[Suggestion] Greater differentiation of damage types and weapons

These are pretty good suggestions and would bring out more variety in the weapons. However, I don't think I'd apply too much of this to armor because the armor is more of an abstraction to your tech level then actual armor (ie. defense). Give us more armors in Elemental and you could really apply this.

Moreover, defensive spells could boost specific resistances, while lowering others.

Stoneskin style spell, for example, could make skin hard as stone, but brittle, so it would be excellent against pierce, good against cut, but bad against blunt (think mace shattering hard, but brittle stone)

Conversely a barkskin style spell could make body absorb blunt damage exceptionally well, piercing damage slightly better, but fail against cutting blades.

Info on enemy monsters could either contain their resistances, make them known after some spell or lore research, or at least have hints in the flavor text.

It would make sense building special extermination squads geared to kill specific powerful mobs, like fire-resistant heavy spearmen against dragons, or mace-armed anti-undead soldiers.

Definetly needed, especially when applied to monsters, Rock spiders and stone golems should resist piercing, ogres should resist blunt, ect ect.

Don't really want to see a system like this. The game already has armor with bonuses against different attack types, but it's not something I'm ever going to go out of my way to utilize - check the stats of every enemy in every fight and then swap out my equipment or bring different troops? No thanks, too much of a micro mess.

System is way underused though. Mounted troops don't even have weakness to piercing attacks. It would also make balanced armies more important instead of just being able to solo everthing with a champion with a reasonably powerful axe.

I don't agree with the dext bonus though, thats a structural problem with assasins more than anything.

I definitely agree that the armor piercing bonus should be moved to blunt weapons as historically that's what they were used for.

The point would be to give the tactical level mixed unit tactics. The burden on the devs should be to make each creature have a base armor and a bonus to one type of attack. You should be bringing a unit of each type to a full battle in order to be able to counter the enemy. That is just good sense, but right now is irrelevant due to lack of challenge in any battle. If you chose to have all heroes, you certainly could switch to your best piercing weapons in order to get through their thick skin. You could also have a single leader hero that has a few regular units in his army. Now you would have to rely on your swordsmen to soak up the damage done by the troll while your archers did most of the damage.

This kind of balance would go miles towards preventing unit level to decide every battle. Your strategy and tactics should come into play. So much of this assumes the rest of game is also balanced. I am glad not to be a dev. 

I like the ideas, but regardless of whether it was these changes or the current system, if they're going to bother to have different damage types, armor bonuses need to be displayed against each instead of just as a number that during battle you discover is different. I like the strategic element different types adds, but right not it's not really easy to adjust against/for even if I wanted to do so.

I certainly like the idea that different weapons would use different skills other than just strength! It would make a variety of characters more useful with certain weapons.

Dext weapons would just make Str obsolete.  Increase weapons dmg is all Str does.

Oh and I checked. The only thing that resists dmg types is armor. It doesnt even display it anywhere but on the item. If a monster had Cutting resistance there would be no way to even tell. I can safely say a list of monsters with resistances would look like this though.

Resists cutting: 0   Resists piercing: 0   Resists blunt: 0

Resists fire: 0   Resists water: 0   Resists earth: 0   Resists air: 0   Resists death: 0

Hopefully this will be implemented later, though I dont see why it wouldn't already be considering this is an expansion. If not this is exactly the attitude that wrecked WOM

Strength affects how much your unit/hero can equip, and how much they can equip before losing initiative. Lose too much initiative and you'll end up taking one turn for your enemy's two.

I think dexterity based weapons would be very well balanced if they werent useful against heavy infantry. You could only effectively use them to counter light infantry/unarmored units (like mages, archers, and skirmishers). Very much in favor of a system like this.

To belabor the point a little bit, if you want to take down tough monsters or heavy infantry, you'd want to create a unit with enough strength to swing a warhammer in order to damage the person inside the metal shell.. or chip away at a carapace, or something. Arrows wouldnt do much to a golem or elemental. Arrow vs. Rock and Hammer vs. Rock are going to play out much differently. This would also mean that units designed to tackle the toughest foes are also the least effected by heavy armor, and therefore the best units to wear it.. and therefore among the most expensive.

This kind of thing tends to balance itself out pretty evenly.

Better example: if spears are effective against cavalry, you could develop a cheap lightly armored spearman unit specifically to counter charges. Granted at the moment you couldnt place them in front to take that charge, you could at least kill the cavalry that charged you. Not sure if there is/will be a first strike trait, but that would make it perfect. It wouldnt be as effective to churn out knights and bum rush your neighbors, you would be better off developing something with more than one angle of attack. That's a good thing imo.

First strike implies the ability to counterattack. I'm uncertain if it would be possible to include counterattacks against certain types of units only, barring that I would be okay with reintroducing the counterattack mechanic.

In the event that weapon damage types get introduced, I hope they consider providing bonuse to champions based on specific weapon (or damage) type. Otherwise the idea of carrying around 8 different types of weapons for each character would be a very likely scenario. Addtionally there should be some reason to differientiate between champions besides melee/ranged/magic. Alternatively, champions should have the ability to switch weapons during combat by expending a turn. Blunt and/or explosive arrows would also be an option.

(Hammer/Sword/Rapier)&Sheild as well as Two-handed(Spear/Hammer/Sword) should provide different tactical advantages.

Dexterity gives a chance to crit. You should need a little of all the stats to have a good hero. Letting Dexterity control damage and crit would get lame pretty quick. It also increases your dodge. Thinking about altering them is moot unless you are a great modder. There is no way the devs are going to change stat functions at this point. 

There is in fact a counterattack trait. I make my spearmen with +3 Moves and Init which is pretty great for countering mounted units. I really hope they add the bonus against mounted units back into the game. Spearmen getting to ignore 66% of damage is a little strange. I still use spears instead of broadsword just because pierce plus that is the best against all armors for the most part and much cheaper. 

I think Dex is pretty desirable right now, but there should be some specialization to weapons so that each type of unit has an ideal weapon. I am still holding out hope for more paths, so there is no need to go into specifics. But I will say that a staff should be the ideal weapon for a mage. The fact that a mage can use a dagger to get an extra +6 to Init is unbalanced mayhem.