Hi,

first of all, 0.85 is a great balance improvement over 0.8! No longer are Horsemen with Spears and charge the best thing ever! I am also liking the added choices for level 3 forts, +2 initiative, +X hitpoints or charge and a defensive catapult? All of these are quite valid, although I am currently playing a Gilden custom race that is greatly amused by the infirmary, which leads to very very sturdy units (+2HP per level? so at level 6ish a random guy will have 30ish hp? Sounds great!).

While weapons are now somewhat more balanced (even though Spears, especially boars/winged spears are quite dominant, in particular, the progression from short spear to winged spear is from 5 to 10 damage, I dont think that any other weapons has that kind of margin), there is still the fact that your units should always be mounted. I strongly dislike this, and I believe that this dislike is shared by a lot of people. 

The most interesting solution to change the horse/warg vs foot dynamic is, in my opinion, to make horse/warg units smaller than infantry units. This means that, with cooperation, a unit could have for example 4 footmen or 3 horsemen. Unfortunatly, this would propably require a user interface change. Another solution is to reduce horse income to 0.1, and then make upgrades of stables/ranches branch. This would add an opporutnitiy cost, one can either have the horses, or economic advantadges. 

Other ways to add opportunity costs for horses could be buildings with a negative horse income. For example, a poastal service could be a national wonder that decreases unrest, but takes a certain amount of horses per turn to maintain its upkeep. One could also consider some kind of Horse militia, a national building that adds a militia horse unit to all cities. (One could of course do similiar things with Iron, Warg and crystal resources). 

If one falls into 0 horses, either the building could stop working or one just stays at 0 horses and cant build any horses at all anymore.

One could either get extra horses in the pool, or gain economic benefits. The third solution, and in my opinion the solution that could be most easily implemented is to give horses some fairly hefty upkeep costs. Make it 2-3 times that of a normal unit, and foot units will become the mainstay quickly.