I haven't played since v0.34, and for my new forts started to think about how to arm my citizens. Since most combat threads I found on the topic had some years on them, I decided to launch a series of tests to see how things look in v0.43. Exact version used was v0.43.05.
Disclaimer: I originally posted this for v0.43.03. Only afterwards was I made aware of some import changes from v0.43.03 to v0.43.05. I have thus rerun the tests and updated the results. The discussion up to page 4 is on the previous version.
The major differences in numbers from 0.43.03 to 0.43.05 were:
* helmets are no longer such a huge problem for iron weapons because they are now removed from helpless opponents
* combat seems to have gotten harder, with dwarves faring worse across the board
* undead removing armour has made them a lot stronger
The main question for this post is: How do the different damage types compare to each other, and how does the step from iron to steel influence them?
I will focus on my three main weapons:
- Battle Axes (slashing)
- Spears (piercing)
- War Hammers (bashing)
Some Teaser Results- Hammers have become more efficient, no longer breaking every bone before killing the opponent
- There seems to be a bug with undying undead heads
- Hammers are very inefficient against inorganic enemies
- It is now possible for reanimated arms to remove your helmet and use it to crack your skull
The Setup
I ran groups of 10 dwarves against 7 different enemies:
- 10 Goblins with Pikes
- 10 Goblins with Mace & Shield
- 10 Goblins with Short Sword & Shield
- 10 Goblins with Whip & Shield
- 50 Human animated dead and one human necromancer
- 1 Bronze Colossus
- 10 Iron Men
Each test was repeated 20 times for each weapon as well as a mixed squad, both in iron and steel variant, for a total of 1120 tests.
A note on margin of error: I computed standard deviations, though I left them out for most tables so as not to overload them. I realise this is not the best model for numbers which are bounded from below and above, so take it with a grain of salt.
The tables that have deviations should give you a good idea of the range of error we're dealing with - it's rather substantial. These results should not be considered final, but they do show clear trends in most places.
More details on setup, skills, equipment
Equipment
Dwarves
All dwarves were wearing iron helms, gauntlets, mail shirts, leggings, high boots and wooden shields. All were proficient at their weapon, armour and shield use.
The mixed squads contained 4 hammers, 3 axes and 3 spears.
I ran the dwarves twice, once with iron and once with steel weapons. Below you'll find the results: First an overview of overall squad effectiveness, then a breakdown by enemy (organic/undead/inorganic) and weapon type.
Goblins
The setup for Goblins included Pikemen, Maceman, Swordmen (short sword) and Lashers (whip). All goblin weapons were iron.
All goblins were wearing iron helms, gauntlets, mail shirts, leggings, high boots and wooden shields (except the pikemen, pikes are two-handed). All were proficient at their weapon, armour and shield use.
Undead
The undead had no skills. The necromancer had a carambola wood blowgun and darts to keep him out of melee as long as possible while not inflicting any damage.
Inorganic
The inorganic enemies were proficient fighters, strikers, kickers, dodgers and wrestlers.
Execution
Morale was turned off during the tests.
For each test, I noted down the winner, survivor ratio and moved the combat log to a separate file.
For each dwarven weapon and enemy type, I then parsed the files to record kills, hits scored, types of injuries inflicted, number of deflections and similar.
Squad Effectiveness Overview
Listed here are, for each squad of dwarves, average survivors per combat with standard deviation in square brackets, and number of won combats in round brackets.
