Is using weapons on troops worth it

1. A human T2 cav has an attack value of 65 - a terrain spear or armour adds 39 to that. T1 spears (all races) have a defence against cav value of 13 - so a terrain spear or armour adds 7.8 to that. Those figures have to be modified for terrain afterwards. So the gear is worth different values to different troop types even though they 'cost' the same - whatever your measure of cost is.

2. You can make spears faster than swords and swords faster than bows - so the 'time cost' of spears is less.

3. The terrain specific gear gives a +60% bonus so +120% is possible for all terrains except buildings. The skins needed are common (rats, dogs, bears in particular). So a person who hunts can easily stockpile the gear - my stockpiles of both weapons and armours are in 6 figures and some are close to 7 figures.

4. Some military players don't hunt - meaning they would have to buy the gear. They look at the economics of that and generally reject the idea. That's a choice.

5. To craft effectively, you needs lots of skinners and specialised smiths. That means big population cities and many military players dont like that as its harder to move them. I craft big scale - close to 3k skinners and can craft all the specialised terrain spears at rates between 80-100 per hour and armour at about half that rate. I frequently have more than 10k stuff out there to gather to craft.

6. Gear has NO upkeep per hour, whereas troops DO.

7. You don't lose all the gear when you use it - you may be able to gather some of it, depending on where the battle occurs.

8. You can transfer gear between towns as fast as you can spend pres! You cannot transfer troops.

9. When you do use gear you lose 45.5% of what you would have lost if you sent unarmed troops - and have cut the rebuild time accordingly - your enemy may be building kobolds in the desert with high sov bonuses but they'll find it hard to match that bonus (assuming its on top of miltary sov of your own).

10. Most things in Illy are, in fact, free. The only real costs are pres and your time. Crafting, on a massive scale, helps with both. 

The choices are yours to make. It depends what game you want to play. I am only making the point that there is a way to look at gear that makes it desirable.