Ah, what a lively debate!
Meh, who cares about complete balance? I don't give a crap if someone else has a enc 50% or const 20% site, it a luck factor, like a plague hitting your cap at turn 3 which pretty much means you're done for in most cases (yes it can happen even with luck), or constantly getting rapped by knights, but that's what makes it so fun.
You can have every single bonus site in the game and lose rather badly when everyone dogpilles you, which frankly happens quite often to nations that stand out sadly, which would presumably be nations with bonus sites for example. It could be in possession of a complete newb who doesn't realize it's potential... Anyway, those sites are quite rare and exist to spice up the game a bit.
And yes, I realize having hammers demands the first 35 turns earth income go to hammer forging, but having death gems demands them being saved for Tartarians, and having nature gems saving them for GoR and GoH, and so on... Every path is bound to have some item/spell/summon more demanding and more worthwhile than the rest, and removing one will just make the next in line stick out again, unless you're determent to make all paths as useless as fire.
Now as far as balance goes, my interest there is that items/summons/spells get reasonable prices (for example I think CBM 1.3 or 1.4 had vampire lords cost like 40 slaves, which was absurd), and rather not eliminate parts of the game.
Personally, the removal of hammers and discount sites came rather unexpected to me as I've never heard of a complain regarding those before the change was actually made.
There's was something else I wanted to say, but the thought fled my mind...
Removing all this things makes the game just duller me feels.
But luckily CBM is just an optional mode so I'll be sticking with 1.6 for now.