Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Scoops Novel]

Then again, what can medieval navies do against attack from above? We have an example of aerial vs nautical combat here, http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_cyclops.html, but the pirates did have something valuable on board. Perhaps there could be some kind of point defence system to deflect projectiles? I suppose you could always destroy the ships where they keep their boulders and rest, and the same goes for land battles, but what about aquatic mounts? It would be just like elves to surround you with barely visible fish, carrying battering rams and boulders for the Giant Bluetits and Greek fire by ye gods.

On a different note, it seems to me that the best shot for seiging dwarves as a rule is plague and famine, given there two areas which dwarves do not have explicit mastery over.

[Urist Da Vinci]

DF currently supports limited flanking, in that attacks "from the side" and "from behind" can happen. Also because of exhaustion, any legendary but not-supernatural fighter can be made to fall unconscious simply by making them dodge/attack enough in a short period of time.

[fortydayweekend]

The best offensive tactic a dwarven army could employ is undermining, with dragon cavalry taking a close second.
Dwarves are born diggers, you see. Give a dwarf a pick and he can tunnel to the center of the earth, provided nothing kills him along the way. A few hundred dwarves with picks can do that job faster and you have the benefit of numbers to increase success.
No castle wall is stronger than the ground beneath it, and all a dwarf army would need to do to breach the defenses is tunnel under and dig up. If whatever waits behind that wall is too tough to fight head on, the dwarf army needs only dig out the ground beneath the castle and send the whole structure plummeting into the magma sea.

Yeah, I don't think castles would evolve as a form of defence in a world where one of the predominant species can dig rock as quickly as dwarves do. Unless there's a way to build a self-repairing defence against tunnelers (possibly involving an aquifer or obsidian casting), which I'm sure someone will figure out once they are implemented

On a different note, it seems to me that the best shot for seiging dwarves as a rule is plague and famine, given there two areas which dwarves do not have explicit mastery over.

Similarly, any injury light enough to not warrant medical attention but able to cause infection. Sneaking invaders laying lots of rusty nail traps across busy walkways; hit and runs with razor blades etc, as well as the rotting corpse catapult and poisoning the water supply.

[Urist McVoyager]

Aquifers and magma vents would be the best automatic defenses, but . . .

Castles would still crop up, even without those. The best defense against dwarves? Don't freakin' fight them to start with. They make great trading partners since they DO dig that fast, and there's really just no reason to fight against them at all. It seems better to ally with them and bring a bunch of dwarven sappers along to your battles.