Like I said, Armoured Cruisers are great medium units, which until the advent of the Heavy Cruiser most navies lacked. I appreciate AC's because they deal with light ships nicely. The Germans have nothing to respond with except Capital Ships, and no one expects an Armoured Cruiser to fight a capital ship in a stand up brawl.
Armoured Cruisers and their later replacement Heavy Cruisers are my favorite naval units. They're the biggest surface ships navies are willing to risk using in open operations and they still have all the cool tech of battleships like primary batteries and directors. Armoured Cruisers just have a few holdovers from the Pre-Dreadnought days which does somewhat lessen their value.
To be fair, even the most modern BBs of WW1 had Pre-Tsushima holdovers like huge secondary batteries in casemates and exposed crew guns on the deck. So it kind of annoys me that most of the world navies were all like "Oh man AC's suck get rid of em they're too old." Good going tools, ditch your only medium units so your forces are shoe horned into Light/Heavy. Now your light units serve no purpose other than escort and your heavy units can't be risked anyway!
