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[celem]

All very true^^    Unless its made of steel, causing your axelords to pass out from exhaustion, their candy kit keeps them alive while they nap and they wake to fight again.  This can go until they die of starve/thirst. 

Sometimes the only way to solve a problem is to whack it with a hammer

[Sutremaine]

Pick and copper shield might be a nasty combination. You have the protection and the bashing attacks of the shield, combined with the single strike of the pick. No haft or pommel bashes on those babies, and even if the attack is converted to blunt the high velocity of the swing will break stuff.

Despite picks being such brutal weapons I'm currently using spear and shield to explore the poke / bash / defend combo. I should probably be using hammerdwarves since the local invaders like to do Thriller re-enactments on my lawn, but the speardwarves are good enough to put them down unless there's a hand in a tree making rude gestures at the civilians.

[VerdantSF]

Also, nothing wrong with crossbows in your melee units.  just be sure to give them a second weapon so that they dont crossbow bash.  since they train hammerdwarf anyway give them a hammer and they will swing that instead of xbow when they find themselves in melee, and even be rather good at it.

OH! I like that idea!  Actually, I'm thinking of giving ALL my melee troops a crossbow.  If they switch to their main weapon anyways, an speardwarf with a crossbow should be fine, too.  Do melee/ranged mixed weapon troops switch immediately once enemies get in their face or do they have to run out of ammo first?

[Hyndis]

I'm intrigued by, but have no personal experience in giving a dwarf both a crossbow and a melee weapon.

A combination of a crossbow and a shortsword would be a lethal combination.


Currently I just go with massed crossbows. 60+ marksdwarves standing around in a huge blob of pointy death is enough to handle anything. The few pincushioned survivors of the barrage pose no threat, and are clubbed to death at their leisure.

The nice thing about massed marksdwarves is that they don't need to be very skilled. On a flat surface, bolts will continue traveling. This means if they miss their intended target, they will hit the target behind or next to the intended target.

If you have a siege advancing through a narrow corridor with a blob of marksdwarves at the end, its a shooting gallery. Every bolt will hit something. Due to bolts hitting the first thing the bolt reaches, this means that the goblins in front will take hits.

After the goblin in front is hit and drops, wounded, the goblin behind him will step forward and then also be hit. This works out in such a way that everyone will be severely wounded and unable to fight back as each rank of goblins steps forward to get bolts to the face.

Likewise, this also works for your marksdwarves. Wounded marksdwarves will drop unconscious, and the still conscious marksdwarves will step forward, acting as a literal meatshield to their wounded comrades. At the end of a siege its common to have a large number of minor injuries, but actual deaths are extremely rare. Give them shields, high quality helmets, and breastplates and chainmail to protect their vital organs. An arrow to the arm is far more easily treatable than an arrow to the brain.

[WealthyRadish]

Giving someone a melee weapon and crossbow only works if the crossbow is in the first slot, and the result is that the melee weapon will only be used around 5% of the time.

Giving everyone crossbows is an excellent strategy. They're easy to mass produce, and civs will carry and shoot them while off duty. It does require putting everyone in squads, though.

[Hyndis]

Giving everyone crossbows is an excellent strategy. They're easy to mass produce, and civs will carry and shoot them while off duty. It does require putting everyone in squads, though.

You don't need to put everyone in a squad. I find 60 marksdwarves is around the magic number. If you don't have enough marksdwarves, you won't have enough fire to stop a siege before they close to melee. If you have more than 60, then they will simply run out of things to kill after firing only a few shots each.

But 60ish marksdwarves seems to be enough to stop a siege while also preventing them from closing to melee range. Even recruits with high quality armor but no combat experience are extremely effective.

The key is to keep marksdwarves in a tight formation. Keep them all grouped up in a 5x5 area, but preferably no larger. The more tightly grouped they are the more dangerous the blob of death is. And you also want to build a chokepoint that forces invaders to attack the blob of death from only a single direction in order to take full advantage of massed crossbow fire.

