I know rather well what ICS is, and how it has been a traditional problem of all Civ-likes since the beginning. Again, I'm not particularly interested in the endless minutiae of this discussion, but AC is a terrible example (and even worse if we take into consideration Crossfire) of "well balanced game". Again, to be fun in MP AC needs to be houseruled heavily.
While my opinion mostly coincides with that of Dzupakazul, I do not entirely agree with that statement, though for a different reason.
AC is a game about Absolutely Broken Shit, and is a competition to get things broken faster than your rivals can. However, a game between several experienced players - the ones who know which broken things to watch out for - is capable of self-regulating through alliances. Those were the most fun games I've played, the ones where they tell you 'build this project or step over that territory, and we'll see you dead', and you have to bide your time until you are reasonably certain you can take out everyone... which may take a while. It's not something I see often, because it requires players to be on the same page when it comes to threat estimates, - otherwise they will either miss a crucial moment or react poorly to others trying to keep them in check 'unfairly', leading to a violent disagreement and possibly a quick end - but I've seen it happen.
(Aplha Centauri is also pretty poorly designed, in that mid-game a single mistake can cause a collapse of your empire in a matter of just a couple of turns with little to no possibility of recovery, meaning that any equilibrium or balance thus achieved is a house of cards ready to fold at a moment's notice. It's pretty unrewarding to spend 100+ turns in micromanagement hell for a 1-turn payoff that doesn't always come as the game may be conceded even before that. There are hardly any back-and-forth or comebacks here)
What people tend to speak about here is multiplayer
duels where two players compare their e-peens and so decide who is the more skilled between them. But
should the games be designed with that in mind? Or should they consider the broader picture, which would inevitably involve having favorable and unfavorable match-ups between certain sides and under certain conditions, and then leave it to the players to find ways for it to work. Because that's what house rules or custom maps are, just limiting unfun things that do not work with this particular game mode you are playing.
I am an avid HoMM III player -
or was one a decade or so ago, - and whenever the rules for tournaments came up there were always guys making fun of the 'excessive' limitations there. No Dimension Door, no certain heroes, no upgrading certain monster tiers, no using certain structures, no hit&run, no diplomacy, no attacking on the 1st day of the Week if you brought reinforcements,
no fun allowed - but it is only natural that whenever players want to compete in skill they want to minimize external influences they consider an 'unfair' advantage or disadvantage. It is also natural that others who care nothing for their 'ranking' see it as a complete madness infringing on their fun, and don't want it in their games.
Don't think there is a way to reconcile the two approaches, except making sure the game doesn't have outright broken stuff that limits the number of viable strategies (and thus limit fun), and then giving the players a good modding kit to do whatever they want to with the rest and let them have fun however they want it.
The HoMM mod is living proof that dedicated communities can balance games better than any developers would without it detracting from the gameplay. After all, no developer would playtest their game for two decades, and no, Grimoire is not a strategy!