I play the 12 Castle lobby games almost exclusively for reference.
After the latest update, I've enjoyed a bit more balance in race-to-race with the nerfs to Orcs overall. However the Elves have emerged as a ridiculously OP race from early to end game. The saving grace is if you just leave them alone, they'll fill up their population limitations with bottom tier units and then you can roll over them with stronger units in one push even if you're guaranteed to lose your first unit from their main bottom unit (deals 3 damage to the first unit in a stack). However in the early game they're all but unblockable by the other races save the Dwarves tier 2 unit (guardian). You can't out-earn the AI to overcome this difference so starting next to the Elves requires a perfect turtling strategy (which I'll describe later). At lesat in the current meta.
I've found the Dwarves to be lacking in high end power too. The Zeppelin's flight ability is nice but with the way the maps are designed it's usually irrelevant. Especially since NPCs no long avoid the water and the Zeppelin itself costs 15g to make (and more to research) it's not a unit that can be spammed sure, but it's also not even a unit that figures to fit into a top 5 value for the Dwarves. The Priest is very expensive to use as a power unit (rightfully so with those bonus') but then it drops down to the cannon which is a bargain among 7 power units (plus the siege ability is great) however, most of the other 7 power units have ways of bumping themselves up.
Human knights get +1 for mounts to 6, making the difference negligible when combined with a hero (totaling 79g per 10 man squad)
Orcs are a mess right now in terms of value and efficacy. I don't see the value in the Warband when most of the game every race is neck and neck. Gaining a +1 strength boost on a victory until end of turn is almost negligible when 50-70% of your unit will be wiped out on every major combat. Let alone doing it for 14g. The Ogre would fill in as the most efficient power troop for the Orcs still but their value at 13g and only 6 strength has made it more difficult to spam them at least. I'm not sure that's the goal to avoid them because of their cost, the economy just can't keep up with spamming units over 11g I find unless you get a very specific building early on.
Highelves: Going from Apprentice spam to an 8g flying griffin to the 10g swordsman/maiden . You don't even need your three highest tier units to stomp on everyone from start to finish.
Dwarves: they have a great defensive unit in the Guard, 4g 6 power (on defense of a castle) unit really can't be beat until end game. They'll fill their castles and just hunker down. You pretty much have to bait them out of their own castle or take them with 3-4x their number. Considering other races have to spend 2-3x the amount of gold to get to 6 power (generally), it puts a ceiling for how complex you can make the AI. Otherwise they'll play super defensive while accumulating tons of gold.
Undead: This one offers one path to the end and the other 5 units in their buy are all traps. Swordsman -> Necromancer -> Hero -> Lich -> Nightmare is the only feasible way to win I find. Relying on Swordsman to get you through early game and Necromancer/Skeleton spam to get you through everything else. If I spend gold on the other 5 units, I get overrun by the AI even with power advantages.
Since the last major update with units getting a higher cost, I've noticed the AI building less and less farm fields around their castles too. Some don't build a single field yet they're able to fill in their entire castle with an army of purchased troops. We've got an instance here where we're losing on gold accumulation, numbers and strength to the AI. The only way to overcome this and change the winning % is to lockdown one building that gives 1g for every 3 unspent gold a player has. If the AI gets it, I mean they're almost unstoppable like they've got 5 castles. I'm not sure on the numbers and what's going on, if there's a backdoor AI gold accumulation fund or I'm just paranoid (entirely plausible lol) but for most of these races, spending money on certain units just isn't possible. The research cost plus the cost of making just one of them can often be too much.
Overall I like the game, I think it has potential and you're doing great work with it over the last three updates that I've followed. Honestly with the amount of variables and choices each AI has, it's quite impressive and I look forward to seeing what the other 5 locked races turn out as one day.
Oh one last thing before I forget, there's a mechanic where if one castle is taken, the entire opponent loses. Even if they have 9 castles, if they lose their original starting castle then they lost. I'm not a big fan of this mechanic. I've used it to my advantage, even overturning a 1 vs 10 situation with it by conquering the 10's empty home castle with a guerrilla dragon but if that had happened to me, I'd be pretty annoyed lol. I'm not sure on the variables of fixing any of this, I do like to offer more solutions because I think looking at all of this the default reaction will be to lower or increase some unit's gold cost but the natural gold accumulation of the castle just can't handle much more right now. It's a tough line on those bigger lobbies I find.
anyways, cheers!