Quote Originally Posted by Ulstan
Whenever a question of balance comes up in these games, there is invariably one person who says "xxxx isn't overpowered - I can beat them 100% of the time!"

Unfortunately this individual never realizes what exactly it means for a unit to be overpowered - which is, it requires effort and resources to defeat the unit far out of proportion to what it takes to field the unit. A 500g chariot unit should not take 3 units of archers and a unit of artillery to defeat. That's pretty clearly imbalanced.

So that deals with chariots problems under gameplay only concerns.

Next we come to historical concerns - one of the greatest strengths of the total war series is the units do what they did historically.

Let us lay aside the fact that egypt having chariot heavy armies right now is not historically correct, and instead focusing on making the performance of chariots historically correct. That is, the chariots should handle and perform like chariots back then did. No turning on a dime, no super accurate archer fire mowing down everyone, and no slaughtering cavalry (their counter) in melee.
VERY, very well said. Any time you have to use a quarter of your army to counter a single unit, and micromanage the engagement, something is a bit fishy. It could be historically accurate...but it better be a true super unit, not chariots.