I think reducing the price of the brigandine was a mistake, but swadians have always being able to armour up quickly, swadians can snowball easier than any other faction but they need to decisively win a round to do that and their starting equipment doesn't lend itself to that. It's a bit better now but previously there was just no point buying anything other than the free sword and awlpikes, the swadians lacked throwing, shield breaking or high damage weapons and their shields were average at best.
I think swadians needed access to cheaper weapons of their own (since they were 100% reliant on looting weapons before) but they didn't need cost reductions on armour and the cav price reductions were also unnecessary. That just helps them snowball more when they were already good at that.
Personally I would have just liked to keep the dart and 1H sword price reductions and give the swadians a second line of 1H weapons, probably the 1H hammers from singleplayer. They were always associated with swadia I believe and would give a harder hitting weapon which has a shorter range. That would remove the main problem swadians had which was getting good enough weapons to actually win rounds in the first place while avoiding the current issue which is the ease they are able to snowball. The only thing their cav needed rather than cheaper horses, was throwing and crossbow skill comparable to all the other cav, but they still don't have that (only class with literal 0 skill in those areas).