Its closer to the annoyance of upgrading one lvl1 wall at a time when you would want to upgrade them altogether. Not really detrimental, just annoying. In the end pushing back deployment of the cc wont even help much, your base for example just means deploying it 1-2 tiles further away.
In terms of when it did make a big difference (fail to see how this is possible) it can be related to a bug imo. If there was a bug that was messing up your raids, the fact that it messes up your raids doesn't justify its existence. A more extreme example is the xbow bug (as this does significantly change things), from a defensive point you can have them all up to encourage ground raids instead of air, but then benefit from a higher range of vice versa. From an offensive viewpoint it makes you unsure of what way the xbows are shooting. You could argue that this is a part of strategy, and it is, but that doesn't mean its good from a gameplay perspective.
You have to ask whether it is beneficial to gameplay. Of course you probably feel it adds to defensive strategy and it does albeit insignificantly, but at the same time from the attackers side its not something that needs to be there, it amounts to nothing more than an inconvenience. You seem adamant about it so I guess we will have to agree to disagree :)

