Let's gather all Balance Issues in Civilization 5 Here!

[Fidel]

horsemen should be nerfed a bit: -1 movement and perhaps a penalty for attacking cities. otherwise mongols will start on a plain and just steamroll in 50 turns.
nerf maritime cs. perhaps it should give food only to the capital, and the second maritime CS only to the second largest city and so on. there should definitely be no empire-wide food boom because it is out of scale.
bushido should be nerfed to 50 or 75%, not full strength
persian UA should be nerfed: either the first prong decreased to 20% OR the other two prongs. not this thing.
greek and french UA should be halved.
chokonu should be nerfed.
longbowmen should go back to normal archery range and just be a tad stronger than normal archery.
upgrading should lose you promotions, or at least those that were tied to prior unit type (ranged, to be precise).

puppeting should have drawbacks. not happiness, but other drawbacks (should not add to research, or should add less, and should provide just a bit of gold). perhaps even require a unit garrisoned.

[Iola of Shinola]

If you want to try something truely "hinky" with civ 5, do this:

Start a (Diety/Immortal) game with standard map, go to advanced settings and decrease the number of city states to 4.
Then at the bottom of the players add 4 players. Now group them into teams by making player 1 (you) and player 7 on team 1. Player 2 ande 8 become team 2, and so on. I chose the map Great Plains, but I suppose it will work with whatever. The game separates the teams on opposite sides of the land mass, and away you go.

The fun starts when you are at war with another AI team. 3 Times i was closing in on eliminating 1 Civ, only to have my team mate agree to a peace deal. Oh, yeah. and when your Teamie sells open borders, they get OB on you too. SWEET.

[Fidel]

This is a thread about balance issues. I fail to see the point/suggestion you are trying to make.

[Iola of Shinola]

Well, in this particular case-- I would say the team concept for single player is so unbalanced it is virtually unplayable. Gosh. Do you really need more people to chime in saying "Horsemen are too strong...." But just for you I will keep my future posts more concise and on topic.

[Fidel]

now that i read your post again, i get the point.
sorry, the trade i work in favors relatively succinct expression.

[Iola of Shinola]

I posted this idea elsewhere, but will repost here as it is spot-on-topic.
(wink--wink.)

Several people have suggested NERFing Horsemen because they are too powerful.

Reducing their attack strength and/or giving them a defense penalty would certainly do the trick (as I have seen several people suggest) HOWEVER...

I think the really sick thing about Mounted Units (not just horsemen) is that they can move,attack, move and/or fortify all in the same turn. Since infantry use all their "moves" in an attack, it would be only fair if it cost the mounted units a minimum of 3 moves to attack. The mounted unit would be allowed to do a move, move, attack for a 33% reduction in attack strength. So you can either, move, move, move, move; or move, attack; or attack, move; or move, move, attack with a penalty. In addition, mounted units get their strength from mobility and speed. Giving them the attack "bonus" of their mobility and the ability to fortify seems to me at least to be letting them have their cake and eating it too. If units had separate attack and defense scores, then the problem would sort itself out... IE Knights 18 attack, 12 defense. Since Civ V only has one score, then you need to either give almost all the mounted units penalties on defense, AND/OR take away their ability to fortify. Personally, I think it should be AND not OR.

Tactically, terrain modifiers make sense for infantry (hills, forest = good/ grass, plains = bad) but for mounted units it is the opposite. Mounted units perform much better in the open than in the trees. Perhaps the ability reduction the game needs to balance is that mounted units have a separate table of terrain bonuses. IE +10% in the open and -33% in rough terrain.

thoughts?

[Ming]

First, I don't think horse units are as over the edge as some might think. Like other civ games, it's still "rock, paper, scissor"
Spearmen and pikemen chew up horse units.

However, I would agree that terrian is as important to horse units as it is to infantry. Horse units should be at that best on open terrian and should suffer some kind of penality if fighting on bad terrian.

[Fidel]

all units get -33% in the open when on defense. i reckon it would be enough to remove this penalty for horses, no need to give them bonus. giving them penalty in hills and forests would be very reasonable.

[LDiCesare]

Spearmen, particularly ai spearmen, don't chew horsemen. They usually die to them on flat ground without being able to strike back.

[Ming]

Maybe against the AI.. but that's a matter of AI stupidity, and not the over strength of horses. We know the AI sucks at combat, that's a given for the moment. If you want to toughen up the AI, FINE BY ME.

But if I have spearmen, and the AI has horses, the horses are toast. It's not even close.

[Iola of Shinola]

Not playing MP, so I can't comment there.

However in SP I tend to agree with LDI. I usually find the move, attack, move works wonders at finding combat on open ground, then moving back to hills/forrest for defense. Against cities, I often dash my horse in, pillage, and exit w/o taking any damage at all. Is usally great for picking up gold, and weakening the AI before you plan on going to the peace table. (like when your unhappiness is reaching epic proportions!)

[Dinner]

Army support costs are a massive problem in the game. Like others have said when you switch ages you can go from prosperous to bankrupt in a turn even though you haven't upgraded any units.

[notyoueither]

It's not from changing ages. The cost per unit goes up gradually over time.