I agree, the Hvy swordsman is way overpowered. I have never lost a battle where my main attack force was composed of hvy swordsmen. I Imagine macemen could be used to defend against them, but even the computer knows how to use artillery to compensate for that. That said, the number of macemen you would have to produce would be prohibitive as you must spread your defenses equally to prevent a surge on a particular city. No quick response unit is strong enough to fight them, so speedy reinforcement is nigh impossible. They're even pretty good at defense! It's a good thing the computer is a moron or else we'd all be dead. As things are, once the free market civic gives you enough funds to sponsor a major conquest, you can take whole continents with minimal losses (assuming your country can tolerate the unhappiness). I usually stop short because I want to give the computer a fighting chance. Please, hvy footmen (swordsmen & macemen) were never this powerful in history. Cavalry always dominated as they could outmaneuver infantry. Massive amounts of pikemen and archers usually made up medieval armies because they were cheaper than other forms of weaponry. Perhaps, if archery units (the crossbowman) could be made in mass amounts (perhaps feudal civics could speed their production as feudal societies valued training with the bow) and the crossbowman was given a 75% bonus against melee troops, things might be a bit more balanced. Also, perhaps cavalry should all have a better chance at withdrawing from a battle with melee troops.
As for the Elephants, they did have a propensity for crushing their own troops. Elephants are not aggressive by nature and require a great deal of special training before they will commit to battle. Indians and southeast Asians are the only peoples I know of who were able to employ them effectively. Despite whatever you idiot history teacher might have said about Hannibal, he had little success with elephants as they frequently turned on his own men and destroyed his defensive formations. And no the Romans were not afraid of war elephants, there was no psychological warfare; the Romans kept them as pets. This happened to the Asians sometimes also, but since they trained from birth to ride elephants, they were better at controlling their beasts in battle. That said, when you could get elephants to do what you want, they were quite useful. Perhaps we could nerf them and make a special promotion which is only available to elephants and sort of "unlocks" their abilities to simulate the amount of training necessary for them to become useful.
No longer can siege do direct damage to units in the field or to garrisoned units after they city's defense has been worn down. Whats the point of mod'ing it at this juncture? 
At this point its just come full circle back to pretty much vanilla BtS 
But I digress 
) and if they start pumping out elephants. 
