Sorry for hijacking your game thread guys.
I can't compete with your word count Calahan since I'm writing on a phone. So I'll just say that while I agree that some choices are lost by removing hammers, I'd argue that at least as many are created by not forcing every nation to obtain E3. It would be easy to make a list of interesting decisions like you've done for additional pretender design choices opened up by removing that requirement. Note that this isn't because I "don't like thinking" during pretender design; far from it. It's because I want there to be more interesting options and choices to consider.
But anyway, I guess we are unlikely to agree on this. Maybe some sub-mod with hammers re-included should be created, because in many other ways CBM1.84 (and hopefully 1.9!) is far superior to CB1.6, so it seems like a bit of a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.