No, even by midgame they still don't use armor.

My experience has differed. Kulan and the other empire factions mass produce 'spear maidens' that are fully equipped with leather. None of the militia seem to equip armor anymore, which is extremely frustrating. It's probably not intentional though, as they do not upgrade at all. Given that unit upkeep is now based on the production cost it is sensible to use troops with little to no armor as you can afford to keep armies on multiple fronts that way.

Though I think the AI should have a 'shock troop' army that they pair with their champion(s) for offensive purposes.

I took over 10+ AI cities with my ruler on horseback, a size 3 and two size 5 scouting swordsmen. After upgrading them to chain, they just started stomping numerous amounts of the AI's leather clad units. Even though I'm now producing size 7 scouting units on horseback (4 movement) with amazingly boosted stats. These 3 old units leveled up so much, they became too valuable to ever dismiss.

Have seen the AI waste money building adventurer's guilds and command posts all over the place. If it doesn't manage money well, then it will never be able to afford the upkeep of better units.

Wonder if the AI prioritizes getting the techs for money and boosted research? It's certainly not picking up loot and then selling the junk for big bucks.

That's odd.. many of the premade units use armor. Perhaps the AI doesn't value unit types appropriately. Maybe there was a unit design that got 'stuck' or something during playtesting. It might be worth looking into.

Would it be possible, for custom factions, to set up a series of designs for them to use? Maybe in the workshop, or something similar.

Armor is also needed in the regular melee once stronger weapons are introduced.

Armor can make a big difference. It can decide if you win or loose the unit, regardless of the outcome of the battle. And you won't always get the first blow.

I also noted the spear maiden, but at that stage My *army* was in better armor. And I wasn't focused on an Armor rush tech strategy either.. I was just researching all the affordable tech.

There is always the issue with the Army amortization cost. That is the cost in time and wages that a unit will spend until it gets to the front, i.e. is used in battle. Once you factor this cost in the equation, building shock troops instead or armored troops is a waste of time and resources. Also factor in experience from survivability... it's a lost cause.

I get the feeling that the AI doesn't protect it's armies... It's like it thinks that units are built to be thrown to the fight.

The same argument holds for Galciv2 The AI never prioritized or built units with defenses, until it was too late...

It wouldn't be an issue if all melee units had 1 natural counter attack. Then 'first attack' wouldn't be that important ... but really I haven't focused on optimizing that sort of thing, because its unnecessary when you have that many extra mooks that don't cause that much maintenance.

look at the zombie thread.

yes and not

after 1 attack you could die

or with figures first attack would do 50 dmg and counter 20

but still the point is WHY ai should do a bad move?

moving in a tile that allow an opponet to deal first attack is a bad move

its not a game mechanics is just a suicide move

depends on the composition

if both opponents has 2 archers and 3 melee lets say archers will shoot each other and so end up with reduced dmg

so its still the main move of the game not allowing the opponet to first strike each other melee

when things are not balanced ofc melee may need to move fast but if 1 side has only melee and the other has 3 archers and 3 melee its a lost battle anyway, so who cares

the problem is when things are balanced, first strike decide the match, its really so bad to have ai to do a suicide move

well in some case yeah, best tactic would be at least to expose the most tanky unit(or the less dmg one so the sacrifice would be minimal) to the first hit with the rest waiting just 1 tile behind  but i get its too much complicated for a game

also a real good play would imply to check the turn order to avoid someone with ai init being able to attack and retreat

so to make things easy to do id just go with melees waiting in formation and if ai consider moving a suicide (ie high attack low def units on both sides) call it a draw

@maniakos I should have specified that I meant shock troops to be better equipped. That is to say better armor, better equipment (like fire rings) and enchanced unit stats from buildings/enchantments that they use for their offensive. All the remaining produced units are free to be lightly (un)armored that hang back for defense. They can then gravitate their best units into their champion stack(s) for defeating the player stacks of doom or making offensive strikes against heavily defended cities.

There are several different problems here:

1. It seems to like using scouts and peons as troops when there is really no reason to ever do this. This unfortunately seems to be an AI issue. The AI should not ever be building these units, except for maybe peons if it has nothing else.

2. I guess the AI really likes spear maidens because they have three traits even if those traits are really random. I wonder why the devs designed spear maidens and gave them to every faction.

3. The AI has no advanced designs for archers that have for example leather armor or better traits.

4. The AI includes pioneers in armies.

Half of these problems could be fixed by better unit designs but the AI really has to stop putting units with weakness in armies period. There is no good reason to ever do this. No unit with weakness is a combat unit. Also it should be smart enough to know that peons are a bad choice but apparently it isn't, so it should prioritize upgradeable units.