| Squad/Enemy | Goblin Pikemen | Goblin Macemen | Goblin Swordmen | Goblin Lashers | Undead and Necro | Bronze Colossus | Iron Men |
| Iron Axes | 6.2[2.4] (18) | 2.2[2.5] (11) | 2.4[2.9] (9) | 2.6[3.2] (9) | 8.7[2.4] (19) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) |
| Steel Axes | 9.8[0.4] (20) | 5.4[3.0] (17) | 7.1[1.9] (20) | 6.9[3.1] (18) | 2.3[3.3] (7) | 8.6[2.3] (19) | 5.8[1.6] (17) |
| Iron Spears | 4.3[3.1] (14) | 2.2[3.3] ( 8 ) | 2.0[2.7] ( 8 ) | 2.4[3.0] ( 8 ) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0.5[1.5] (2) |
| Steel Spears | 9.7[0.5] (20) | 8.4[1.1] (20) | 9.2[0.8] (20) | 9.2[0.8] (20) | 0 (0) | 8.6[1.9] (20) | 0.2[0.7] (1) |
| Iron Hammers | 8.8[0.9] (20) | 5.3[3.6] (15) | 6.2[2.9] (18) | 4.5[3.8] (12) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) |
| Steel Hammers | 8.5[1.3] (20) | 6.1[2.9] (17) | 8.1[1.6] (20) | 7.3[2.1] (19) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) |
| Iron Mixed | 6.4[2.5] (18) | 1.6[2.3] (7) | 3.4[3.0] (12) | 4.4[3.6] (13) | 0.3[1.3] (1) | 0 (0) | 0.1[0.4] (1) |
| Steel Mixed | 8.6[1.3] (20) | 4.9[2.9] (17) | 8.0[1.1] (20) | 7.9[1.3] (20) | 0 (0) | 7.8[3.4] (17) | 0.7[2.1] (2) |
Excluding for a moment the Undead column (more about that later on), this paints a pretty clear picture:
- Steel Axes and Spears are top, winning most combats with little to no losses. Steel Axes are the only weapon to regularly beat Iron Men, putting them ahead of the Spears.
- Both kinds of Hammers form a middle ground, with Steel Hammers slightly ahead.
- Iron Spears Axes are dead last.
Living up to their name, the mixed squads had mixed results: better than the worst weapon in the squad, worse than the best.
Weapon Efficiency
Listed here are numbers on how efficient the weapons were: How many hits do they need to kill, what kind of injuries do they inflict?
These numbers do not include shots blocked or parried - see further below for those. Included are only attacks that specify the weapon. Averages here are over series (one combat per weapon).
A note on attack types:
- Hammers deal only blunt damage.
- Axes have a blunt "slap with flap" and a blunt "pommel strike" attack. Both occur at about 3% and usually achieve nothing, except for a very rare crushed hand or foot.
- Spears have a blunt "bash with shaft" attack that occurs at about 4% and is mostly inefficient. It does have a somewhat higher "crush rate" than the blunt axe attacks.
vs GoblinsIn this table,
- Minor injuries are bruises (not to the brain), tearing the fat or similar mostly harmless things
- Major injuries take time to heal, but are not lethal - e.g. shattered/fractured bones or torn muscles.
- Severe injuries are permanent, but not immediately lethal: severed extremities, broken lower spine, crushed feet
- Fatal injuries are just that: Crushed Heads, Torn brains and the like.
To compute the averages and deviations, I grouped together the goblin enemies, so the numbers are computed across 20 sets of 4 combats each.
| Weapon/Injury | Total Hits | Deflected | Minor | Major | Severe | Fatal | Total Kills |
| Iron Axe | 854[137] | 51.2% | 33.7% | 0.3% | 14.6% | 0.2% | 33[4] |
| Steel Axe | 480[43] | 10.7% | 2.9% | 44.7% | 36.1% | 5.6% | 39[3] |
| Iron Spear | 1315[585] | 34.6% | 43.6% | 14.0% | 7.3% | 0.5% | 29[6] |
| Steel Spear | 483[35] | 0.8% | 5.2% | 37.7% | 50.0% | 6.2% | 40[0] |
| Iron Hammer | 626[61] | 2.9% | 49.5% | 26.2% | 15.5% | 5.9% | 37[3] |
| Steel Hammer | 711[55] | 2.4% | 48.4% | 27.3% | 16.2% | 5.7% | 40[1] |
Listing the amount of hits needed per kill, and the percentage of deflection/minor injuries in parantheses, we get a list that conforms well to the squad efficiency found above:
- Steel Spears: 12.1[0.9] (6.1%)
- Steel Axes: 12.3[0.6] (55.4%)
- Iron Hammers: 16.9[1.2] (52.4%)
- Steel Hammers: 18.0[1.4] (50.8%)
- Iron Axes: 26.2[3.7] (84.9%)
- Iron Spears: 47.7[23.1] (78.4%)
The advantage of spears at steel level is well within margin of error. Further testing would be required to establish if they are truly better against organics with some armour.
