Its more a quality of player thing right now (as well as a higher than normal quality of nexuns group) that you are seeing then a fundamental weakening of the village. Players like homard, Knacnar, droma, Nurrok, Zinsazin, etc were very succesful because they did what they needed to do to be succesful with their village build. I know that is kind of a generic thing but I think it used to be the mechanical advantages of battle were able to overcome a lot of skill in enemies. that mechanical advantage has decreased a bit, so you can still win but you might have to go about it slightly differently in many cases.

As long as your willing to accept the fact that you can die a lot villagers are still pound for pound the deadliest characters in the game on average. There might not be as many hitting the ludacrisly high end of the pk specturm (200+ kills) but you have a boatload more then most other cabals in the strong department (50+ kills) and generally in far less hours played.