So I've always been a fighter in tournament, maybe not the smartest move but it grew on me. I loved fighting when i was able to manually fight and make sure my losses were minimal. That was the challenge for me back then. So then all our units were rebalanced, and that wasn't possible anymore. I adapted and accepted that now it was not longer about trying to minimalise losses but you had to accept you would loose a big part of your units no matter if you did it manually or not. At that point switching to catering wasn't really an option either because the fight costs were huge if you wanted to do many provinces.
So i adapted, and focussed on to levelling wonders that made my troops train faster/ give me free units. Because now losses were always there so there is no other way.
With this current rebalance it feels like i have wasted those last 3 years since the rebalance by levelling the wrong AW, it feels like i have no choice but to switch to catering now. If i switch to catering only i can trash: simia sapiens, flying academy, victory towers, needles of the tempest, shrooms, piramid, temple of the toads, dwarven bulwark. On top of that since i probably need a lot less hammers (I spend more then 1.5M hammers a day in barracks), these can go as well endless excavation, tome and prosperity tower. So thats 8 or 11 wonders at lvl 30 that can go: thats 240 or 330 wonder levels, surely that will make an impact.
If i would go full fighting only then i can trash: abyss, mountain halls, maze of dark matter, watchtower ruins, elvenar trade center, thats only 5 wonders that can go. The cost impact is much lower as such.
The thing is, you used to be able to mix and match, do some catering and do some fighting, now you force us to choose 1 strategy and stick with that.
Because wonders are all treated equally, fighters get a much bigger cost then caterers.
And then there are some wonders who are just nice to have but don't help you at all as a caterer or fighter, like blooming trader guild, thrones of high men, sunset tower, both lighthouses, etc
The thing is, since you need many many hammers when you want to be a competitive fighter, you also need some of the wonders that were intended for caterers, like excavation, prosperity tower and tome of secrets, making it so that you need a lot more wonders to fight in this game. So maybe removing hammer cost in barracks might tackle this a little also.
You might have noticed that most of the complainers are people who usually fight, and those who are happy about this change are people who hardly put effort in tournament before and/or are usually caterers.
This balance favors caterers so much more now, so maybe you can understand where the rage of some come from, if they worked years to tackle the last unit re-balancing, only to find out, they are screwed now.