Quote Originally Posted by Orda Khan
Are factions unbalanced?

......Orda
Obviously some factions are more competitive than others.

In general the picture is not bad since there are many competitive factions in each era. The high era is better in this respect IMO since almost all of the factions are competitive except England, Turks, Mongols, Timurids (if you dont count rush) due to the weakness of archery (as these are the factions that heavily depend on archery).
In late western factions with pike+musket(arq.)+heavy cav combo dominate. Other factions receive little to compansate for this, though at least the muslim faction and russia get some moderately useful units (Moors and Egypt gets sudanese handgunners, good kills but short range; Turks get JHI and Jan. Muskt, very high cost can cripple the turksih players though; Russian gets cossack muskt, again high cost). On the other hand Hungary and Poland only receives a cheap heavy cav (hussars) as a late era unique unit (they get halbs and arquebus but that is not unique), and while hussars are indeed good and cost efficient, other western factions have good cav and pikes and musketeers. Also since both Hunagry and Poland losing it is faction specific heavy ranged cav in late era (i.e. Hungarian and Polish nobles respectively) there is very little point taking them.
England has a somehwat similar problem as it receives only a good cav (demi-lancers) and heavy billmen as faction specific late era unit, but assuming the archer problem to be fixed an arquebus+LB "spam" could be an efficient late era tactic for them.