From the Dev Blog: Crafting

Quackers wrote: My only concern is the armor not giving penalties. Like having the heavier crafted armor, that is suited for troops on plains, weaker on mountains. Will the armor give penalties to other terrains based on the terrain it is suited for?

I'm sure it will, a bonus on one side usually has a deficit on the other

Orcs are all about pretty.

From what they have said in the blog I beleive the intention is A, just as they said about collecting specific equipment to specialise in one area, or collect a variety so that you can react to different situations.

With the new gear will you have to

A build your standard T1/2 troops then assign equipment to them or

B build highly specialized troops with perm assigned equip


Personally I'd like to see option A where you assign equipment to armies to add flexibility to the military over having to build a static specialized force

geofrey wrote:   the manner in which you acquire these items was suspiciously absent. The only info given was that unique resources would appear on the map. I'm guessing these might be located regionally, and spawn only in that region.  For example mythril only spawns in the Middle Kingdom. While elephant skin leather can only be harvested from elephants (spawned in Zanpur).   This would fall in line with previous GM notes on creating more reasons for land disputes.  The ability to attack NPC's to get these resources, and steal them from other players, will add a new level to the game. I'm hoping that this will come with the ability to target specific resources when sending thieves/raids. And maybe the vault will have a new meaning as well.