Aye but there is a reason why HA spam is banned in MP (CWB rules) and HA armies can pull off 0 casualty Heroic Victories with consistency. Essentially a quality HA stack can go on a never ending conquest spree. Unless it meets top quality bowmen (in vanilla things like Pharaoh's Bowmen/Sacred Band Archers. Or Longbowmen/Genoese Crossbowmen in M:T2 and its mods)
You are talking vanilla RTW? I never played MP with that game, I just know that in SP HAs were ridiculously easy to beat - even elite HAs. All I had to do was recruit foot archers. If he brought heavy cavalry too, I just threw in spears. So basically at that point I'm fully countering him with an army that's 10 times cheaper.

Again though, I can't speak exactly to the situation you outlined above as I didn't play MP with RTW, but it sounds like generic bowmen didn't have the ability to pierce the armor of elite HAs... is that right? So if you were a faction that didn't have access to decent bowmen, you were screwed? Did fielding a melee cavalry force that could catch the HAs help?

There are some MP types here, and they even use a modded version of the game specifically for MP. Maybe one of them could chime in on this HA question you pose. My guess though (this is just a guess) is that on an MP battle, assuming limited ammunition, you could field a very heavily armored infantry unit - perhaps a pike phalanx type - and an HA unit would run out of ammo before being able to kill you. From a Saka campaign I played I know I had to completely isolate and surround Selucid and Baktria pike phalanxes with HAs, and that wasn't enough generally (I had to come back again next battle and do the same).

Not sure about criticism, I can simply state the sources of what I have discovered and they can make up their minds.
My impression (I'm speaking "generically in life" here, not specifically about this forum) is that if you are liked, you can say anything you want to any group and it's fine. For instance, a hot chick in a classroom stands up and says something controversial. She is either applauded, or at the very worst politely challenged with another view. Parallel universe - fat ugly chick stands up and gives the same view to the same group of people that the hot chick did. She's shouted down and told to "sit down and shut up bitch!"

I think what I just said applies to this forum too in a generic sense, but more specifically, if you aren't the popular hot chick I just spoke of, my guess is if you just "simply stated sources of what you discovered and let folks make up their minds," that would be generally fine - provided that's all you did. Now, people might 1) challenge your view with a rational argument (unlikely, but it could happen), 2) tell you development of this game is finished and thus take balance suggestions to EB2, or 3) most likely tell you "balance is fine" or "if you want a totally balanced game go play starcraft" or "you just don't know how to use [insert unit type]" or a plethora of other things I heard. But that would be fine, because you did what you set out to do - "state sources, let people make up their own minds, blah blah." And that's all you did, and it ended.

Where it has the potential to degenerate and get nasty (at least it did for me) is if you respond back to either 1, 2, or 3. Bottom line, if it's just "state sources blah blah" that's likely to generate minimal controversy and you will probably be fine. If you are a hot popular chick, you can say anything you want and it will probably be fine.

Note that I'm not personally discouraging you from saying whatever you want, whenever you want, on whatever topic you want. I fully support that 100%, and actually enjoy reading balance critiques and suggestions and what not, especially backed-up by logical rational arguments.