I like most of the thoughts around this mod. It seems to me that the game could be significantly improved with more and better armors and weapons rebalanced. Mostly I think it should undo some of the stranger ideas that have crept into the core game design.

The weapons should be 'balanced' in the sense that they all have a place to counter certain other 'defences' (whether that be armor, mobility, monsters, etc). 

What can't be easily changed of course is the basic combat mechanics around accuracy vs dodge, attack vs defence, hp, etc. 

If they are to be tied to a tech tree, it seems to me that there were not that many different 'eras' to represent.

1. Early weapons prior to metal technology (clubs, spears, poles, etc)

2. Metal weapons (blades of all lengths, hammers and axes, etc)

3. Anti-armour weapons (hammers, polearms, maces, etc). These were brought in as a response to the heavier armors developed in Era 2.

The idea that long swords are better than short swords (for example) and that later weapons in the tech tree are better than earlier weapons in the tech tree is a flawed concept, and we should fix that. If anything, we could have better quality weapons later in the tech tree, but length of blade is a choice, and longer isn't necessarily better.

What I'd like to see happen with armour

No reason why we can't represent the main kinds of ancient armour. Loosely speaking, and divided into 'eras' (tech tree levels):

Padded

Leather

---

Scale

Lamellar

Heavy Plate (an early kind of plate, very heavy but crudely effective)

---

Chainmail

Laminar (such as Lorica Segmentata)

---

Splinted Mail (maybe)

Brigandine

Plate Mail

---

Steel Plate

Each has strengths and weaknesses, and their costs in weight, metal and so on means that the tech tree should be de-emphasised (but not gotten rid of entirely). 

The trick here is (imho) that all weapons can kill a man, no matter what armor they are wearing, and we should be fundamentally rebalancing the armor so that all weapons are affected by all armours (more or less depending on their strengths), without the need to research 'killer' weapons at the end of the tech tree in order to affect an armoured man (for example). 

What I'd like to see happen with weapons

Clubs and staves are fine early weapons but not that flash when armor kicks in. The first armies should be spear based, since that only requires wood and basic tools. The spear survived for millenia as a weapon type, and only went out of fashion a few hundred years after firearms were developed. Once you know how to make spears, you can make short spears, long spears, pikes (although only if you have the right trees). The real strength of spears is against mounted units, which they should have a bonus against (preferably getting their retaliation in first!). 

Once metal weapons start, you get blades. In game, daggers, short swords, long swords, etc. The difference is in weight, speed and attack. I would be happy to see something like:

Weapon Attack Weight Initiative

Dagger   6      1            +6 

Short      8      3            +3

Long       10      5            +0

(the numbers need trialling for balance, but you get the idea)

We can do some modelling to see the overall effectiveness of different weapons vs different armor combinations, in order that they all have an appropriate use.

I would like to see up to two retaliations for every weapon. That means to get a 'free hit' against a unit, you would need to be flanking or outnumbering them. 

Bash and backswing are a bit silly, and can be removed. The main point is to have the right combination of cutting (the basic best weapons), piercing (spears and arrows) and blunt (specialist weapons for tackling heavy armour).

What I'd like to see happen to the tech tree

There are really only 3 or 4 basic developments in arms, and the same in armour. Levels beyond that could be introduced only to add 'masterwork' type bonuses, i.e. better quality weapons. My idea would be to allow a great range of weapons quite early, and I think that would be more fun and more 'realistic'. 

Alright that is getting a bit long. The main point is I think your idea is well worth exploring and trialling, to try and bring additional balance (and fun!) to the game.

You are exactly on track with what I am trying to do with what is available n the game for art assets as I am lacking in graphical design skills for armor and weapon models/skins.

What I have for armors is fairly balanced for progression wise name and type to what you have already listed with a few changes.

Tier 1 (Initial armor to be researched and remember these are fallen societies that are researching lost techs that were once new not learning from scratch.

Light

Gambeson (Padded Armor)

Medium

None

Heavy

None

Tier 2

Light

Leather armor (Branches off of Gambeson)

Medium Armor

Scale armor (Branches off Gambeson)(Also fits for amount of protection offered versus technological advancement

Heavy

None

Tier 3

Light

Reinforced Leather (Brigadine)

Medium

Chain

Heavy

Iron Munition Armor (Plate)

Tier 4

Light

None

Medium

Steel Chain

Heavy

Steel Munition Armor

Tier 5

Light

None

Medium

None

Heavy

Field Plate

After making it to the max type of each armor a magic version unlocks that is called adorned which is built off the charm tech in magic.  I am not 100% sure how much farther to go on magic armors as they scale to overkill unless I make the training time ridiculous effectively making it champion/sov only armors.  If I do this I will make a  spell to create a third resource called blended steel requiring mana, steel, and crystals.  This can be the champions armor but I would make the training time something like 3 or 4 times the initial armor type to prevent super armies unless you are willing to sacrifice some serious time and resources.

I am playing around with weapons in the same respects as what you are suggesting but weapons are a much more difficult nut to crack because weapons were, as you stated, researched to overcome armor.  The problem lies in keeping whats is in the game (mostly) intact to keep it with the feel of the game for races.

Speaking of races I am going to make the ability to get improved leather be its own perk and not tied to wanderlust as the improved leather armor is almost as good as chain with the benefits of leather.  The same follows for improved chain to almost as good as plate but not as close as the leather to chain ratio.  The improved plate will make a improved version of the steel armors and I will call it Gilden Plate similar to Milanese Plate armors which was extremely well made and sought after for its high articulation and excellent protection.

Anyways this is where I am at for now.  School is rough so I am taking my time on this to make sure it is quality and not burn out on it.

