recent balance patch makes it more balanced, but you don't have to get the expansion, you still can get just regular extended edition without chinese and still play online with people with chinese expansion and no expansion (basically everyone who plays online on steam).
but don't get it!
not yet, at least - extended version you have stability problems, hard crashes, out of sync so much so that 50% of your games (maybe more, depends if you like teamgames and maps with a lot of stuff, like world map, settlers, zelda - then more crashing).
look at recent user reviews at steam, all of them negative! that's because stability is gone downhill recently. also when more than 80 people in the lobby it starts to lag server in the lobby - means you can't see list of games for minutes, no matter how much you refresh, so starting a game in peak hours of activity is a problem too.
so wait! and get it when you can see user reviews and news about no more crashing, fixing bugs etc. basically wait for a properly working game otherwise you will rip your hair out trying to finish your games without crashing in this.
before that happens though.. regular version>
extended, balance or not. btw they still didn't fix mercs and collosus in ee patch, so not THAT much has changed.
UPD: and also, titan is ugly, looks like 8bit garbage texture smeared on this big ass model, but all titans look garbage low quality so.. there are more serious problems than this in this expansion[This message has been edited by Legendary Raider (edited 03-08-2016 @ 12:06 PM).]