Well, the last devlog confirms we can start wars now. Interesting: is it possible to attack only visible sites like villages and forest returns? Toady said "nothing fighty" in one of his posts earlier but seems it is not longer a issue. Can we raid mummy tombs or beast lairs? Can we raid *SPOILERS* and bring certain metal items to fortress in order to melt later? In any case, new update will give us a ton of new possibilities. In last versions, I had problems with lack of sieges, but now I can start wars with all civilizations available (maybe even dwarven civilizations? I'm not certain).
You could start a war with another dwarvern civ, but unless Toady changes dwarf civ behaviors they won't come to attack you. Dwarf civs don't attack anyone for some reason.
Maybe they don't attack us. But in a world i genned there was a dwarven kingdom with just one site that got attacked by the goblins, got really pissed and just attacked the goblins back.
I think i can find the legends again, they just won against one tower and begin attacking the demon itself (they lost all the battles but with few losses and they just kept going)
In my own experience, and you could say from a unmodded experience too, is that the dwarves are pretty strong (fight's aren't really calculated on metal vs metal) in having decent lifespans to learn their craft
A 1000 wide human army may invoke catastrophic losses upon itself, but will eventually overwhelm a 250 strong dwarven army as swarm tactics often works better.
In a siege inside your map, our dwarves won't have to fight all the horde of humans because, traps and dwarven shit.
In worldgen aren't the battles fought in a series of 1 vs 1 without the metal? So that means that 1 legendary dwarven could beat 1000 humans with a cooper sword in it's hands right?
Okay, after 1000 humans with mediocre skills it's more probably that a bad roll could happen and he/she can get a stupid death by a weak peasant with just dabbling kick, but the death wouldn't be because they outnumbered the dorf.
Unless a dwarf can get tired in a W.G battle. Or get enough small bruises?