Are there any balance mods that specifically target ICS? I don't really want cheaper units and cheaper buildings because (it seems to me) that will just result in more units (I don't want that) and every city being able to build every building (as in civ4... I don't want that either). Tech does seem a little fast to me but slowing that down is essentially the same as speeding up unit/building production (I found the ratio about right... so I just shifted to a slower game speed). I'm not trying to pooh-pooh Thal and Valk's mods. I see some really good ideas and I'll have to try them before passing judgement (it's always pointless to judge based on single changes in isolation; it's how all the changes act in combination that matters). But at first glance they seem to change a lot but not the single thing that (to me) appears to be the biggest problem.
Some of us would want to see a mod that very specifically tries to gimp ICS, which is currently a runaway strategy. The hard thing is to gimp ICS without hurting REX or conquest too much (these should be viable strategies). Currently, it seems that a focussed city approach (small number of carefully developed, large cities) is not viable in civ5 (keeping a constant difficulty level). I thought perhaps that I just didn't know how to do it in civ5, but I'm about convinced now that it is not at all possible because there are just no breaks at all on ICS (I don't necessarily mean "pure" ICS; the AI does well by pursuing a sort of ICS-lite strategy, but the player can always do better by having a strategy that is closer to, if not exactly, ICS).