Eek. 1.5 pop for a villager? So I have to finish a house before I can build a villager? And another house before I can build my 7th villager? And a 3rd house before I can build my 9th?
That seems sort of excessive. And I wouldn't want the Shang villagers to be worse than other villagers.
I think it would be better to just raise the cost of Shang villagers. Or make all technologies (but not age upgrades) cost 50% more...something like that. The tool rush might be slowed down if upgrading scout armor cost 187, attack 150 food, infantry armor 125 food...
I think upping research costs would be the best way to go. It wouldn't (I think) soak so much of the Shang economic power to cripple them, but it would stop a lot of the abusive stuff. If they wanted to axe rush in tool, it would cost them 137 more food to upgrade the axeman technologies. They could still tool rush. It wouldn't be a problem. But it would slow down their bronze dramatically. They would have to spend an additional 37 wood and 88 food on the wheel - again, they've saved more than that on cheap villagers, they're still very fast, but I think(hope) that the cumulative effect of the costs would be to slow them down in the long run and prevent them from just changing approaches to beat whatever their hapless opponent is doing.
It might leave the Shang in a more manageable position. They would still be the best at any given strategy they chose to pursue in default resource games, I think(well, they wouldn't be the best at some weird ones, like priest rushing; and maybe Phoenicians could get scythe chariots before they could, but I think maybe Shang would still win that race with their scythe chariots at 1800 wood and 1500 gold...)
I don't want Shang to be the best civilization in early iron as well as every other age. I don't mind them being the best tool age civilization: someone has to be. I don't really mind that they have a good bronze - that's just an outgrowth of their excellent stone and tool age, and several civilizations have enough military advantage over them to beat them in a protracted bronze battle. But I hate that I can play Hittite against Shang, survive the tool rush, fight a war in bronze, iron a minute after them, and still lose horribly.
Or maybe if the cost of Shang villagers could be raised by 10 per age? Stone age villagers = 35 food. Tool age villagers = 45 food. Bronze age villagers = 55 food. Iron age villagers = 65 food. At least it would make Shang villager losses more meaningful...