I hope this increased cost will help balance, but the problem is less about 90 metals or experience and more about dependency on a single resource to train units. The way game plays happen, merc civic, especially Carthaginian, is banned from playing (@ValihrAnt or @chrstgtr might know if they play team games frequently). The alternative way to handle this issue would have been adding wood or food to train these units, like 40 wood and 80 metal or 40 food and 80 metal or some other combination. My similar concern was not given attention in a25 even though I indicated it several times. Well, let's see how it turns out in a26.

I think there are two sides to this story. Sure, I agree with chrstgtr that people will prefer booming over playing aggressively because they will lose a good amount of units while retrieving. You can play this two ways; one is to hit eco, where you are sure to win a fight, or the second, hit and run. Hitting eco still works, but hit and run won't work now; you can only take a winning fight and retrieve and not win a fight by a hit & run where u surely were losing. But, do you realize that people will do the same hit and run with cavalry as they do with archers now? If we reduce the turnaround time, the skirmish and pike units will become totally useless even against skirmish cav. Sure, the change will favor a few top and aggressive players, but it might unbalance the game for moderate and beginner levels. You can't just fight units upfront like pikes and spear and do a 180 degrees flip and runway without taking any damage. Besides, you can still run around and hit people eco, it's just that you can't hit and run and win a surely losing fight.

Seems like a good idea. I like the second approach. Although given its complexity, we can go with the first approach. Athenian marine units are not much used in gameplay. This patch, especially allowing training in P2, will make them useful.

I think there is one more improvement we can make. Corals are somewhat complementary for cavalry. But to make coral efficient, we have only 1 upgrade, which is reducing breeding time. If we can have one more upgrade for fast gathering food from hunts or animals, it would be great. Also, if possible, cavalry should switch from 1 hunt type to another in their vision range automatically. Sometimes it causes lots of ideal time.

All seems good. The only problem I see is with Iber when the INDIBIL hero is used. Since he also reduces citizen-soldier costs, skirmish might become cheaper for Iber, but I think that's fine since it is still around 38 or so, not a big deal.