snipe
False. HE and AoE tools had been toned down through out the years and it doesn't compare at all to the levels we had at release.
Crits: flamers and explosives. They had a little chance to completely evaporate units randomly, who were caught in it's AoE.
Death crits: like Stuka Dive bomb. If you were caught in the AoE, any infantry would die. Nowadays it's been removed from most sources and given a linear damage drop off.
Mines: no longer can they 1 shot wipe squad as the damage is capped.
Demo charges: nothing to add to it.
Precision strike on indirect fire units.
Old artillery and mortar AoE profiles and fire saturation. 120dmg 120mm mortar?
Old ISU152 profile?
Long long etc.
The issue is simple. You have to protect 2 VPs and enough strategic points to get resource income. You have to spread somehow thin in 1v1. Popcap is limited.
Now start adding more players. VPs and strat point doesn't increment. Popcap does. Now you have double the amount of units to hold the same amount of points.
Regarding the fact that vehicle gameplay replaces infantry fights, thats the nature of the beast. You don't have many ways to reduce mp drain through fuel expenditure so it's logical to get units which don't represent with reinforcement bleed.
This is nothing new. Stall into call in tanks and having your army be composed of tanks and engineers had been a feature since day 1.
The few moments you don't have tanks been predominant, is when blobs were at it's peak. Example: CAS meta with Gren LMG42 spam with pak walls behind it.