There has been drastic meta changes before too but over the years the units that have been made has remained the same. The earlier meta mostly used to be around archers or cavalry , infantry was simply not viable except with certain civilization(goths) and that too only once you had the whole economy set up to spam their cheap infantry continuosly.

Theve been trying to push infantry with small buffs , and this is patch has seen some more buffs to infantry and infantry civs.