As for the hammers, the results are somewhat surprising. I suspect it's down to deviation, but either way there seems no great advantage of steel hammers over iron ones. Time to test the silver hammers, I guess.
vs UndeadListed here are the statistics for weapon attacks against the undead. Killed Zombies refers to kills on the initial 50 undead. The kills on reanimated corpses/parts are also given in relation to killed initial zombies to account for the effect that weapons killing less zombies overall produced less corpses to reanimate.
The numbers are averages per Combat, computed over 20 runs. I only listed deviation for efficency (in square brackets), so as not to overload the table.
| Weapon | Total Attacks | Killed Zombies | Killed reanimated Bodyparts (per killed zombie) | Killed reanimated Corpses (per killed zombie) | Efficiency in strikes/kill |
| Iron Axe | 372 | 50 | 69 (1.4) | 49 (1.0) | 2.4 [0.9] |
| Steel Axe | 458 | 48 | 151 (3.2) | 144 (3.0) | 1.3 [0.2] |
| Iron Spear | 361 | 23 | 5 (0.2) | 21 (0.9) | 8.9 [3.5] |
| Steel Spear | 417 | 28 | 6 (0.2) | 15 (0.5) | 9.9 [3.8] |
| Iron Hammer | 529 | 18 | 1 (0.07) | 0 (0) | 30.7 [8.6] |
| Steel Hammer | 564 | 18 | 1 (0.06) | 0 (0) | 34.2 [10] |
Sometimes for steel axes, there is a reanimated human head which just won't die. 100 Pages of Combat Logs listing its brain being torn apart, and it still is not struck down. When the steel axes won, I twice aborted after only one undying head was left, surrounded by steel axedwarves happily chopping away at it.
There are two winners here:
- Hammers are really good at making sure things stay dead. They take a while to kill stuff, though - in fact, they lost the combats because they just could not kill the undead fast enough and were worn down by cumulative damage.
- Axes are really good at ripping through undead fast. Steel axes have a strike:kill ratio of 1.3 - that's almost a kill per strike. The iron axes reliably tore through the undead and dismembered the Necromancer in record time. Steel axes were even more efficient in dismembering stuff - to their own detriment, as they then got swamped by undead parts. However, axes produce a lot of parts for reanimation. In addition, mutilated (chopped down) corpses can be resurrected, while mangled (crushed heads/bodies) corpses can not. So axes are good for getting to a revealed Necro through his hordes or dealing with undead where there is no reanimation, but quite dangerous if corpses are immediately reanimated by the environment or an invisible necromancer.
Spears seem to be a bit in the middle ground - somewhat less severed limbs, but still too slow to get to the Necro reliably. It seems piercing attacks are just not very good against undead.
vs InorganicThe fights against colossus and iron men went rather differently, so the results are listed separately.
ColossusThe results here can be pretty easily summed up: All iron weapons, as well as steel war hammers, have a 100% deflection rate. The Colossus won all those combats without a scratch. For efficiency, the numbers are thus only relevant for the two weapons that could acutally damage it (standard deviation in square brackets):
Steel Spears took an average of 148.5 [21.7] attacks to kill the Colossus. 1.6% [1.2] of attacks glanced away.
Steel Axes took an average of 27.0 [14.6] attacks to kill the Colossus. 4.6% [4.3] of attacks glanced away.
The advantage of axes comes from 7% decisive injuries (removed parts/outright kills) for spears vs only 54.3% for axes. Spears often removed hands/feet/leg/arms while axes went directly to cutting apart the torso.
For the survivor ratio, it seems Spears might be slightly better - maybe due to removing hands and feet first, making the colossus safer overall. However, the difference is small enough to be within margin of error, so more tests would have to be run to see if this is indeed a trend.
Iron MenThis appears to have been the most difficult combat. In this table,
- Minor damage is broken gas, dents, chips. This amounts to little.
- Major damage is fractures. They add up to enable destroying a part.
- Severe damage destroyes parts. If not instantly lethal, they at least make the combat easier by hampering the opponent.
