Upgrades of Armory and Black Smith......

Armoury and Blacksmith upgrades are very beneficial later in the game and really are a very simple idea..

First of all each upgrade gives you a 1.5% bonus to that unit for either the offensive or defensive ratings..

Armoury upgrades Defense - - - Blacksmith upgrades Attack

Secondly the reason for upgrades is to make your units more crop efficent.. So for instance you can have 1500 upgraded troops that would be just as strong as 2000 non upgraded troops (This is not the exact ratio.. Only an example)..

These upgrades become important later in the game when crop upkeep is more limited and your trying to make the most of what room you do have.

DO NOT ever give an offensive troop type a defensive upgrade or give a defensive troop an offensive upgrade. It is a pointless waste of resources.

This maths shows that you need quite a few troops before it's worth doing the armoury/blacksmith upgrades:

It's +1.5% to attack per level of upgrade, similarly for defence at the Armory.
So at level 1, if you had 66 troops they would have the attack value of an extra man.

Given that the upgrade costs are high (Legionnaire level 1 = 940|800|1460|440 = 3600), about 8x the price of an extra Legionnaire, you'd need 566 Legionnaires to make it cost effective to upgrade their weapons rather than to build another 8. And even then, they would need the defence upgrade to really be as good as 8 more men.

Armour & Weapon upgrades don't cost any crop, unlike additional troops, so that's a point in their favour.

Remember - upgrades only apply to troops built in the village with the upgraded armoury/blacksmith. But you can send those troops anywhere! So if you have built 1000 Praetorians in Village 1 and have upgraded them to level 10 in Village 1's Armoury, you can send them off to reinforce village 2 and they will still have the upgrade bonus.

If you built the 1000 Praetorians in village 2 (with no armoury), and sent them to Village 1, which had the Armoury upgraded to level 10 for the Praetorian defense, there would be no advantage.