Horses need accomodation too!

[panda]

TLDNR: It is illogical that an empire can have one single stable for its 200 cavalry!

1. Stables should not only be a place for training cavalry, but also for accomodating horses. You should not have more horses than your stables would allow. Just like you can't have more people than your houses would allow. Your horse population should be limited by the number of stables you have. For example, we can set that one stable can house 10 horses. If you have 2 stables, the max cavs that you can have would be 20 + the horse pop bonus from your civic centres (of course the player also need enough houses for the riders of those 20 horses).
2. Limiting horse pop bonus from a civic centre to be 6 or 8 would make chicken rush more difficult. (the number of horses that you can garrison in a cc could be different from horse pop bonus for a cc)
3. It should also be possible to set a horse pop limit in a game. With lower horse pop limit, players would need to develop more winning strategies than massing cavs, this is an alternative to what @JC (naval supremacist) proposed here

Edited December 21, 2023 by panda

[Atrik]

I'm not that sure that cavalry are as op as to deserve to double their pop cost. If you spam cavs you are trading it for eco, if you spam champs you are trading it for early attack. I think overlooked kdr is another reason why champs feel op. If normal units are fighting champs you could expect kdr to be in favor of champs. However you must recall that the cost of champs is more than double the one of normal units.

Some civs can stack bonuses like with seleucids tech +hero  (+ 20%hp and + 3 resistance) to your champ cav. However others civs like Athen have OP combos : easy Rank 3 inf + hero.