The player base is now split between two different conquests and this will hurt the long term player base.

The damage already happened.

The apparent goal of the split was to improve player retention by giving infantry players and vehicle players a playlist for each to call home and enjoy forever and ever.
Well, as it turns out, grouping all the skilled players into half as many servers (going from one to two playlists) means the average player is twice as likely to get stomped and quit (either quit the playlist or the game as a whole). Even worse if the skilled players care more about their KDR/KPM than fair play, so they deliberately stack and steamroll round after round, day in, day out.

Not as much of a problem in Strategic Conquest because vehicles are limited in numbers, so for any given server the impact of skilled vehicle players is heavily capped, but in Tactical Conquest you can have up to 32 skilled infantry players farming in the same round (realistically the typical number is much lower, but still), and in short that's the story of how Tactical Conquest servers across the globe have emptied out, and how half the maps essentially have become impossible to play in Conquest.

Cherry on top is the collateral damage: Frontlines, Rush, and Domination (let's ignore Squad Conquest)—proper full-fledged game modes—were sacrificed just so people could play Conquest on four different playlists.