I see your point, and I agree that this alpha brought more variety and dynamics in team games compared to older versions. I also like that captures add another layer of tactics. Also I think a lot of strategy of today were usable in past too. It more about how people play and communicate. I remember 2 big army in phase 2 could take a CC even with 20 citizen troop inside even in previous alpha.
My concern is mostly about late game (Phase 3) when some strong buildings like CCs or fortresses can still fall relatively quickly to capture. In those cases, I feel destruction (with siege or units) should remain the primary way, otherwise capture sometimes feels too cheap compared to the investment in defending and upgrading. Tower seems annoying to use (put men inside etc) for a low result and easy capture. 3 or 5 men can't give enough capture resistance. But you can tell me we can obstruct access to the tower, it true and I do. I will try do more tower for have an opinion
Maybe the solution is not to make captures impossible, but to adjust ratios depending on the building type and upgrade level. Civilian buildings and light towers could remain easy to capture, but core military buildings (CC, fortresses, barracks with garrison) should require much bigger numbers unless the attacker has already crippled them.
If you play a civ with hero elefant you can't have a CC with hero garnison.
That way, we could keep the current dynamics you enjoy (more tactical choices, not always relying on siege), while still ensuring that capturing a well-defended CC in late game doesn’t become too much of a shortcut. What do you think of this middle ground? Just run on cc and then capture all building is annoying. It should be exceptional situation.
if you invade an enemy without army to defend or refusing the fight, you still can capture and destroy some building in my point of view, they enemy will be hurt and he don't recovery easy. He still has to micro for garnison some men in the important building, just less. It open also the strategy of counter attack in some way.
also i said " here’s always the option of heavily damaging a building to force the garrison out before attempting to capture it. " with some military tech, the cc it easy to destroy if your opponent have no army.
I will add in the most of situation, except if you retard spam them, palisade give a fake feeling of security (and that's normal for the low cost of ressource invest), they are easy to destroy if you right clic with an entire army on it.
I like a lot turtle and protect my building with other building for win some time.