Mana for heroes and gildar for cities and armies

The tech tree could help to split the heroes, cities and armies even more. The magic tree should help the heroes, the civilization tree should help the cities and the warfare tree should help the armies:

Example: MAGIC TREE

- Summon basic weapons (level 0):

  One handed weapons, two handed weapons and ranged weapons

- Summon basic armor and shields (level 0):

  Leather armor, chain mail, plate mail, small shield and large shield

- Summon improved weapons (level 1, requires summon basic weapons):

  Weapons made of special materials (mithral, adamantine, ...)

- Summon improved armor and shields (level 1, requires summon basic armor and shields):

  Armor and shields made of special materials (mithral, adamantine, ...)

- Summon basic mount (level 1, requires summon basic weapons + summon basic armor and shields):

  Horse (kingdom) or warg (empire)

- Summon enchanted weapons (level 2, requires summon improved weapons):

  Weapons with special abilities (life drain, poison, ...)

- Summon enchanted armor and shields (level 2, requires summon improved armor and shields):

  Armor and shield with special abilities (spell resistance, improved dodge, ...)

- Summon enchanted accessoires (level 2, requires summon basic mount):

  Rings, Cloaks, ... with special abilities (spell resistance, improved dodge, ...)

- Summon legendary weapons (level 3, requires summon enchanted weapons):

  Weapons with very powerful abilities (maul, teleport, ...)

- Summon legendary armor and shields (level 3, requires summon enchanted armor and shields):

  Armor and shields with very powerful abilities (lightning immunity, spell reflection, ...)

- Summon magical mount (level 3, requires summon enchanted accessoires):

  Dragon

It could work.

Something certainly needs to be done, it is ludicrous how expensive fairly basic equipment is relative to the economic output of cities. This completely breaks immersion in the game.

I think you guys are trying to fix something that aint broken.  The cost of items is high because it was too low in WOM.  In WOM as soon as you had a new level of armor/weapon tech, you instantly could and did upgrade all your champions.  This was broken, as it meant micromanagement to upgrade everyone, and it was way too easy to make every hero the same, and every hero too strong.  In FE, while the numbers may feel funny in some sense, the balance works quite well, I believe.

The cost of equipment is in line with other things you can spent money on, making upgrading equipment an interesting choice, not just a immediate necessity.

This subject is moot until we get the balance changes in .78 next week. Right now there is no need to buy armor because heroes get so much of it from battles. 

If you compare the equipment prices the balance is great, but if you can rush the production of a city after selling a single item i think the balance is off.

It was broken in E:WoM as well. Fundamentally, the value of gildar is totally different, depending on how you use it. For maintaining units or structures, or as income from cities, gildar comes in ones and twos and threes and fours. To buy even the cheapest single piece of equipment requires many, many turns of output from a city to be able to afford.

Now, this is an annoying piece of cognitive dissonance to be sure. But where it starts to actually detract from the mechanics (instead of just the feeling) of gameplay is when you get something like Wizard1200 points out: sell a single wooden shield, rush build a whole building. This remains true even if the values are tweaked - rushing half, or a third, or any sizeable fraction of a city improvement for the cost of a basic shield is ludicrous. Similarly, if I choose to buy that shield with the gold output of a city, it will take many turns (early-game, maybe 180) to save up for. But if I train a multi-person unit that is equipped with shield - boom - it's finished in a few turns.

This isn't an issue of tweaking, it's a design issue that needs to be dealt with from that point of view. This is one place where the RPG and strategy elements of the game overlap and actually conflict.

If we're talking realism, then surely the sov shouldn't have to pay at all.  Can you imagine the president or prince Harry or whoever walking into Guns'R'us, saying "I'm off to serve on the front line" and the guy behind the counter saying "That'll be 300 gold, your majesty"?

Of course, that sort of realism probably isn't a great game mechanic, so it's probably irrelevant in this thread.

Sorry.  Bye.

The idea of free 'vanilla' equipment for champs/sovs (limited by tech) has been brought up before, and I'm not sure it couldn't work. Certainly I wouldn't dismiss it as "not a great game mechanic" without further discussion. Sovs/Champs tend to be kitted out mostly with magical/found equipment after a while anyways - purchased equipment just fills gaps. So there'd be early-game balance issues, but I wouldn't think them insurmountable.

However, an argument that literal realism isn't the best choice doesn't mean that absurdity is. Maybe the Sovereign and Champs do have to pay something, but should it be completely out of proportion to every other valuation of money in the game?

Well how about this then?  Sov can get anything free, BUT the shop only contains items that the city has built previously (to equip a unit).  That gives the realism that the sov can have whatever they ask for, but balances it out a bit.  It also sort of makes sense - the shop isn't likely to have full plate to sell if there's no armourer in town making it.  And to stop the sov just repeated asking for stuff and passing it on to all his champs, maybe limit a shop's stock to 1 per unit that's been trained in the city with that item.

So:

1) City trains a unit of longbows

2) 1 Longbow then becomes available in the store - free to sov.

Of course, then you'd have to do something about sov sells item to shop, sov takes item from shop. Sov sells item to shop etc. etc.

Another way to fix the difference in price would be to have labor decrease the cost of purchased items. So a high production town would be able to produce a sword much more quickly and thus cheaper. It might even make those 3/4 cities worth a damn. Food is currently far more valuable. This would balance it nicely. 

Good idea!