Qilin are fast, have a special ranged attack, and can heal in an area even while fighting or running. These attributes make them incredibly strong for the Classical Age. Let’s compare them to similar units like the Valkyrie, Sphinx, and Centaur.
It’s like they combined the best aspects of all three myths into one.
The area heal, in my opinion, is even better than the Valkyrie’s. You can heal many units at the same time, heal yourself, and keep healing while fighting or running — it’s far superior.
They also have a special ranged attack like the Centaur, but their damage is instantaneous, so you can’t run away to avoid most of it.
Finally, the Qilin have attributes similar to the Sphinx, making them hard to kill.
I’m not sure what to suggest, but maybe remove the special ranged attack and make it so they only heal when standing still/idle. I think this would already help, as it would force them to expose themselves more during raids and take longer between one raid and the next.
I had made a similar post in the balanced discord. I suggested reducing how much the healing aura stacks or making it slower. Its simply too much packed in a single unit, its fast, it heals and its got great poke and retreat ability.
This way they keep one of their identities, they are either a slower Support unit that heals the army or a faster poking unit that doesnt auto beat every thing else by being able to sustain itself.