I agree, that it is very difficult to balance because the mongol lancer just has vastly different stats. However i would go with just ignoring the mongol lancer. I think it is beyond redemption for actual fights and mongols as a civ have been working out really well for a long time. They never needed the lancer to begin with. Tartars on the other hand are pretty mediocre. An archer killing steppe lancer would help them out quite a bit, while it also adds to the options of cumans. I think if it makes the lancer better for these two that is enough. I honestly think you dont need to Balance a cav unit for a civ that lacks the last armor upgrade for cav.
However, if we want to make the steppe lancer a pure raiding unit I would suggest to reduce the food cost from 70 to 60, or even 55 and give it bonus damage against palisades (maybe like 7 bonus damage, that would reduce their time to kill from 32 to 17 hits with forging).
The elite upgrade could then add bonus damage to houses as well and reduce gold cost of the unit from 45 to 35. This way the unit would be useful for all three civilizations as a pure raiding unit, while each of them has their unique bonus that makes it better at this task in some way. However, this is unfortunately not possible in the current game (i.e. won’t happen) as there is no unique armor class to houses, or palisades.
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