The numbers are averages over 20 combats. I listed deviation only for strikes, kills and efficiency, so as not to clutter the table.
| Weapon | Total Strikes | Deflections | Minor | Major | Severe | Killed Iron Men |
| Iron Axe | 59.5 [22.2] | 29.5% | 29.1% | 7.1% | 33.4% | 2.2 [1.5] |
| Steel Axe | 35.8 [7.3] | 1.7% | 1.5% | 0.2% | 93.0% | 9.6 [1.2] |
| Iron Spear | 82.1 [43.9] | 2.3% | 28.5% | 52.4% | 16.6% | 2.5 [2.9] |
| Steel Spear | 82.1 [33.5] | 0.7% | 32.9% | 48.0% | 18.0% | 3.9 [2.9] |
| Iron Hammer | 70.6 [24.8] | 0% | 55.7% | 32.3% | 11.8% | 1.4 [1.4] |
| Steel Hammer | 76.8 [29.4] | 0% | 55.1% | 33.6% | 11.1% | 1.1 [1.3] |
This gives the following list for efficiency (strikes/kill):
- Steel Axe 3.7 [0.5]
- Steel Spear 27.8 [19.4]
- Iron Axe 33.6 [23.7]
- Iron Spear 43.1 [22.1]
- Iron Hammer 46.8 [18.8]
- Steel Hammer 61.7 [23.0]
The large deviation for all but steel axes is due to the fact that the dwarves lost the combat and kills are usually via cumulative damage - meaning some very damaged iron men did survive.
Steel axes were the only weapons that could reliably win the combat. Note how Hammers have moved down here in comparison to their performance against goblins.
In conclusion, inorganic enemies seem best killed by tearing them apart until you severe something crucial. Axes excel at this as long as they manage to penetrate the armour. Hammers are simply horrible, taking forever to smash their way through the layers until parts are crushed.
Threat Assessment: Enemy Weapon Effectiveness
Goblins
Listed here are the statistics for each goblin weapon, in similar fashion to the above dwarven weapon table. The averages are computed over 20 sets of 8 combats each (against steel and iron axes/spears/hammers/mixed).
| Weapon | Total Hits | Deflected | Minor | Major | Severe | Fatal | Killed Dwarves | | Iron Pike | 622 [151] | 24.7% | 49.0% | 15.8% | 9.4% | 1.1% | 18 [5] | | Iron Mace | 819 [135] | 4.6% | 59.8% | 17.7% | 13.7% | 4.0% | 44 [9] | | Iron Short Sword | 785 [103] | 39.9% | 37.5% | 5.1% | 17.0% | 0.6% | 34 [5] | | Iron Whip | 573 [125] | 0.1% | 81.0% | 2.5% | 11.5% | 5.0% | 35 [9] |
Iron Whips completely ignore armour: The deflections all glanced off eyelids. (A lot of attacks glance of eyelids, even steel axes.) However, they usually only chip a bone or tear some skin; their lethality is mostly from hitting the spine or head.
Overall Efficiency, as hits/kill and total deflections + minor injuries:
- Iron Whip 16.6[1.8] (81.1%)
- Iron Mace 18.8[2.2] (64.5%)
- Iron Short Sword 23.5[3.0] (77.3%)
- Iron Pike 36.0 [7.4] (73.7%)
Interestingly the goblin mace, while being the deadliest iron weapon like the hammer, was no more efficient than its slashing counterparts. I cannot currently say if that is due to Hammer vs Mace or some other factors.
Inorganic
Inorganic enemies sometimes took weapons, shields or armour from the dwarves. This is usually a good thing: A colossus hitting you with a wooden shield is far less lethal than a colossus pushing you around.
In the rare case were they get a steel axe this could be more problematic - then again, the guy holding the steel axe is usually cut apart by the axedwarves before he can do a lot with it, given he has no skill wielding it.
Attacks statistics here exclude those made with captured weapons.
The numbers are calculated over 20 sets of 8 combats (one per squad).
| Enemy | Total Hits | Deflections | Minor | Major | Severe | Fatal | Killed Dwarves | | Colossus | 237[54] | 2.3% | 33.8% | 8.5% | 38.0% | 17.4% | 55[4] | | Iron Man | 1081[625] | 28.8% | 22.4% | 20.3% | 20.7% | 7.8% | 73[4] |
This gives the colossus an attack efficiency of 4.3[0.9] hits/kill with 36.2% minor injuries/deflections, while the iron men need 14.8[8.2] hits/kill with 51.2% minor injurise/deflections.
