For all intends and purposes armor and life are considered to be equal design-wise. The new kingdom system highlights this fact prominently since both armor and life are “worth” the same. Some team bonuses grant a certain amount of armor while others grant the same amount of life (attack and magic for instance are “more expensive” in this regard).
However, my point now is they should NOT be considered equal. Here a few reasons:
True damage completely negates the use of armor
Poison ignores armor
Numerous troops actually benefit from enemies with high armor values (Bone Dragon, Gloom Leaf, Blade Dancer,…)
Armor does not protect a troop from dying, i.e. a troop can die while it still has armor
In almost any situation a troop with only life and no armor is superior defense-wise to a troop with the same amount divided between armor and life
In this way some bonuses feel kind of weaker than others. When you could choose why would you ever want to get armor instead of life? Except maybe for a paladin build but that is just one troop out of many many and I am speaking in ageneral manner.
I think armor should be worth slightly less than life. The important word here is slightly. I do not propose making a huge change. Maybe like 10 life is equal to 12 armor or something of the sort. As it is it feels a bit punishing to get 10 armor when others get 10 life instead.
To further your example, replenishing life is easy, while armor is difficult to accumulate.
Emperina (my first ever epic) completely heals all life, and adds to it as well. You will not discover a troop that recovers armor for you, or offers much more than 7 at best. (Templar is honestly the best at accumulating defense, and he’s just a rare troop.)
Btw, Rowanne also benefits from armor, but is basically a spread attack version of Paladin.
I’ll also say healing troops are entirely based off life, not armour so another reason life is superior.
I don’t think design wise they are considered equal at all. There are many interactions between armour (paladin, gloomleaf, blade dancer) as well as health (any healing, true damage, poison).
I do think the designers have considered these things; it seems built in.
Edit: started typing this 4 hours ago. Finished it now.
Balance-wise the OP is right - Life is ‘worth’ slightly more than Armour, for the reasons given… It’s marginal though, so not sure it would justify moving the bonuses.
Also I’d observe that in 107 world now, as all stats are higher in the end-game except Magic, there’s been a shift towards attack damage being more important than spells, so armour is worth the same as life…
I would completely agree with this. It’s a very interesting world now where I am MORE concerned about how much attack my opponents have vs. what spells they will be using. Those maxxed out kingdom guys can be TOUGH!
