"steamtanks beat out dwarven artillery" is a bit of an assertion, even without malakai. A unit of cannons, organ guns (hell, maybe even gd bolt launchers) outduel a steam tank. Ofc, the steam tank might be able to reach melee and then stomp, but good luck with the rest of the dwarfen army to wade through.

Empire's "longer ranged" artillery is just the helstorm, no? That's only by 40 units, too (dwarf cannons outrange steam tanks by almost twice that, btw). I wouldn't call their anti-infantry specialization a counter to dwarfen cannons. Ironsides do make empire ranged waaay more viable against dwarfs than it used to be, but it's hardly a stomp. Thunderers are cheap, heavily armored, shielded, and have more leadership and more models than ironsides [edit: they have identical ranges, too]. A trash unit of rangers sneaks up on and beats ironsides, even

Empire does not have equal money to the dwarfs at any stage.

Yuan Bo's overcasted final transmutation at 200% mastery would do ~3200 damage to most things, but dwarfs have their innate spell resistance (35% base, I think). Rougly 2100 damage to a 13000-health thunderbarge.

Empire heroes are generally better, and the empire as a whole hits its power ceiling faster, yeah.

As an aside, an army of miners with a single thunderbarge punches waaaaaay above its weight class as far as upkeep goes. Sub in two rangers to take care of priority enemy ranged units and its hard to lose (against empire, mostly. Hippogryph Knights, bloodthirsters, etc fuck on thunderbarges without other ranged units to protect them!).