Well done. Very good post.

I fully support the idea of scaling back the stats so the disparities are much less between early, mid and late game troops. The battles I've enjoyed the most are the ones where the stats are just slightly more or less and that you need to look for the best terrain to get a win. I much prefer subtle variances.

I would personally like to see damage dealt at 1 point per hit minimum, unless the armor roll exceeds twice (or three times?) the damage roll. A little fidgety, yes, but it allows weaker weapons to still do some sort of damage in large groups, and yet still retains the ability of good armor to simply block a hit. The difference is, that it would happen a great deal less frequently than it does now, making plate-wearers have at least a little respect for bears and hordes of angry peasants.

That's why I would like to see units issued "Leather Armor" with all the bits. We can worry about champion gear at another time. It can stand to be a bit better than ran-n-file stuff anyhow.

Besides, tell me you ever put mismatched armor on your troops...

Good suggestion, but with any changes please keep things progressive and not regressive as they were in the original.

If more effort goes into researching a new tech then I wish it would be better at its intended purpose than the previous type.  How much better is subjective but I think making it worse or regress is very , very bad form.  (case in point - Kingdom Mace and Kingdom Warhammer)

I'm not sure what you mean by a difference between armor value and defense value.

Armor right now gets a roll which is 1-n (where n = the armor value) which is subtracted from your damage. This is the value that I am focusing on.

There is a Dodge modifier for heavier armors which I think is great, but at -12 for Heavy Master Plate, perhaps a bit meaningless for regular units.

I am not aware of any other factor in determining the usefulness of a particular piece of armor in combat.

Price has absolutely no bearing on combat efficiency of a suit of armor, and therefore was outside of the scope of my observations. Yes, armor needs to be costed appropriate to it's usefulness, but that is something that you do after you determine how useful your armor is.

I'm putting together a mod right now. Keep an eye out; I'd love the testers.

   Yarp~ I dont have much to do over the next few forevers. So count me in...

as the guy who balanced the numbers for the current system I feel I need to point out a huge part of the equation you are neglecting: what tier of techs these items are unlocked at.  

Remember, the first tier of weapons are unlocked at the start of the game for free (Club and Staff) while armor is not.  The idea is that if you have out teched someone's weapons with your armor they will have an advantage, ideally they wont be 100% ineffective, but they will be pretty weak.  In your examples this is actually how it is lining up right now as all the weapons you have 'weak' next to armor sets for are one tech before the corresponding armor.  Obviously they don't unlock at the same time as you have to pick which line of the tree to go down, do you want to be offensive or defensive?  Also for most of the weapons that are weak to their equivalent tier armor set (daggers and the like) they have combat speed boosts or are 1h so can be used with a shield.  They are designed to be used situationally to help improve survivability or to when you know you aren't fighting a heavily armored force. 

I'm not saying that all the numbers are perfect, I just retooled some of them last week based on forum feedback and our own findings, I just want to make sure you guys remember to think about all factors 

For the legendary armor issues raised, the way its designed right now you are right, if you have a full set of the best armor in the game with the best shield in the game you are extremely hard to hit.  That's part of what the new magical champion only weapons are there for (Sword of Wrath can hit through legendary with shield).  Also like I said above, part of the design is that the 1h weapons are much weaker then the 2h so if you do go with a shield you will have trouble hitting things with the same armor and no shield.  I mean in reality its going to be nigh on impossible to mass produce the legendary set for standard troops, you just wont have enough Elementium.  So it almost becomes like the Sword of Wrath in that it is champion only.  Again, doesn't mean its perfect but some reasoning to digest.

Elemental doesn't have a real tiered tech system. It's a mix of horizontal and vertical progression, but you can prioritize the higher tiers so early that it doesn't make sense to talk about the tiers being part of the balance. It makes sense in Civilization, because to get to mecahnized infantry and AEGIS cruisers, you need to clear almost all of the tech tree, which leads you to the 1800s at the earliest (mid-1900 most of the time) anyway. But Civilization doesn't pretend to offer a large choice of units either, or to discuss quality over quantity. Elemental does.

Elemental is closer to Age of Wonders, which also has a sort of "tier system" (city building-related) that can be cleared pretty quickly by prioritizing it. And in AoW/AoW 2, high tier units aren't invulnerable compared to early tier units.

And that's actually a good thing: obsolescence sucks in an all-medieval game. Obsolescence makes sense when you have M16, muskets and prehistoric bows in the same game, but not in Elemental. Medieval armies had peasants with pitchforks, light infantry in leather armor AND knights. If you play those total war games, you see that you can do much, much better without obsolescence.

And so there is no point using them, because the shield is a costly piece of equipement that doesn't really increase survivability all that much. Certainly NOT worth 8 points of damage between broadsword and battleaxe for a light shield.

Also, remember that glass canons don't need a shield. Even if the 2-handed weapons weren't that much better than 1-handed, they'd still be the better choice for heavy-hitting, light-armor infantry which will not use a shield anyway.

The tech tree was the thing that caused me to start looking at how these work.

We have a row of weapon tech (Kingdom): Basic -> Equipment -> Weaponry -> 1st Tier -> 2nd Tier -> 3rd Tier

And a Row of Armor Tech: None -> Equipment -> Armor -> Light Armor -> Heavy Armor -> Expert Armor

6 Tiers Each. Each armor tier makes the weapons from the equivalent tier weak, and the ones before very nearly useless. The only weapon that really avoids obsolescence in the current setup is the War Staff.

Weapons should get 2 tiers of genuine usefulness tech-wise, and 1 Tier where they are weak. It is fine if clubs are worthless against heavy plate because people will have the capacity to get to "weaponry" by then. It is not fine if clubs are essentially worthless against bears and people wearing armor from the very first tech you research.

Once you have researched the first tier "cutting" or "blunt" weapons, these should remain functional (if only barely) until the end of the game.

It is the same rapid obsolescence of weaponry that makes the strategy of "many weaker troops versus few stronger troops" totally pointless. The time it takes you to get groups of 8 people with leather and spears, someone else has individuals battle axes and heavy plate, and you lose every time.

Factor in the increased cost of every tech in a given tree becoming more expensive as you unlock more tech, and armor is the clear fastest, best, most efficient thing that you can do for your soldiers. Weaponry is a secondary consideration. Nothing else comes close; Not training, not groups.

Please don't take my ministrations personally, Kestral. You and the whole team have done amazing work between the start of real beta (September 2009 to 2010) and release, and have quite literally moved mountains between then and now. It is just that allowing armor to be the most important consideration in an entire third of the game (tactical mode) severely limits the drive and ability of players to explore other avenues of the game, and I sincerely feel at this point that the armor techs are just that; the most important consideration in the warfare arc.