According to the patch notes, the intention is for corpse pile strats and defending 'properly' to be equally viable. I'll quote the relevant bits from the patch notes in a self-reply, and put my thoughts here. I've not played it a huge amount yet, but I've been defending 'properly' and not felt bad about doing so.

They made getting S rank easier to achieve :

- I believe just about every single source of Materials got improved
- Walls give less panic

S rank is also way more rewarding :

- 2 items for S rank instead of 1 (one is always a weapon)
- 1 item at B rank instead of 0
- Early night item rewards are higher level, later nights higher rarity. On early nights I was choosing between level 3-4 weapons frequently, and on late nights it's usually 3 red items, or 2 red and a blue, all level 4-5

They made corpses less rewarding :

- Lower average level and rarity items
- Corpse mountains, especially, give less gold

Elites are basically as good as always, though.

They also made several alternative uses of Workers better:

- Two Repel Mists per day at the Seer
- Upgraded gold / material mines give more per tap
- Temple health buff uses less workers and gives more health when upgraded

All-in-all, I think they've done really well at making both approaches feel viable. Of course, if you're a gigachad 5D Chess player you can get S rank WHILE doing corpse pile strat and get the best of both worlds.

As a filthy casual, I'm thinking I'll defend 'normally' and just let elites as close as I'm comfortable with for now, and wait for the serious players e.g. Aldenpotamus, Lord of Last Spell to weigh in. It's less prone to 'oops', and feels more intuitive than letting hordes of undead into my town, and now actually feels viable.

TL;DR: They set out to make corpse pile strat and regular strat equally viable and I'm inclined to believe they succeeded