I would hope that the preferred outcome of throwing troops of low level = X gold against a high level unit = X gold where none have weakness to the other is that it be a pretty even fight.
(but the guy with the low level units loses out in the long term because the upkeep would be so much more, and unit attrition would be more, more difficult to handle all the units, and some production is usually lost with smaller units but not as much with larger ones, higher level heal is wasted on smaller units, and so on)
Ok I did some testing, I made a group of 4 avengers and a crusader for a total gold cost of 450 against a titan with a tital cost of 460, then threw the 4 group against the titan over and over via autoresolve and reloading from save. Without any enchantments the titan won pretty regularly and by the same small amount of health. If I threw bless(on all) it seemed to win by a little less, EW (on all) as well, the 4 won more often- with 2 survivers. Not sure how much casting was done in autoresolve, not much afiak but these latter tests I moved the wizard out of town to make sure no spells were cast.
If I threw on stone skin as well as EW and bless (on all) it varied, sometimes the four would win with 3 survivers or so, one with decent health the others worse. Or the titan won with more then half health. Doing this a bunch, then doing it 14 times more and marking down the results, 7 times the 4 won, 7 times the titan won. Only a few times did the titan win only by a bit, all the rest of the time it was pretty clear victory one way or another as far as health/survivers.
The 4 had a upkeep of 42, the titan has a upkeep of 15. Plus the casting/upkeep cost of all those enchantments.
Via these tests, it seems these particular low and high levels of archons are well balanced to each other. People might be tempted to just use low level units in dwiggs but clearly theres still reason to build the bigger stuff.
But consider this, avengers start out with fire strike, titans don't get it till silver.(both are fire immune so this didn't come into play in these battles) Avengers can get range at medals,(two kinds) titans can't. Avengers start out with and upgrade at gold, turn undead. Avengers have death immunity, titans don't. I think avengers might be too ability heavy. Titans could use a gold ability, even if that means nerfing them in some way to do so.
Also maybe avengers shouldn't be holy light immune, besides that devaluing using life sphere with archons, that devalues the town defense racial structure.
[This message has been edited by TruePurple (edited 03-17-2006 @ 06:25 AM).]