Here’s a video showcasing the beta behavior.
I think they probably changed it since the helmet only upgrade could look odd.
It should probably be Helmet and Chest shape with the upgrade as it is now and was in original, but color comes from the Armoury.
The thing I hate most about the visuals in this game is that Bronze upgrades male the units silver and Iron upgrades make them gold.
It’s just stupid. Gold doesn’t male units look good. AoE4 did a similar thing but there it’s at least not the completely wrong metal for 2 Ages.
It is weird seeing people making an argument that an armour upgrade visual will make it unbalanced because you can see it on your enemy. Both weapon and shield upgrades were visual and no one suffered. It existed in the beta and was a brilliant idea (as can be seen from the video in the thread, the breastplate colour still corresponded to the unit tier, just sophistication of the armour changed).
In a few words, armory upgrade visuals is a thing that makes AOM stand out, and polishing it makes a user experience skyrocket and introduces wow effect. I sincerely hope they return it.
I see the champion armor as painted or coated in gold or something similar looking, to signify them as elite warriors, so the armor, that may be iron underneeth, doubles as both combat armor and ceremonial armor.
The silver of the heavy armor I interpret as being polished iron. This is contradicted when Iron armor hasn’t been researched yet, but can be just as easily explained away by a coat of paint or something similar to protect the copper or bronze from oxidation.
The reality of it is likely the tier being showcased more than the material, as in, bronze, silver, gold, like the medals.
I really dislike this though.
Soldiers are not medals or something like that.
A well armoured soldier should look well armoured not painted in gold or silver.
Also the “Elite” unit thing is kinda stupid when your whole army is coloured in Gold/Silver.
Fair point, but it’s how the tiers have been shown in the original game as well.
You wanting to swap the colors for heavy and champion tier is probably the same as me wanting to include Atlantean assets in FotT Atlantis. Makes sense, but goes against nostalgia, so won’t happen.
You made a headcanon for yourself to explain how Atlanteans went from being 100% identical to Greeks to being completely different, from language, to clothing, to architecture, to technology, to culture, to history, to absolutely everything except (arguably) the same pantheon.
I hope they will bring back this in future updates, or someone mod it.
I’d love to see FotT with actual Atlantis in it.
Also I don’t want to swap Champion and Heavy I want to remove Champion, make Heavy Mythical Age and add a new Bronze Looking one.
I’d also love to see actual Bronze Age Mycenaean Armour on the Greeks.
I might put in the effort to make a version of the FotT missions where I replace the Atlanteans with well Atlanteans for both the enemies and player.
Just gonna be annoying that they can’t have Poseidon statutes and Atlantean architecture at the same time.
This visual changes was one of my favorite things in the beta 
I had this figured out since day one of Advanced Access, but I kept forgetting to upload it. I see a lot of you were asking for this feature to come back into the game. Here it is guys! Enjoy!
I blame the Pro Scene for the changes, and the removal of this wonderful feature.
I think the easy solution would be to make the armour technologies change the colour of the army but the Medium/Heavy/Champion upgrades change the shape.
So you get Copper, Bronze and Iron coloured armour.
The beta behaviour was kinda strange since why is the helmet the one thing that is based on the Medium/Heavy/Champion upgrade?
The current behaviour (also old AoM) is strange because why do Medium/Heavy/Champion upgrades change the material the armour is made out of?
Looks like the atlanteans are unaffected.
+1 in bringing that nice feature back - it adds a lot to the game in my opinion
edit: and/or allow the Visual Armor Upgrades - Mods - Age of Empires mod in multiplayer
++ support for future updates, like chinese and so on
I see no reason why this can’t be implemented, as for the pro scheme and the enemy being able to recognize if you have got the upgrades or not, you can literally look at the stats of the enemy unit and find out about it. That’s how its done in all aoe-aom games, at least by pro players so no it doesn’t really affect them. I don’t mind the gold armour or elite upgrade, etc… It’s distinguishable and looks cool, doesn’t have to be historically accurate.
This definetly needs to comeback
I agree, this needs to be in the base game again and not as a mod.
It adds more visual appeal to units.