Cultural Utopia is OP and problems with mercenaries

Playing as Diraqine Empire I couldn't believe that this tech exist. It basically invalidates leadership/charisma/ imperial lord for hero. You can easily get 120+ morale score from this research only.
That bring us to second problem - mercenaries and army support limits.
I will freely admit that I'm not a fan of starvation/food mechanics, it's unnecessary, simple army limit of 100 would suffice. This could be only exceeded by morale score and research.
Real problem however lies in mercenary system because of factors:
1) No upper limit on merc force, in longer games I literally crushed enemy with 300+ mercenary army alone.
2) Mercenaries are to cheap and weirdly placed. Merc 1 can get you paladin, flame cannon or hellbore for example. That for a price what 50 gold and crystal?

My solution would be separate merc limit of 50 not affected by morale. Fame research could increase those limit by +5/10/15.
Additionally all mercenary recruitment could use some changes. Mercenary I could recruit only base infantry units, pikeman or swordsman etc. Mercenary II could recruit advanced units such as knight errant or imperial sergeant. Mercenary III would be for spellcasters.
There shouldn't be option of recruiting siege weapons, generals or elite units such as paladins or warlords, to powerful IMHO. All those units should follow army costs so mercenary knight should take two slots for example.
Diraqine empire would get cheaper mercenaries and Fame IV and V research further increasing limit and decreasing price.
Fame research should be available from archway without needing to upgrade palace level, so You can tech up immediately.
So what is yours opinion on this?

I haven't got any strong feelings about mercs. Perhaps the cost of the merc should be based on the generated unit? The morale research and the capless army limit issues have both been fixed in 0.8.9a.

0.8.9a? Out of curiosity when it will be available for DL?
You can't, I think, base cost of unit on it's type because you don't know what unit you will get when buying it.
Could you answer what are those fixes?

0.8.9a will be available before Christmas.

It is possible to generate the type of unit before the research is selected. The costs of the research would then be equal to the unit that it would produce. After the research has completed, the generated unit would then spawn as normal.

In 0.8.9a, all merc researches are now restricted by the unit cap. In addition, Cultural Utopia now gives +1 Morale per race of unit you control, capping out at +5. It wasn't meant to give +1 Morale per unit.

Would morale function properly? What I mean currently 100 army limit isn't increased by morale score, it just allows to skip food penalty. Unless that is intended.
So proper cultural utopia would get you max +5 morale? Why not simply give Diraquine Empire Morale IV to research. Effect would be mostly same.

Morale only increases Morale Army Limit. When your unit total goes over the MAL, units receive a production time penalty. You can see your MAL by hovering the cursor over the army limit.

Regarding Cultural Utopia, it was done that way to make it a little different and because it panders towards the faction style. It could definitely become Morale IV.

Not a fan of this mechanics TBH. It impact is minimal and it encourages weird situations of producing more expensive units first.
I would advocate removing it and returning morale to be able increasing limit above maximum. To prevent morale from being to OP you could simply increase limit to 200 and make units cost about twice, so peasant 1AP, swordsman 2AP etc. This could also allow for greater difference between units. Currently all knight cavalry cost same amount of AP, with this change errant could cost 3AP, cavalier 4AP and paladin 5AP for example.

It was initially put in place to try and make battles more decisive but it doesn't work. Only unit time costs are increased but they can be circumvented by simply building more production buildings. It feels like another implementation that was developed as a work-around. It would be better to get to the origin of the problem and fix that instead.
Interestingly, more varied AP is exactly what we're going for.