There was a topic somewhere about TPR balancing and BornFree(?) tested the equip rate values in TPR and found them to be interchangeably 26 or 52(?) However I don't remember if the final test nor decision were made.
I have seen a variety of values, ranging from approximately 17 seconds to over 2 minutes. There are a lot of factors that play a role in this. I was lazy and did not make a very good setup to test this, but I think the distance from the school to the barracks is important. In my test there were two schools, one close to the barracks and one far away. The AI did not (most of the time, in some occasions it did unfortunately, making this even more complicated...) train a new recruit before the last one that was trained had entered the barracks. I think this has to do with the fact that in TPR, only one recruit could go to the barracks at any time. So training new recruits wasn't useful as long as there was still one on his way to the barracks. A good test would be to give the AI plenty recruits at the start and only let him start recruiting soldiers after all recruits are in the barracks. However, since the AI will be training recruits in most missions and not just start with 300 recruits, even the values you will find with this test will not reflect the truth.
My point: this should be tested more thoroughly, and the standard equip rates which are set automatically by the editor seem to be way off and will make all missions easier.
Which brings me to the second part of my/your post.
It is map editors job to set the equip rate because that directly affect AIs strength and mapmakers need to be in control of that to make good challenging maps. Otherwise how else can mapmaker control the speed at which AI (re)builds his army?
I think you didn't understand what I exactly meant, sorry if I was not clear. Of course it is the map makers decision what the equip rates should be; but it should not be the editors task to set them at 500 for iron and 1000 for leather. I think it should set something like !SET_AI_CHARACTER EQUIP_RATE 450, and not force iron/leather equip rates upon players, since the map editor can't see if an AI player can even train iron troops.
