Awesome

I think the important thing to consider here that each value for a weapon has to lead to interesting trade-offs.  Each value should be particularly useful for some reason, and should carry accompanying limitations.

Your club/iron helm combo there is an interesting example.  By those rights, I would be better off using the dagger against that helm, but a mace is actually a much better weapon against most types of armor than a blade - softer armors moreso than rigid ones, but still.

In order to get the right mix of "Easy to use, difficult to master", you also have to ensure that there are tactical combat situations where a high rating in any of the values is particularly useful.

So, assuming weapons have those 4 values:

1. Attack Rating - universally good, but adds to overall cost of weapon, and requires higher technology level to create.  So low attack rating items are more common at lower levels and cheaper, allowing for more people to be equipped with them.

2. Damage Type - most basic ones should be available from the get-go - piercing, slashing, blunt.  Do damage types stack, or does only the highest apply?  Could I do a "Club w/spiky bitz on" (3 attack, blunt damage, melee) (1 attack, piercing damage, melee).  If you can do stacking damage types, how many can you add?

Again here, we're looking at a cost and possibly a resource requirement - blunt stuff is pretty easy, but a good slashing weapon takes some metal, unless you want to be replacing your obsidian a LOT - yeah, I'm looking at you, macuahuitl.

3. Range Value - would this be a value of tactical map squares?  Would it be possible to assign a range (2-10 for javelin) and have penalties for being under it?  I'd like to see some sort of system here that rewards short swords in tight melee combat rather than just "bigger is better".  I know in tight formation the gladius kicked the crap out of the gallic longsword or a spear.  Or will this be where combat speed modifier comes in?

I'd love to see the range value also have some effect when units close on each other, and a starting 0 number, which indicates shield-to-shield.  That way, you could have a pike unit being attacked by a shortsword unit. Pikes have combat range of 1-3.  So they attack the shortsword unit at 3,2,1, the shortswords have range 0 - all of a sudden the pikes have a -3 (or whatever) penalty and the shortswords are cutting them up.

4. Combat Speed modifier - ascending or descending scale (is 1 good or bad?).  Combined with Range value, this could be really interesting.  A speed 5 range 0 weapon like a shortsword vs a Speed 3 range 0-1 weapon like a longsword would be interesting.

That's my thoughts, just as a start.

What is the difference between combat speed and movement speed?

Add defense to weapons.  Add combat speed to armor, add abilities to everything.

I'd love it if I can go batshit insane with things and pump out real monsters with restoring armor, swords that fling meteors, all kinds of goodies.  Like a necromancer staff that turns victims into a zombie after draining their life.  So much can be designed if weapons and armor surpass the physical.

Since it's all data driven, we can stack up as many different types of attack and defense to any type of equipment.

For example, taking cities where the city has city walls requires siege equipment. A bunch of sword guys can't just conquer a city in that case.

But SAURON could.  (A lot of our internal debates come down to "what would sauron do?") which means having a staff that is a weapon but also counts as siege equipment too.  

Now, I don't know what will make it into the final game yet in terms of what OUR equipment will do.  That said, when the game is done, as some know, I plan to take a sabatical and get back into modding and make my own mods.

I like the combat speed modifier concept! Makes it so that there is a hierarchy of weapons: daggers attack faster than axes; axes attack faster than bastard swords; bastard swords attack faster than great swords, etc.

That is a very good idea, and I think it would balance out weapons in terms of damage vs speed. Like, a melee unit gets a 2handed spear with a -5 speed modifier and a 2 tile range. He faces a dagger wielding melee unit who has a speed modifier of 5. The tile range benefit allows the spear holder a first strike on the dagger enemy. However, once the dagger enemy closes the distance, he attacks first!

Here are just some suggestions to consider in the process:

Weapon Modifiers:

I do believe that weapon modifiers (with easily "moused-over" tooltips) would be a great addition to the weapons lineup. Additions of poison, spells and other such things should be an "add-on" to the base properties of a weapon. Contingent on spells or training.

Archery/Throwing/Ballistics:

Depending on the damage type and the way that archery is eventually balanced, a distance "to-hit" penalty might need to be considered. Also, shields and other equipment could then have a dual-purpose in reducing archery "hit" chance.

Unit activatable abilities:

One of the things that Dragon Age Origins has taught me is how boring a point-and-click melee fighter truly is. Even one or two active abilities added on to a unit (maybe based on training?) would go a long way to making melee combat even more interesting. Make those abilities limited by weapon type/armor type and it would be even more tactical!

*sigh* why is it the first post you type always disapears into the ether.

Oh well, round two.

While I am definitely liking the idea of a more robust combat system. I would tend to shy away from having to do DPS calculations in a TBS.  It's not that I can't do them (5 years in a top raiding WoW guild) but I prefer a more linear approach to my armaments in a TBS. And while all those fun things listed for making a sword more than just Damage 4 and would really like to see that kind of stuff implemented.

I won't lie. I would get vexxed if my calvary got destroyed by a bunch of agile dagger weilding fanatics just because someone spent hours on end mathing up the most ideal weapon and armor package.

