Insight into Armor Repair Mechanic

[shatner]

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.