The large variation for iron men is due to some freak fights where only one ot two remained standing on both sides: The dwarves unconscious, the iron men too damaged to get anything done. The logs are then full of "no force" and "deflected" messages. Without these combats, effiency is closer to 11[1].
Undead
Finally, the statistics for the undead attacks show how little iron-clad dwarves have to fear from individual unarmed attacks. Numbers are again averages over 20 sets of 8 combats.
| Enemy | Total Hits | Deflections | Minor | Major | Severe | Fatal | Killed Dwarves | | Undead | 18707[3304] | 37.6% | 54.6% | 7.3% | 0.4% | 0.1 | 89[22] |
This sums up to 221 hits/kill, with 92.2% deflections and minor injuries.
Note that on 43.03, the number of hits/kill was ten times that. It seems the new "deflections can cause injury on nearby parts/joins" and "remove armour from unconscious" mechanics really benefit the undead.
Avoiding Harm
Armor Effectiveness
Listed here are the percentages of attacks deflected for each piece of dwarven armour, against goblins, colossus and iron men. I left out the undead - basically everything deflects here.
As said, whips completely ignore armour. They don't even list what they are ignoring in their hit description (such as "through the iron chain leggings").
Again, the table contains average and standard deviation computed over 20 sets of 8 combats.
| Enemy | Helm | Mail Shirt | Leggings | Gauntlet | High Boot | | Pikemen | 49.5 [8.9] | 1.0 [1.0] | 23.0 [3.9] | 63.5 [7.3] | 73.1 [6.1] | | Macemen | 9.9 [3.3] | 0 | 2.8 [1.4] | 15.4 [6.2] | 27.2 [8.0] | | Swordmen | 91.3 [3.0] | 1.1 [0.9] | 36.8 [4.0] | 94.2 [3.4] | 94.4 [2.1] | | Colossus | 1.2 [2.6] | 0 | 0 | 1.4 [2.3] | 1.0 [2.5] | | Iron Men | 27.6 [16.4] | 47.5 [19.9] | 46.3 [19.8] | 36.2 [20.3] | 17.7 [18.2] |
Interesting to note here is that against the goblin weapons, the "plate" armour pieces (Helm, Gauntlet, High Boot) fared better than the mail ones (Shirt/Leggings), while against Iron Men the mail parts did better.
Also note that this chart only lists deflections. For blunt weapons in particular, the amount of hits lessened from broken bones to bruises would probably be more interesting.
Lastly, the Iron Men values again show huge variation due to the reason mentioned above: In a few freak fights, neither side was able to finish the other off: The Iron Men were too weak to do anything, the dwarves unconscious. Actual deflections against vital Iron Men are around 10 % less.
Defence
Listed here are avoided attacks (with standard deviation in square brackets) against the Goblins, Colossus and Iron Men.
| Defence | Goblins | Colossus | Iron Men | | Block | 29.3% [1.2] | 52.9% [5.2] | 35.4% [9.1] | | Parry | 3.0% [0.2] | 1.2% [0.3] | 0 | | Dodge | 11.6% [1.1] | 7.1% [1.0] | 7.2% [2.2] |
The low block rating against goblins is partly due to the fact that dwarves going down (from exhaustion or wounds) would often receive a number of further hits before they died, none of which they could block. In contrast, the bronze colossus did not have a problem dispatching dead dwarves.
This is substantiated by block rates for weapons varying from 24.9% for iron spears to 45.6% for steel spears, in accordance with the general success of the weapon.
I did not investigate parry and dodges further. Note that no dwarf had any experience dodging.
Removal
The new mechanics giving sentient creatures the ability to remove armour from helpless foes have done the most to shake up some numbers from v0.43.03.
Dwarves and Goblins removed little armour beside the occasional helm, in particular iron spears/axes/short swords/pikes.
The undead, though, removed 98% of all helmets, 76% of mail shirts, 73% of leggings, 44% of gauntlets and 43% of boots. They have become far more deadly in numbers, as they will quickly remove armour and use it as a blunt weapon.
The inorganic enemies only did any removing was when they had gotten hold of a dwarven weapon to use.
Wear
With the new combat wear mechanic, establishing a well-equipped military has finally gotten somewhat harder. Listed here are, for each attacking weapon or creature, number of armour pieces.
