Just the fact that your opponent has the option to use these pay 2 win units means that you HAVE to take that into account in the early game. If you don't you put your self in a further disadvantage.
This is where you are contradicting yourself, if the commanders are hidden you don't even know
if the opponent has the option of deploying these "pay to win" units or if you can exclude them and form your strategy based upon this information, which is what you want to do. So I have to agree with Le Wish here, I do not share your view on this being an "advantage".
Yes, this is kind of the basics of having a fair game.
So, to translate this into coh terms, people who only had one part of the original CoH (e.g. OF) were at a disadvantage because they could be matched up against vcoh factions, factions they did not have access to? That's news to me, because the OF players were rather capable of dealing with the stuff they didn't buy (vcoh factions).