I think that the equipment part of the army builder offers a huge potential to diversify your army.

What we got now are Scout and Messenger as kind of training packages and Med Pack and ‘Poison Pack’ as equipment. 

I propose to split that part of the UI into two parts, one called ‘Equipment’ and one called ‘Training’.

When creating a new unit you would be able to choose any or all equipment packages, but only one training package.

Then I would fill up those categories with … stuff. Some examples:

Equipment examples:

Medical Basics

Cost: 5 Gold, 2 Material

Effect: +1 HP regeneration on strategic map

Healing Potions (Useable in combat, 1 Charge total)

Cost: 5 Gold, 1 Crystal

Effect: Use to recover 50% of units maximum HP.

Unit coat of arms

Cost: 10 Gold, 2 Material

Effect: Unit looses Moral at half rate

Sidearms (only for units equipped with ranged weapons)

Cost: 15 Gold, 2 Iron

Effect: Unit gets a retaliation attack at half strength

Null Runes

Cost: 50 Gold, 5 Crystals

Effect: Increases defence against magic attacks by 50%

Rune of Flame

Preq.: Fire Shard

Cost: 50 Gold, 5 Crystal

Effect: The unit gets the ability to cast Fireball once per combat. Damage is based on researched spell level, level in the magic tech tree and number of fire shards.

Training examples:

 Scout

Cost: 15 Gold

Effect: +1 Move, +1 Vision, Stealth (Strategic; Automatic; When not moved and in forest or mountain tile the unit is invisible)

Messenger

Cost: 15 Gold

Effect: +2 Move, Diplomatic Immunity (Strategic; Automatic; Unit can cross borders without triggering ‘want to go to war?’)

Knight

Cost: 20 Gold, 2 Material, 1 Horse

Effect: +1 Attack, +1 Defence, Charge (Tactical; Used; Only if not adjacent to enemy unit; Unit gets double movement and the first attack in the same turn deals double damage)

Archer

Preq: Equipped with ranged weapon

Cost: 10 Gold, 1 Material

Effect: Hail of Arrows (Tactical; Used (1 Charge per combat); Target must be at least 2 tiles away; Target takes normal damage and cant move on his next turn), Panic Shot (Tactical; Automatic (once per combat); Must be engaged in melee; Before the enemy unit strikes that archer gets one attack at half damage).

Shield Breaker

Cost: 20 Gold, 1 Material

Effect: Shield Breaker (Tactical; Automatic; Each attack that is not a miss, reduces the enemies defence by one until end of combat).

Charge Breaker

Preq: Equipped with Polearm

Cost: 15 Gold

Effect: Set Up (Tactical; Useable; Unit doesn’t move, gets +2 Defence and Units using Charge take double damage)

Cost and Effect has yet to be balanced, but changes to combat seem to be coming , so it would be kind of waste now.