Here is data on why Advanced weapon production failed in the past, is currently failing, and will continue to fail unless production ratios and times are severely adjusted. The base unit used here is "Time", measured in Seconds. This time measures the time to make a weapon across all the buildings involved (pinewood cutter, forester, coker, copper mine, copper smelter, and bronze weapon smith: those make a recruit).
You may ask, why does this matter, this time? It matters because we have a finite amount of space and building licenses.
I did this for All 4 melee units, along with bows and longbows - the classic units we plan to lose.
The stat that matters most I feel is effective Hp, measured against the time to produce the weapons used for that unit. This stat is Total time divided by HP (Damage was used for ranged units). BB did a good job in balancing the recruit, and while the rest were brought down - they are not even close to recruit.
As seen below, it is 4.55 times more efficient to use recruits current than militia, 7.45 times more efficient to use than soldiers, and 13.8 times more efficient to use than elites. Longbows also ranked badly, with bows being 3.24 times more efficient than them currently.
The baseline goal I feel should be to get losses in line with the Old recruit in terms of time per HP (elite should be somewhat cheaper, given titan ore has 0 time to produce, and as ore is ~ 6-10% of the cost, it should be about 5-10% cheaper in terms of time to produce
The first area I believe that should be analyzed is cutting the Iron ore needed to make a bar from 4 to 2. Maybe even 1. Upping coker output from 2 logs to 2 coal would also help. Coal time overall is in need of a massive reduction across the higher chains and composes most of the time.
Here is how long it takes to make one unit of coal: 630 seconds. 90 Seconds to chop 1 log. 2 are needed. 135 Seconds to refill log deposit, 2 are needed. 180 Seconds to turn the logs into coal.
Times on Weaponsmiths also I believe need a good bit of work. Damascene should come down to 32 minutes. Steel is good at 24 I think, though 18 should be considered. Smelter time is good across the board. Same for mine times.
So my overall recomendations?
Coker: 2 logs makes 2 coal
Recruit: 5 Swords needed
Iron smelter: 1 or 2 iron ore input
Iron/steel/titanium/damascene: all buildings should consider a 25-50% reduction in coal
Failure to do this, and the weapons will still be way to ornery to make.