Really happy to see that you're working on this. I had roughly the same idea while I was playing last night. The current situation is really unsatisfying.

For a simpler system (which would require less techs), why not reduce the number of levels for each armor type, and use repeatable techs, +10% to blunt defense, +10% to piercing defense, +10% to slashing defense for continued improvement. 

Trades some complexity and realism for a more gamy rock/paper/scissors, but I'd sort of prefer that, honestly.

Blah the forums ate my post for the morning so here is a short version.

I was looking at why it didn't work and realized that I made a LARGE error when modding the tech tree and the game crashed repeatedly as a result.  Its fixed and seems stable.  Thankfully this taught me some new tricks to use for distributing techs around to make the trees work better.

Going to keep plugging away at this.

Projects caught up on so I am working on this again.  Still have finals in a week and a half so can't completely concentrate on this yet but making progress again.  I solved the tech issues so I can now place everything into the game the way I want to.  I made some reasonably large changes to the Magic tree for a balance change.  Basically the Decalon ability is gone now and everyone can get all the books, but there is a catch.  To get past level 2 of the magic abilities you have to be path of the mage.  Also all magic abilities; such as air 1, fire 1, and so on, will have a minus 5 to encumbrance to reflect the fact that magic is taxing and also to somewhat prevent mages in plate.  So while 1 magic ability won't hurt you much 2 or 3 or 5 will start knocking down your encumbrance fast.  

All weapon initiatives are going to be modified heavily.  I finally figured out what was bugging me the most about this.  You should not get a bonus to spell casting just because you are holding a dagger.  As such all weapons will start at 0 initiative bonus and go negative from there.  However the minuses won't be as harsh.  So just adjust all stats down from where a dagger started and then reduce the minuses by about half (to be adjusted for balance).  

For weapons I also finally figured out how to make improvements to weapons without making them outrageously overpowered compared to monsters.  Spear will have a bonus damage to mounted unit as well as a revenge damage to mounted units (Thanks to Heavenfall here and his extended tags) be warned do not attack spear equipped units with mounted units you have been warned  I may also add additional tags based upon size factors such as dragons.  Maces and hammers will have an armor pierce factor as this was what they were designed for, look at the spikes on a mace, as well as bash.  Bows will be the same as they were designed to be able to pierce plate, so to chain and leather armors arrows will be deadly.  Swords will have a dodge bonus added to them as they are good for parrying.  Axes will also have armor pierce and also armor sunder effect, borrowing from seanw3 here.  So each weapon has a unique quality and advantage to it.

That is it for now.

Use it as you wish, I am going to get a version out reasonably soon that shows the architecture of the mod without the balance pass done yet.  So basically all the arms and armors will be there but the numbers will be off.

Almost everything you have suggested here has been thoroughly discussed by many different threads here and I can concur on most of what you have to say.  However, there are some mechanical barriers to setting up some of the things suggested.  Some of the unit_stat tags showing that a unit has a certain weapon type equiped don't work as well as they should even though the one for mounted units does.

For different weapon types I have listed almost all the different effects I plan on having on each type above but I can repost it here for re-evalutation.

This is the basics of how I am attacking weapons.

For staves I figured out a way to eliminate their huge initiative negative while still maintaining their slow casting time.  Remove their ranged attack and make it a standard attack but then give it an unlock ability by equipping skill that gives the ranged attack as a 0 cost spell.  What this does is make it that you can hold a staff and have no init penalty for just holding it to cast spells with but regular units will still use the ability at the same time factor as the original.

Anyways, back to studying for finals.

Heh I understand.  I am not touching unit classes except militia for now as they are semi broken for the AI to use.

Just a quick update for the new version.  I am done with all of the armors in the game.  I have completely updated all values to include robes, leather, chain, and plate.  Hero versions that are looted and items that are technically armor have all been updated as well.

Now working on the weaponry side of the mod.  This is somewhat easier as there is only one weapon for each type as opposed to four different parts to make for each set and then shields.  So in reality I guess you could say that I am more than half done in reality but I was thinking thematically.  Eh oh well, I am getting back to work.

Alright now that I am doing the research phase for the weapons in game I am finding a lot of discrepancies similar to what was pointed out in the bow discussion that happened on the board before.  I am working on cleaning up what goes where in relation to armors.  I might have to redesign how techs unlock as most of the "advanced" weapons were designed to counter "advanced" armors.  

In general it went something like this.  People made chain armor in response to the rise of swords which in turn brought the rise of blunt and piercing weapons.  This was countered somewhat by plate armor.  This was then countered by adding spikes to the blunt weapons to give them an armor piercing effect along with the crush effect.  The piercing weapons became slimmer to get through the cracks in armor not the armor itself.  

Different bows were still used because different materials allowed a greater draw strength allowing for higher armor piercing.  So crude arrows can pierce armor but only minimally whereas stronger bows could pierce better.  This eventually led to crossbows which could pierce even better at short range.  Eventually firearms replaced crossbows in the field which negated for the most parts armor as they could pierce all but the heaviest armors.

I would really love to see this mod completed.  I would much prefer to play Fallen Enchantress with a more realistic weapon and armour design.

Ciao,

Sword

There are some good ideas there, and we still remain pretty much on the same page about what has to happen in this mod.

Of course, with LH, I don't see any point in doing the mod without making it for LH. This seems to be the 'live' branch of the game, and the one that will go forward.

I have not looked into detail about what is necessary to change the tech tree, but I will start. It seems that we have most of the game armors we need already in there, including the 'damaged' versions of chainmail and so on, which could be the early and cheap versions.

Let me know when you want to get going on this again?!