Very interesting feedback.

I am thinking you might want to try it with abundant resources and see how that works out for you in terms of being able to crank out lots of metal based units.

ai's are defineately doing quests, but they are still not using gear very well. This is probably why you couldnt find very many if you spent a good deal of the game stuck in a corner.

Not sure what impact this will have on the master quest.

Not all factions should be able to create a ton of metal clad troops. Gilden gets a 50% discount and light plate costs less metal. Try going for that and rushing the Iron Works. You will never want for metal. If you are talking about 20+ cities, you have probably won the game or are playing on a massive map. Metal is about right for cities when you have 8 cities. The endgame is not entirely fleshed out, but if you are in a good war, you have to manage limited resources. Many times leather clad bowmen and boar spears will have to do after a war has exhausted your resources. That is what we call a war of attrition. Full plate should be rare and valuable. I think things are about right, but the most recent nerd to leather makes plate too good again. Leather gives so little armor it should have almost no labor.

But then I have a personal preference in balance, which is contained in my mod. I give players even less metal to work with, but cities can specialize in metal production on city level up.

I am not sure about scarcity of full plate armor. I think i should be able with 10+ big cities to pull knights every 2 or 3 turn + support units; that's if you want to have full scale war on higher level difficulty. Right now, every unit is priceless and loosing 2-3 high-end troops means your end.

Low armor units just gets slaughtered by numerous archers with all bonuses to accuracy AI tends to field. No point producing troops, unless you go after dodge. By the way it will be nice to know what's your air-dodge, and overall bonus to experience on unit's info screen.

I think it cripples AI as well, they never have any crystals or metal, and they troops are usually lightly armored, which gave me a win. Once i had enough heavy armored troops it was quite easy.

Full plate every 3 turns would be bad for balance with 10 cities. If you have 10 cities and some outposts, you should have about 3-5 metal sources. To meet the goal of a knight every 3 turns, you would need to increase the metal gains to massive levels or make plate cost very little metal. Either way, it makes light troops useless. They would be essentially free or take about the same metal as a fully armored knight. The best balance is where knights are very strong, but scarce. I can train a few pikemen for much less cost and counter that kind of unit with numbers. Enemy archers don't pose that much of a threat if you have your own. I find that pikemen with charge are more than capable of competing with a small number of knights and archers. Pikemen do enough damage that a second army can get in there and mop up. But the AI builds really great units in my games since I have played every faction and they all have dozens of units to choose from. 

I do see where a feeling of need for all plate units comes from though. The game should be balanced in the Werewindelian Method: each tier of weapons has unique uses and tactics, but does not obsolete the previous technology. Currently each new tech tier allows you to build a purely superior unit, with scarcity preventing mass training. That is problematic because a good plate army can wipe out 6 or more leather armies before it needs to retreat. With a good back line of mages, it can go for 100 battles. The devs have not fully embraced this idea and I am hoping things will move back towards Werewindelianism. If not, as you say, more metal is needed and the AI needs to only train perfect plate units after the technology is reached. Losing a single army would decide a war otherwise. But in that possible future, there is no possibility for a war of attrition. Only a war of technology.

I will continue to find a balance between each tech tier and make plate so heavy and expensive, you will only be wearing a breastpiece in most all cases. A combination of plate and chain will only be useful on mounted units that can deal with the extra weight. Even so, these armored units will be used to take the initial blows of charging light troops, giving time for archers to take aim on the ensuing melee. One knight per battle should be enough, but the rest of the army should take casualties and require rest. Many such armies would be required to win a war. Dozens of them to capture a city. As it was in medieval times, so it shall be in my mod.

As I read your post Sean, I start to understand why I don't like to play your mod , We like technology to do atleast slightly different. Although the way I want it would require more graphics for armours throughout the tech tree.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

It was not originally my idea, which is why I refer to it as Werewindellian. Werewindlefr came up with the basic concept when we were working on one of the first balance mod back in the spring. My version has a basic rule that techs are not obsolete until they are 2-3 tiers behind another. But even heavy armor is nearly impossible to wear a full suit of without massive encumbrance penalties and metal costs. It is certainly still a work in progress. The thing I want to change is any claim that tactical battles are identical throughout the game. The interesting part for me has been modding monsters to offer specific challenges to army composition. Like what do you do against an entire army of mounted wildings with pikes?

So did Western Europe, but it was too heavy. A plate chest with chain for everything else looks pretty great for knights. Gilden can have full light plate and Trogs can do full plate no problem. Then there is the Alteration spellbook that can burden or feather units to temporarily get rid of the penalty or screw over enemy tanks. You see, when you place a realistic limitation, magic becomes more integral to the game. That is what I am going after.

I think this could be modded in the game pretty easily. Although you would have to go to each of the resource buildings and cut the resource output by your indicated amount, but quite doable to say the least.