It is very much intended to be an imbalancing unit as all of the cultural units are. It may be a little stronger than the normal curve and at some point will be, as all cultural units, evaluated for adherence to a fair measure of equatable imbalancing. The point is that the edge they give does not last for the whole game so it matters not that for this culture, they come so early. For other cultures, their imbalancing units come later and give an edge during that era instead while this one has been obsoleted. This means cultures wax and wane in strength and edges over neighbors to a varying degree even if all civs stay comparable in tech achievement.
What's the benefit of the mobility promotion exactly? Remind me so I don't have to go looking it up please.
But it's the opposite of challenge, it just made it easy. I'm generally bad at warmongering in Civ4, but with these, I rolled over my neighbours with ease. Only thing slowing me down a bit, was the unhappiness penalty for cities.
I'm not familiar with all the C2C promotions, but is there such promotion like that available? Only one I know of from BTS is only for warlords.
