Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic
 

The Experiment: In a recent test game, I had a Celestial Master, Noble commander, 15 leather armor archers and 15 leather armor pikeman attack an indie province. On round 1 the Celestial Master cast Acid storm while everyone else did nothing. The storm struck, destroyed everyone's armor (in addition to harming 50% of the units on the battlefield) and then everyone retreated back to my capital.

All told I had both commanders plus 10 pikes and 12 archers that survived. For five turns I built nothing in my capital... I just waited and checked each unit to see if their armor had repaired. During this time, no one's armor was restored despite have LOTS of unspent resources.

Then I built a single pikeman. End Turn. Whoa! Suddenly, my commanders and about 1/3 of my troops had their armor restored. For another 5 turns I did nothing, built nothing and just checked my units to see if the armor would repair itself. Nothing happened. Then I built one more pikeman. End Turn. Suddenly most of my remaining units had their armor repaired.


The Conclusion: armor does not repair automatically regardless of how much unused production there is in a province. It's only when you build something in a province that the game bothers to repair armor with the remaining, unused production. I didn't run this experiment in a castle-less province, but I assume that the end result would be the same.

So, your army's armor was broken, how do you get it fixed ASAP? Divide your troops among as many provinces as possible, sending proportionately more to the higher production provinces, then build a single low-production unit in each of those provinces. Next turn most, if not all, of your units should be armored once more.

Re: Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic
 

I wonder if the indy province's units still had broken armor.

Re: Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic
 

That's a good question. I'll have to answer that and test armor repair in a non-castle province when I get the chance this evening.

Re: Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic
 

I have confirmed that the exact same repair mechanics apply in castle-less provinces and that indie troops with broken armor have their armor stay broken. Specifically, on turn X I invade an indie province, hit them with Acid Storm and retreated. On turn X+1 I invaded again and the armor of all the enemy troops was still broken; none had been repaired during the course of a turn.

Re: Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic
 

Thanks for taking the time to test it!

Re: Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic
 

Did the cost of repairing armor seem to match the amount of free resources in the province?

Re: Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic
 

Yes. If a province had 101 resources and I built a single 1-resource unit, then the remaining 100 resources went to repairing the armor of my soldiers and commanders there, with commanders appearing to get their armor repaired before soldiers, if possible. I did notice that if I had a bunch of 14 resource soldiers and a handful of 9 resource soldiers (for example) that a handful bit of both would get their armor repaired each time, though there tended to be more 9res soldiers repaired than 14res.

I interpret that to mean that the game picks soldiers in some order (random, by most resources to least, in unit id #, who knows) and would repair as much as it could, but once the number of available resources got too low (say down to 10), it would skip over all the 14res soldiers and repair additional 9res soldiers instead.

Still, my tests weren't controlled enough for me to know for sure.