I had a thought while I was considering the problem of armor costing too much, as per my previous thread:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/438380

Lately, I find my biggest problem with the prices isn't balance-wise (though the prices are too high, esp for leather); but one of flavor and willing suspension of disbelief.  That I can pay some crystal/metal and production to build a set of 4 units with the armor quite readily, but I somehow can't equip my hero with it (because that takes a LOT of gildar);  or even more extremely, if I have something like henchmen; I can pay the crystal/metal/prod for items, then transfer them to my hero; but I can't just build the items to give to my hero.

The second problem is that I often find multiple heroes with equipment to trade nowhere near each other; they might be defending 2 distant corners of the empire, or exploring for goodie huts in separate areas.  I often don't have spare heroes to ferry the equipment; and it'd mean many wasted turns to get the two heroes close enough to trade.  In Age of wonders; and I think in MoM thouh i'm not sure; you could teleport items for a mana fee; which woudl be a good future feature to put in, but until then I thouht of this:

SOLUTION:  adding to the list of buildable unit chassis (male/female/juggernaut/henchman/whatever) some sort of doll or servant chassis.  It would produce single units which could trade items like heroes; but its combat stats would be poor (to prevent possible abuses) and it wouldn't cost much to make; and level just like normal non-hero units.  This would be a unit which exists for the purposes of a) letting you build items to put on your heroes directly, and transferring items between heroes.