One way of solving this would be to slow down honor gain. Older characters have 1000+ honor which I'm pretty sure the devs never expected to see so they can recruit giant armies. Maybe the amount of honor you get should slow down as you get more and possibly hit a hard cap?
It would if we agree that having larger units = bad. I don't believe we can say that at this point. We can say the game is currently weighted against them.
