What do you mean exactly?
Should, could we balance this that armor and hits should be more realistic, in that any unit has a potential for even a 1 hit kill of damage depending on how the units interact? This goes with armor, accuracy, dexterity, number of units in proximity etc…
for instance, a long shot from an arrow a hit might have a 25- 75% chance to miss the shot (based on movement speed) 5% chance for a critical strike immobilizing its movement (animation man hunched over on horse) and quickly its HP dwindles, giving a chance for a healer unit to revive. A 15% chance for a mortal wound, that reduces its effective stats and HP greatly. and 30% for a hit that might be armor related and very light.
for medium to close range, when archers fire directly at armor weak points from point blank range the stats change a little in that accuracy way improves to land those critical and wounding shots. But remember a longer reload time and their own potential squeamishness, means you still got to protect your archers, because if you are running them away and melee catches up will do 2X the chance for kill shot vs. them standing to fight with their short sword or bow as a club.
units need some intangible prowess, like stats, aggression, defensive ability, dexterity, cooperation, awareness, accuracy etc… to make the game more balanced than just HP, speed, attack and resist, which upgrades to HP and attack are really just the same thing. Imagine we take a unit like a Greek Spartan, and part of their thing was to have full aggression and good dexterity, this might help their chances to land good hits on weaker units making them almost seem invincible to weak/ medium infantry that would move slower or be more passive in landing a first hit. I really like this direction as it could make some armored centurions a real problem to deal with like they should be.
a unit with medium to good cooperation, may get passive bonuses from alike units, or near by structures, or even some with full benefit might get buffed from allied units as well. So imagine going back to the sarissa and pike man formations, this is a unit that really only works together and stronger in larger masses. the cooperation links them, and shares this ability, and makes them form their own formation. They will kind of seek each other out, and once linked other units wont want to cut through and will generally move together as a slow pace unless split apart. A unit with very low cooperation, may not get any bonus from commander units or be able to man a siege unit.
This leads into commander/ general units. I like the idea of strategic targets within a battle and surely every battle field needs a commander (which might be able to train standard bearers that then act as 1 unit (you choose the commander the banner guy just follows closely) this signifies that there could now be a civ specific buff that increases potentially, LOS, increased AI so units in aura try to counter units if possible (AI level is set by level of game in lobby) maybe you could use your commander to target a building or army, and it will then assign the units in its field to attack that structure or army like a computer would. Now VS A good player would still have to micro some to find other commanders but its like supplemental better unit AI and pathing from having this…
that may seem a little gimmicky and is only possibility but no ones likes to loose an army to bad pathing… many other potentials are here. Like simply just increasing some unit stats (but lets get beyond just attack and HP)
SO as I see it, the game will be easy to play, but hard to understand, like chess, it may seem complex but it could be basic enough that you can still just make an army and attack, but maybe not understand every battle outcome that may have been decided by things a pro would take advantage of such as terrain, unit compositions, positioning for accuracy and better guarding of melee units etc…