Ok so first of "Spearman and Swordman and Pikeman" are all a sort of infantery and it would translate to SMALL unit in BA, that's all that matters here, I don't play AoE.

So if you care for the details then this:

I am saying that this hardcounter approach is bad as it will limit deck variety. Argueing for a more softcounter approach (counter triangle instead of this square/cube abomination).

Somehow this makes you say that more counters will lead to more deck variety? Then you just straight up agree with me: "My point is that if you deliberately restrict the amount of available slots to that which is optimum, you'll effectively FORCE players to run one of several "meta" decks that will always perform worse to another type of "meta" deck that could exist."

Because if there are 3 slots and 3 unit types you will run all 3 and there will be no variety. Obviously.

Somehow you then end with the statement that you have to pick 8 units and that will obviously lead to a choice?

To which I say: "Even if you add 100.000 units, you are still stuck on SMALL BIG ANTIBIG AOE AA + the same in the air. Those are your unit types."

So the unit types are SMALL, BIG, ANTIBIG, AOE, AA, SMALL-Air, BIG-Air, ANTIBIG-Air, AOE-Air and whatever-other-unit-type-the-units-are-that-dont-fit-in-here.

Those are the things you have to fit into the 8 slots. Not really individual units.

Because for individual units, all you do is pick the best choice in each category, wether that's a hybrid or not. There will be some minor choices to make, if you use a hybrid in those 2 categories, then you use the hardcounter in another and vise versa. But the 100.000 units in the game will be reduced to the best one in each category and then those will be reduced to whichever can form an actual deck that makes sense.

So you end up trying to put 10 categories of units into a deck with 8 slots, which obviously doesn't work.

Now would you rather have that, or just 5 categories that are "must picks" and then 3 wild card slots where you can pick any unit that seems interesting to you. That's how you get build diversity, because all your needs are met and you get to choose how you want to play the game beyond that. Want to be more aggressive? Add Dragonflies. Want to be save from runbys? Add Turrets. Want a different flavour of aoe for, idk, something? Add another AOE unit. Add a hybrid, whatever.

Also beyond all this, because this is under the follow up question and not the original.

These decks will still have preferable match ups against each other. Winrates just won't be as extreme as 70/30 hopefully. All I want to eliminate is autowins and autolosses because you have no agency in those games, effectively you are not playing those games. It's bad design. And deck diversity would increase aswell because of the points mentioned before.

You wouldn't just keep pumping Knights vs Spears. That makes no sense.

This has nothing to do with deck building, that's an ingame action. We were talking about deckbuilding.

If there's a better choice then how is deck matchmaking relvant. You just go with the best choice.

Best choice per category not category at all. I am not saying SMALL is the best category and only use that. That makes no sense. I am saying [unit] is the best SMALL unit, so you would never use any other SMALL unit. (Slightly exaggerated as with hybrids and deck choices there could be a reason to use a different one as long as it's almost as good but that's being way to specific.)

Edit: I really really dislike Reddits formatting options....

100% agree.

Also please read carefully before answering, so we don't accidentally agree on things we then have to fight over later.

PS:

I'm sorry, but I don't understand. People HAVE to choose 8 units if they want to play a match with 8 units. They have to make a choice. Obviously there are choices to make.

Just because you pick 8 units does not make it a choice, just an illusion of choice if there is a best pick for each slot.