Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Developer Journal

"Go big, or go home" is the title of a new developer journal penned by Elemental: Fallen Enchantress lead designer Derek Paxton, in which he talks about a range of topics that include faction abilities, units, damage types/resistances, traits, and more.
In general the differences between weapons and their impact on other armies or monsters didn't mean as much as I wanted. I was being too subtle. So I went through every monster and gave them dramatic strengths and weaknesses. Trolls are all vulnerable to fire, Ice Elementals have no defense against blunt weapons. Naja and Stalkers are immune to counter attacks. Ogres all have bad spell resistance. Nearly every monster has areas where it is weak, and areas where it is strong.

The same thing has been done with armies. Armor has been rebalanced and instead of being 50% more effective against certain damage types it is 100% more effective. Abilities have been added to all weapons. Swords all have counterattack. All axes have backswing. Spears still have armor piercing, but they also make the unit immune to counter attack. Hammer type weapons don't have an ability but tend to be big, slow and do lots of damage to make up for it.

What weapon you use matters. And many of the factions have special versions that drive this even further. Krax has one handed versions of the spears that they can use with shields. Umber has scimitars that have backswing and counterattack. Pariden has a staff that shoots lighting. Yithril has a great axe that has armor piercing (it's devastating).