Current status and small correction:

Why would fanatics be OP? They are very expensive due to their high food cost. Also, temples are expensive and otherwise not as useful as a barracks.  Fanatics have low armor and are not that fast. Also, if they would be OP, we would have seen them much more often.

As I see it, your right. It not that easy to load externally.

Sure. Do you have any replays to share? EDIT: One subtle nerf would be to separate the upgrades into infantry-only and cavalry-only. Weapon upgrades would further be split between melee and ranged weapon upgrades. Additionally, make the upgrades more expensive. Essentially, as they were in A23.  

You should see how champ cav performs on a TG, and how is the dynamic we talking about. they really need a nerf or some kind of counter unit. its absurd that some of them can wipe out pikes like nothing

I was under the impression that a mix of sail and non-sail boats would be ok, given the previous reception. We have the scout ship as a somewhat faithful recreation of the hjortspring boat, and the fishing ship uses oars instead of a sail. For the merchant ship, it makes sense that sails would supplement trade vessels. As for the arrow ship, it needed a bit more distinguishment from the hjortspring boat, otherwise the ships would be difficult to distinguish quickly. I think there is a degree of plausibility in the use of sail which we can justifiably represent, while keeping a sort of replica of the real hjortspring boat for history enthusiasts to appreciate. Rock art shows a diversity of hjortspring-style boats, some complete with masts and/or sails, plenty of ship settings have single rocks denoting a mast, and north <-> south trade existed.

They are broken because spearmen cant counter them U can get metal easily like how u get wood easily from trees Also with abit turtling u can spam them