Yeah, like I said, based on my arena testing, everyone in game is by and large a 1, 2 or 3 shot on realistic. Regardless of armor, weapon quality or HP pool.
Occasionally I'll fight a guy in the arena in full kit who for some reason just always takes about 20ish damage to the head. So I have to hit him between 5 and 6 times. It tends to be when squaring off with sword and shield though, so there's little or no speed bonuses at play. When I run into a fight and swing, I'll get a nice 40 to 60 damage hit with a single handed weapon against mid-tier armor.
So while it does kinda rankle to see a Tier 5 Vlandian Banner Knight get downed in a fight with Looters, I've seen it happen in arena plenty. Where a <culture> Militia wearing clothing somehow manages to bring down a Tier 4 or Tier 5 unit in armor. Both in real time and in simulation. I almost feel like armor is there for incidental damage. The random arrow or crossbow bolt or glancing hit you didn't see, armor makes the difference between a one shot and surviving it. In straight up 1v1 encounters, footwork and blocking and not ever getting hit is worth way more than any amount of armor. Because for me, when I've got more than 2 opponents, the odds of winning are almost nil, doesn't matter how heavy your armor is or how good of a weapon you're wielding.
And I'm generally ok with that, I think. Otherwise I'd play with reduced damage dealt and just laugh off the 10 or so damage they manage to inflict on a clean strike. Too easy!
It seems to me that if you spend all day hanging out in a town for some poachers to show up you should have recovered your stamina a bit.
Stamina regen should just be a function of time IMO, with bonuses included for how you spend that time (waiting versus traveling, waiting in the field vs. waiting in a town.) That would be my ideal.
But it's not a big deal. Especially since we can make a stupid amount of money smithing up two-handed swords to sell. And even cheapo crude/wrought iron swords sell for 700 at the low end. So we can easily pay for the upkeep of my crazy 100-man cavalry army.
I really haven't done any free form smithing for profit. I've got like 500 crude and 400 iron stockpiled in Sargot because the sale price of metal materials is a fucking joke across almost the entirety of Calradia. Even when the price IS good, you sell 1 bar of iron and the price per unit drops by 35% IMMEDIATELY. Kind of annoying. So I think I will crank out a bunch of cheap garbage and eat up that stockpile, it's driving me nuts looking at it.
I do wish there was more you can do with workshops.
The implication is they're supposed to get better or you're supposed to be able to invest in them to improve them. Alas, they haven't changed since EA and I'm hoping they don't just....doodly doo skip over actually finishing the feature.
Even just the old warband trick of dumping off large amounts of cheap raw resources directly into the shop would be nice.
I tried something similar to affect their profitability, by buying out all the wine in a town I have a wine workshop, or sell a bunch of grapes in that town. Neither seems to have a noticeable impact on profitability. I've had workshops with no resource flow manage to produce stuff, and I've had workshops with an ABUNDANCE of raw materials fail to ever actually start production. Workshops in general and the economy related to them need a complete pass in development, IMO. Right now the amount of money they make me (with 5 of them) is a pittance compared post-battle loot, and a marginal amount of cash compared to a good caravan day.