[HotNifeThruButr]

I place the blame solely on the fact that while your SCs get better with exp and improved forged items and your Summonables improve with more magical research, your mundane units stay the same for the whole game. Please read the following with an open mind.

I think Dominions should have a tech system for your nations which improves normal soldiers by upgrading units or unlocking new and more powerful units. This could be done by researching technology or paying for improved facilities (like MoM). For an example, let's say you start the game being able to train Tien Ch'i Footmen with full leather armor and a spear, standard puny Horsemen with a light lance, level 2 priests, Eunuchs, and a weak magician (weaker than masters of the way). You can build a Blacksmith to open up more options for your nation, giving the ability to train Footmen with scale mail hauberks/cuirasses/whatevers and also unlocking glaives and pikes. Another building is the Fletcher, which gives you access to Footmen with shortbows, and combined with the Blacksmith, allows you to train armored Footmen armed with shortbows. When you get basic buildings, more advanced ones are unlocked, like, say, an Armory after you a Blacksmith and Fletcher. Armories unlock full scale mail armor, tower shields, falchions, and lances for the province with it. This would mean the ability to recruit Heavy Footmen (like the ones from Spring and Autumn) and Heavy Horsemen. After you make a Fletcher, the Bowyer building becomes available and it lets you recruit Composite bowmen and Crossbowmen, again, you can combine these arms with the Armory weapons for better armored archers. As these second teir buildings are created, more are unlocked and you have more racial buildings, like, say, a Celestial Enchantery, which unlocks armors and weapons with special abilities for your troopers. Since Celestial spells use Astral magic, it would give you Astral influenced weapons like bows that give a chance to temporarily blind enemies (much like that Solar Brilliance spell, but watered down) or Herald Weapons that give units improved morale. And so on and so forth. There be separate tech "trees" for separate types of units, like Monasteries to unlock better priests and magical places to unlock better casters. Buildings could be racial, so Tien Ch'i would have beaurucratic offices and imperial palaces that give access to nobility units like the General, Prince General, Imperial units, and the Red Guard while Abysia makes breeding grounds that gives you access to more crossbred units and Machakans can venture further into the bowels of the Godwall to unlock the secrets for more and better sorcerors and spider assassins. Of course, there will be a couple of different tech paths for each nation so you'd want to decide if you want better priests, infantry, ranged units, mages, and etcetera.

Also, to build buildings should require more time for this idea to work, so you don't instantly have flambeau-wielding, weightless-armor wearing, supercharged, crack elite soldiers while everyone could still only summon Fall Bears and Vine Ogres. Perhaps build speed would be linked to the total of strength or HP among the soldiers the building commander leads.

This idea would definitely not come in a patch, but it would be head-explodingly cool in a Dominions 3.

What does everyone think about this?

On a side note, I agree that Elemental Armor should be toned down.