And just as a side note. 

  HURRY UP AND OPEN BETA AGAIN SO I CAN PREORDER THIS GAME!!!!!

would be alot easier to give my input into the creation

Abilities shouldn't be tied to weapons ! But to units.

For instance a unit could learn the feat "sweeping". And when that unit use a weapon flagged as a "staff" then he can try to make an all-around attack.

A unit could learn the feat "Counter-charge" : if that unit use a "staff" weapon he will do extra damage for each square the opponent has travelled for attacking him.

About damage : there should be at least two kind of damage lethal/non-lethal, so we can capture other units.

For instance in a quest you must capture a wild horse : you get in a battle and you must use effectively your weapon to NOT kill it.

About wounds : permanent wounds, temporary wounds, bleeding wounds, incapaciting wounds (you lose few hit points but get also a malus in stats).

What would be good is that EVERY weapon (not blunt) would do bleeding damage and incapaciting damage, in varying degree. So the first strike would be really important. A feat like "iron skin" would reduce the bleeding damage you take (sometimes negating it). Veteran fighter wouldn't be ahard to fight because they have lots of HP, but because they are able to prevent bleeding/incapaciting damage.

A mouse-over tooltips are just a must something like that 6 damage (4 blunt + 2 piercing, 20% to bleed 1point/turn)

Any reasonably decent UI can calculate and display the DPS rate for you (or more likely damage per turn in this case).

Combat speed is a nice stat because it can simulate things that just straight attack/defense don't cover, like a cannon. Cannonfire does HUGE damage to whatever it hits, and would kill your average soldier outright. But it takes time to reload a cannon, during which it can't attack. Axes don't tend to suffer from that problem.

Frogboy, you said that you want to allow as many damage types/resistances as available to be stacked on an item but I don't care for that and hopefully I can explain my case a bit. Some will likely disagree with me there but I don't want to have to sort through 7 different modifiers when I'm being attacked to figure out what this new weapon that the enemy is fielding will do, and then again to figure out if I can hurt them. I prefer a cleaner system where a weapon can have at most a (+ to physical damage) (1 elemental damage type) (1 special ability (ie life drain, first strike). Otherwise I think we can expect a total mess of modifiers especially when you take into account that this business would need to be calculated for every piece of equipment on the soldier. This will also make it possible to develop specific counters to troop types that your enemy is producing and require you to adapt to what the enemy is throwing at you as there will be a limit to the number of modifiers involved in the process.

Weapon types should have innate abilities  and/or a wide and varied range of damage types and ranges (even for melee). Look at a matchup of a dagger versus a sword ...Why would a player want a dagger over a sword and vice versa? If they both have the same damage type, is it simply which one has the best dps (damage x combat speed)? If so, then the choice is just a matter of which weapon cost more or less. Not very interesting.

For example, an innate ability for daggers could be higher damage when flanking another unit. Like a backstab ability. It’s easier to run your blade in between the seams of armor if you have a light maneuverable weapon. Maybe simply make this another damage type. A dagger would have two types of damage types..piercing and 'backstab' (or something like that). When a player mouses over 'backstab' it simply says "deals 50% more damage to flanked units". An example of an innate ability for swords could be parry more easily, which would mean swords give some defensive value to the unit. Another for swords (or smaller one handed swords) is that they can both "chop and thrust", which equates to multiple damage types in game.  I'd like to see a large pool of damage types that go beyond the standard crush, blunt, piercing, slash, fire, shadow, ect...

Melee range/reach. In real life a sword has the reach advantage over a dagger. Each melee weapon could have a simply melee reach value ("Melee - 5" for example. A dagger would have a value of 1, and 10 for a long pike. Whichever weapon has the bigger value does its combat damage first each round..guaranteed. If the melee range difference is large enough, the unit with the longer weapon could deal unanswered damage for a couple rounds.

Flanking would negate the melee range, so a dagger wielding unit flanking swordsmen, would not only do backstab damage, but also wouldn't worry about the swords range advantage.

A pikemen could have low damage, a negative combat speed modifier, but a huge melee reach value. The pikemen could do several rounds of damage before a swordsman does anything. Of course if a swordsman withstands the battering, or better yet flanks, the pikemen is toast with its slow combat speed and low damage.

Something else I'd like to see is weapon encumbrance and how it relates to a units movement speed on the battlefield. Heavier weapons make units move slower on the battlefield, which would give another reason to take a dagger over a sword...or a short spear over a long phalanx spear. This might go into the realm of needing a PhD, but the total war games have even more complexity under the hood then this.

However, I do agree that whatever is implemented, it should all be found on the unit card.

Things can get really complicated but it's not necessary complicated for th euser. In elven legacy you can have a lot of modifiers for combat. But a mouseover tooltip just says what are the odds. You still have to know what a "bleeding" weapon does, but a tactical battle need options like this to be interesting.

I know I would kill for a combat system as evolved as Combat mission, or the close combat series, or the steel panther series. I also know that too few people would like that. But good and simple syystems exists.

Devs should play elven legacy to get some great ideas in combat system. (perks for instance)