Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
Good to know. Bronze weapons, helmets, and bronze scale for the line, with cloth/no armor for the cannon-fodder rabble if needed.
Well-worked bronze is the equal of the lower grades of steel that any non-modern civilisation is capable of producing. The only meaningful difference is that the same volume of bronze is about 10% heavier than the equivalent of iron.

It does take skill to make longer blades (see the Chinese, who were masters with bronze), otherwise you're limited to shortswords and spear/axe heads. As mentioned, larger plates are also pretty easy to make if you can already work bronze, so cuirasses, greaves and so on would be common. This isn't a metal-poor culture when it comes to equipment.