I agree outright with this. We were also not expecting just how insanely strong the old marches would get. Of course the new level of marches will be stronger, but no warning on how much stronger the old marches would also get.
I have all of my celestial gems, my ubba gear is maxed, my shaman fortress gear has e level 9's and 3 level 8's so almost maxed, my fortress knowledges are all maxed, our new levels of SH knowledges are all maxed, I don't have all of the new town skins but of the ones I do have one is maxed and a few others are working their ways up, along with all of the old stuff maxed, and I can barely make a dent in the blue marches.
If we could tone the new marches down a bit so we didn't work all this way only to get to worse results than we previously had, that'd be great. It really is a load of crap to work this hard, spend money, upgrade, and end up getting 1/2 the shards at 10 times the troop loss. Even being damn near a maxed player.