Well, possibly, but if it's a basic unit, then surely those guys will be of comparable strength to the Mechanics? After all, 40 is even beyond a mechanic captain! Plus, during mission 3 we fight off the Mechanics, and mission 4 is straight after that and doesn't require that much upgrading on behalf of the player. In fact, to be in line with this idea, let's call the unit a Helenite Captain, so that the health is comparable.
Plus, methinks people are overpowering their units currently by quite a lot- if we all were to play the full game, I think no one would bother waiting around mission 3 to level up their characters by quite a lot- exactly the same happened during TRPG2 testing, where people were saying that the difficulty is too easy during the later stages of the game, and I think it is partly to that that the difficulty of missions 5, 6 and 7 is quite higher than of the previous missions, forcing the player to farm for gold for quite some time. Methinks it's worth avoiding the problem, as we're already seeing quite a steep difficulty curve and too much grinding isn't really going to give much fun to players.
PS
Ah, zackirus, you posted whilst I was writing this- well, I don't mind the idea too much, and I do like the idea of an attack that blocks counter-attacks, I just simply cannot imagine realistically anyone going around with just a shield to defend/attack. That's not really a weapon with which one can hurt an enemy much. Maybe give them a knife or something as well?