finally, most infantry civs (Malians, Goths, etc. etc.) have gotten significant economy buffs to make them even stronger. Whether or not its enough for infantry to shine is to be seen.
It seems like a design failure that the game does not obey the intended rock paper scissors, no?
So the meta pre-patch is that XBows are weak to Skirmishers. (10 E. Skirms can often win vs 20 XBows). Knights are weak to Monks (100 gold to convert a 60-food+75Gold unit is effectively a 120-food + 150-gold swing, so the Monk can die afterwards and you still got an effective conversion. Furthermore, Knights are the same speed as all other knights and have a ton of armor+HP, so the converted knight can likely escape).
If the monk survives for a 2nd or 3rd conversion, even worse. The monk already paid for itself after just one conversion.
The "intended" rock-paper-scissors was that Infantry (ie: Longswords) were countered by XBows. But...
You see, its more important to "force" your opponent into making otherwise worthless units. Skirmishers may counter XBows, but they're nearly useless against all other units in the game. So by "forcing" your opponent into a counter-unit, you've more effectively controlled the game.
So Longswords are countered by XBows. But guess what? XBows were the meta-play to begin with, so you just "forced" the opponent into making good units, what he should have been doing from the start!
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That being said, XBows only counter Infantry when micro comes into play: effectively knowing the XBow move-and-attack cooldowns. Its not a thing beginners do. If you just patrol-move into a pile of infantry, the Longswords kinda do okay.
So its only a counter much like how monks "counter" knights, I assume perfectly play on the part of the XBows (who have nearly the same movement speed, so they can perform a "retreating" kiting maneuver against enemy Longswords). If you are unable to micro like this however, its not really a true counter.
Theve been trying to push infantry with small buffs , and this is patch has seen some more buffs to infantry and infantry civs.
They have been releasing expansion adding new civilizations every ~6 months or so together with a bunch of balance changes.
> stay popular
It didn't. Not too such an extent as it is now. For years it had only community support and a fairly small player base. Microsoft resurrected it not so long ago.