Tracking wear is difficult: Sometimes, items skip a level of wear, going from x directly to XX or from undamaged to X. Other times, they take the normal progression.
Listed here are the numbers of armour pieces that were listed as worn (x), damaged (X), tattered (XX) or broken per combat. A number in parantheses indicates total amount, where the number was too small for percentages to be meaningful.
Note that, because of the tracking difficulty described above, categories are not inclusive. An item may be listed in all four. To get more reliable numbers, 1-on-1 testing would be needed.
Undead are not listed because they only inflicted wear when using iron armour as a weapon.
| Attacking Weapon | Iron Helm | Iron Gauntlet | Iron Mail Shirt | Iron Chain Leggings | Iron High Boot | | Steel Axe | (3)/(1)/0/0 | 2.9/0.6/0.1/(2) | 5.5/2.9/1.3/0.5 | 6.0/3.7/1.9/1.0 | 2.0/0.3/0.1/(1) | | Steel Spear | 7.5/0.3/0/0 | 4.0/0.9/0.2/(2) | 7.3/5.8/5.4/5.6 | 7.4/5.9/4.0/2.5 | 3.5/0.9/0.2/(4) | | Iron War Hammer | 5.7/2.8/1.0/0.6 | 5.3/1.3/0.3/0.2 | 0 | 0 | 2.4/0.5/0.1/(3) | | Steel War Hammer | 6.2/3.2/0.6/0.7 | 5.8/2.2/0.6/0.2 | 0 | 0 | 2.5/0.9/0.2/0.2 | | Iron Mace | 2.6/1.2/0.4/0.2 | 0.8/0.1/(1)/0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5/(4)/(1)/0 | | Iron Whip | 2.6/1.1/0.5/0.6 | 4.1/1.8/0.8/0.2 | 0 | 0 | 1.7/0.7/0.3/0.3 | | Iron Men | 5.4/0.3/0.5/0.6 | 2.5/1.0/0.4/0.1 | 0 | 0 | 1.4/0.4/0.1/0.1 |
Number differences, in particular for the blunt weapons, are at least partly down to Goblins loosing more fights and thus having less time to destroy armour.
Not listed are iron axe, iron spear and iron short sword because they did not inflict any wear. Iron Pikes managed to break one helm and wear down about a single-digit number, so I did not include them either. The colossus did inflict only little damage to equipment, so I didn't list it as well.
Also not listed are shields - shields don't seem to suffer wear from blocking, but from attacking with them. That makes wood shields somewhat less useful, as they tend to break quickly when bashing armoured foes. Average numbers of shields destroyed per combat were 3-6 in the goblin combats (depending on how fast the weapons finished the combats) and marginal against the inorganics.
Of particular interest is that blunt attacks seem not to damage the "flexible" armour pieces.
Fun fact: Only right gauntlets were ever damaged. Guess you'll have a lot of left gauntlets in good condition when using shields.
Conclusions/tl;dr
The tests allow some conclusions about roles and effectiveness of the different weapons:
Hammers have two major roles: Give you a weapon that can do something even if you have far worse material, and making sure stuff stays dead. They are quite bad against inorganic enemies. Against a bronze colossus, they seem to not do anything at all!
Axes are heavily reliant on material, but as long as they have the edge, they are absolutely lethal, far outclassing anything else. Their only trouble is stuff that just won't stay dead.
Spears are somewhat of an off choice, beat by axes if the material is better, by hammers if equal or worse. I guess they make for a good progression from iron upwards if you plan to do a lot of fighting with iron weapons (slow acquisition of steel). They also seem good at shredding lesser armour, if that's what you want.
Overall, Goblins seem to be mostly on par with dwarves. Even with steel axes, a combat 10v10 vs iron-equipped Goblins will leave permanent injuries and likely some dead. Steel armour or superior skill can presumably offset this.
A very important conclusion is that you should absolutely bring a shield. The goblin pikemen, the only goblins without a shield, fared far worse than other goblins because they were missing that crucial layer of protection.
So, that's what I got. If hope found it even half as interesting to read as I found it to assemble : )
Any feedback or comments are welcome. |
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Topic: From Iron to Steel: A survey of v0.43.05 combat [Long] *VERSION UPDATE* (Read 18722 times)