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[Zealord]

I'm thinking of making a warhammer squad, since a lot of my dwarves have decent warhammer skill.
Should I use warhammers? Are they effective in goblin sieges? What are the downsides and up sides about warhammers?
They have a small contact area, but what does that mean for a warhammer?
If so, should I make them from copper or iron?

Thanks for the help! 

[locustgate]

I'm thinking of making a warhammer squad, since a lot of my dwarves have decent warhammer skill.
Should I use warhammers? Are they effective in goblin sieges? What are the downsides and up sides about warhammers?
They have a small contact area, but what does that mean for a warhammer?
If so, should I make them from copper or iron?

Thanks for the help! 

I'm not an expert but warhammers are best for killing small living things, i.e. goblins, it seems/they are suppose to ignore some if not all armor, as you aren't cutting through it your bashing it. When it comes to blunt weapons iron/copper is pretty much the same, so I suggest you save the iron and use it to make steel, which is one of the best metals for blunt weapons. For blunt weapons the heavier the metal the better.

[Mushroo]

Warhammers are great for killing goblins.

My play style is, I do not train untrained soldiers in the weapons of my choice. Rather, I look at the skills the migrants have arrived with, draft them to the military based on those skills, and then forge/trade for the appropriate weapons.

[locustgate]

Warhammers are great for killing goblins.

My play style is, I do not train untrained soldiers in the weapons of my choice. Rather, I look at the skills the migrants have arrived with, draft them to the military based on those skills, and then forge/trade for the appropriate weapons.

I used to do that then I had 5 squads of less than 3 dwarves.
I prefer to let the immigrant with the highest weapon skill form a squad only if I have a replacement for him and only if the squad he is leaving has over 8 dwarves, I usually draft fish dwarves since my water supply is only accessible for a month along with mechanics.

[Mushroo]

Warhammers are great for killing goblins.

My play style is, I do not train untrained soldiers in the weapons of my choice. Rather, I look at the skills the migrants have arrived with, draft them to the military based on those skills, and then forge/trade for the appropriate weapons.

I used to do that then I had 5 squads of less than 3 dwarves.
I prefer to let the immigrant with the highest weapon skill form a squad only if I have a replacement for him and only if the squad he is leaving has over 8 dwarves, I usually draft fish dwarves since my water supply is only accessible for a month along with mechanics.

15 melee dwarfs (let's ignore archers for the sake of this discussion) is a huge military!

I usually recruit 3 soldiers per year (the best one from each migrant wave) and have no trouble defeating the toughest sieges and FB's without the benefit of traps (which I consider an exploit). Even taking into consideration maybe 1 or 2 will die, that still gives me 2 new soldiers per year, for a total of, say, 20 after 10 years. 20 legendary melee dwarfs with steel equipment are pretty much invincible to anything the game can throw at you (unless you dig very deep ).

The one exception would be FB's with some sort of special attack. For those I actually have an area of the caverns with a fortified archer outpost. I just seal off the cavern, station 20-30 cannon-fodder archers behind the fortifications, and let them pepper the FB with bolts until eventually either it dies or I run out of archers and come up with a new plan.

[Hyndis]

Hammers and maces are great for small or dwarf-sized creatures. However the larger the creature is the less effective blunt damage is.

For very large sized creatures death of a thousand papercuts is where its at. Axes, swords, or picks can hack away at them, causing them to bleed out even if the creature is too huge to chop into pieces.

If the creature is very large as to be immune to blunt weapons and it has no blood, then you have to get creative. Luckily these creatures are very rare, and ususally only come in the form of a titan, FB, or a demon. As these are all randomly generated, you might get a creature made out of something with no physical strength, so a small child can slay it by slapping it.


Or you might get a FB which is a giant tarantula made out of magma safe rock that is continually surrounded by a cloud of face melting gas.

Those are fun. 

[Garath]

silver and copper is great for hammers, steel, iron and bronze better for cutting. Not that they are not good for hammers and other blunt weapons, but if you have iron, you're generally better off making an axe than a hammer, or making armor while using a different material for the hammer and shield

[Hyndis]

Shield quality is very important, but shield material is almost meaningless. Occasionally a dwarf will bash something with his shield, and when he does is material important. However a shield bash is so rare and does so little damage that it really doesn't matter.

Shield quality improves the odds of blocking with it. Weight is also very important. You want your soldiers to be as light as possible. The lighter they are the fast they move.

So, oddly enough, this means that masterwork featherwood shields are probably the best type of shield to use. There's no point in making an adamantine shield unless you have more adamantine than you know what to do with. An adamantine shield is just a waste of metal.

[Garath]

similarly, to expand a little on the previous post, if you can choose steel or iron for a shield, take iron (weight is the same iirc), since steel is better used for sharp weapons and armor, while silver, being heavy, is great for heavy weapons

something I always found funny with tetrahedrite was that it gave about 5 copper and 1 silver for 5 ores (old version) which was a shield, high boots, helm, chain shirt, gauntlets (just 1 short for leggings) and a hammer (again old version - everything cost 1 bar of metal at that point), kitting out 1 soldier

[thburns]

Not sure if someone else already mentioned this. But, silver warhammers are the best. The only weapon you really ever want to make out of silver.