[Ubiq]

I've found mixed squads of picks, spears, and whips to be wonderfully effective on just about anything.

[Person]

Vanilla whips are lightsabers, so they are almost always valid. Unfortunately, dwarves can't produce them by default. Plus, there's the problem that you have to rely on goblin imports to have a good amount, and the quality on those is usually fairly low. Don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but spears tend to get stuck a lot, causing problems if the target is still alive. Spears generally excel when there's not many other things trying to hit you while you pull your weapon out.

[celem]

Giving someone a melee weapon and crossbow only works if the crossbow is in the first slot, and the result is that the melee weapon will only be used around 5% of the time.

Yes crossbow in the first slot.  However yes they will always use their melee if the enemy forces it by getting too close.  The same way marksdwarves xbow bash before they have run out of arrows.  Bows have a minimum range as well as a max.  In my experience the dwarf stops as soon as the squad gains range on the enemy and begins to fire.  the memebers with no bows run ahaead and engage.  Archers will switch to pure melee once bolts are exhausted, or if enemy reaches him before this happens

Edit: im going to do some report checking to make sure they are always preferring their melee weapon to a bow bash when they do come to range though.

[wuphonsreach]

Giving everyone crossbows is an excellent strategy. They're easy to mass produce, and civs will carry and shoot them while off duty. It does require putting everyone in squads, though.

Yes, giving everyone crossbows is remarkably effective:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=113308

I usually go with iron mail shirt, iron mail leggings, a leather cloak, a leather hood, a wooden buckler and a wooden crossbow as the basic uniform for militia.  It's not fabulous, but it's still light enough that it won't slow the dwarves down and it always fits over existing clothing.  It's enough that they avoid most serious injuries.

That being said, I've lost 15 of 40 dwarves recently due to multiple ambush squads combined with a strong desire to trade with the dwarves this year after failing for 3 years in a row.

[Loud Whispers]

I always use mixed squads.  for starters its probably several years before you can spare and armor even 4x5 dwarf squads, add to that the fact that most of the first 2 migrant waves (non-historical) probably dont contain much military goodness means i start mine slow.

Embark with some military Dwarves. Usually that gets you some military Dwarves in the first two waves, and failing that you can still train the migrants with your Dwarves.

Wrestlers are also theoretically strong mixed with other troops.  The idea is that through use of holds they immobilise enemies for their squadmates to kill.  In reality you need a good wrestler for this, and most dont survive their first engagement, let alone progress to gain serious skill.

I'd like to ratify the part where wrestlers are brutally powerful and not "theoretically" powerful. I don't suppose you've seen an army of 90 grand master stranglers break the bones of everything that moves
Also no, wrestlers don't die any quicker or slower than other troops. It's all down to training. Just like every other form of martial Dwarven art.

[Poindexterity]

make fifteen squads of two. Let em use whatever weapons they want.
they work best that way i find.

[TomiTapio]

Giving someone a melee weapon and crossbow only works if the crossbow is in the first slot, and the result is that the melee weapon will only be used around 5% of the time.
Giving everyone crossbows is an excellent strategy. They're easy to mass produce, and civs will carry and shoot them while off duty. It does require putting everyone in squads, though.

Genesis mod's crossbows have a bayonet stab attack -- to simulate being able to carry both a dagger and a crossbow. Also, three levels of wood, to get better bolts, crossbows, oak/ebony/teak furniture.

[lcy03406]

Can a Miner use the same pick in mining and in !!mining!! ? I heard some sayings about equipment conflict.

[celem]

Well if you draft him while he still has the mining labour active then I seem to remember he turns up with his mining pick but wont wear any armor since thats not in the mining uniform.  If you remove the miner job and draft then he arrives with nothing and you assign him a pick as a specific weapon plus armor to get a proper pick-weilding warrior.  Its quite possible that his mining pick is not available to be selected, i dont really remember.

Its been a while since I drafted miners, but when he uses the pick in combat he will gain and use miner as weapon skill.