Weapon types

[Tiberius]

Do they have any significance? Like mace, whip, dual axe, etc?

[Man of Culture]

You could say they do. It's mostly just stat based but there are rules of thumb when it comes to weapon types.

Copied straight from the wiki

Weapon Types
Swords, axes, dual-weapons etc: These generally perform poorly against armoured units or large units, but do well against polearms.
Polearms: Spears, halberds, and similar weapons usually give the unit a bonus against large units, but are a disadvantage versus swords or axes.
Great weapons: Large, heavy melee weapons that often have armour-piercing damage.
Shields: Shielded units are able to block some portion (variable percentage depending on the unit) of the incoming missiles from the front.
Lances: Cavalry armed with lances (as opposed to swords or spears); they generally have increased damage when they charge.

What's probably not on the wiki are whips. Those are almost always decent damage stat but almost no or super poor armor penetration but has good defense. Not too many whip units in the game though.

[Green Raven]

Whips seem to be defensive in nature. Warriors who wield them have high melee defense (Not sure why that makes sense, but there you have it.)

Spears are, of course, anti-cav.

Everything else seems to be interchangeable.

[Ryusko]

Really the better thing to learn is the meaning of armor, weapon damage, melee defense, and melee attack. These plus leadership are really the things that predict which units will beat which, more than weapon types - the weapon types will at most give bonuses to those stats in certain scenarios. There are great videos out there of stat breakdowns if you search youtube; for how important they are there aren't great explanations in game for it.

[Cryten]

I kinda disagree with the earlier depiction of weapons. There is no 1 weapon beats another triangle. Instead think of weapon types as shorthand for how they typically behave between armies. For example spears typically offer anti large and low Armour Pen, Halberds are an upgrade to spears with Armour Pen though unless wielding on a race with good strength tend to be wielding 2 handed so they loose the shield. Goblins and other small races tend to be so small they do not get anti large from spears. Dual wielded weapons tend to be damage dealers that give up defence for more offensive power. 2 handed weapons tend to offer Armour Pen. etc etc.

[Ashardalon]

Originally posted by Green Raven:

Whips seem to be defensive in nature. Warriors who wield them have high melee defense (Not sure why that makes sense, but there you have it.)

probably to represent the whips entangling the enemy, making their attacks less effective being all wrapped up