I guess you never saw calliope or american Howie.
American Howi had many counters and it was static. Snipers, mortars, mortar HT... they all could destroy it easily.
Calliope was the last ability of armor doctrine and while it was really powerful, armor doctrine was not the most popular doc in 1vs1/2vs2 as it required a lot of fuel to be effective.
What I'm trying to say is that Calliope came very late in the game and rarely people made more than one.
In CoH2 you can rush mobile arty and have one Stuka/Katyusha/PzWer in midgame. They're non-doctrinal and they can be spammed. Add up much more indirect fire options (mortars, units barrages, commander abilities...) and you have a game where you can lose vetted units just by the RNG dice.
I'm not saying that vCoH was better or not, but it awarded much more unit preservation and it was strange to lose vetted paratroopers or KCH by indirect fire.