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[tussock]

If I was gunna rush to conclusions myself, it'd be that endurance and the strength for many many layers of armour is way more important than most of the skills. Iron in the raws is basically the same as Copper, while Steel cuts everything except Steel, so Silver maces and warhammers do more damage, more reliably, through steel armour, by virtue of having that weight.

Discipline is of course vital if you have morale turned on.

The only reason your axedorfs are getting anywhere, Bjiip, I suspect, is you're all missing the 2nd glove and 2nd boot, so those bits they can cut off, and then they have a disarmed dorf to fight! Who mostly passes out from the blood loss, gets his helm removed, and is instantly decapitated.

Spears won't work because they can't remove the lower arm or lower leg and get that advantage, and they seem to get dropped a bit more readily in fights, so that certainly puts them on the back foot. Against soft armour though, just bang dead, bang dead, bang dead. Steel spears rule against most non-dorfs.

Where the silver hammerdorfs do it full on, breaking bones through armour, stunning their foes, disarming by legitimate joint, tendon, and nerve injuries, and then often missing their weapon anyway, out-wrestle the more injured axemen and eventually tear the upper spine.

Most fully-armoured fights are won, well, post-fight. A 2nd wave after everyone falls down will tear apart large numbers of troops, a single axe can unhelm and behead 6-8 stunned foes before they wake, where the hammer dorf will slowly destroy the steel helm on one to crush it's skull, and then everyone else gets up and he's done. Iron helmed gobs are much easier for hammerdorfs to kill. Steel armoured dorfs against iron- or copper-armed sharp weapon foes just sort of win, they're mostly invulnerable, as long as they stay on their feet, thus Endurance. Work them pumps, boys.

Random findings, stuff like wooden shields are obviously great at blocking, but half of them are destroyed in any length of fight against steel weapons, so maybe metal shields after all? Everyone should train wrestling, because it's a very common thing for an injured dorf to do to defend themselves, and totally kills people. Having limbs cut off is bad for your dorfs, make sure your amour set is complete. Armour user doesn't seem to do much of anything compared to just having slightly better armour.

But mostly, yeah, get legend in something so they keep training and put their physical stats up to maximum, like Endurance and Willpower and Strength. Candy is probably good too, for cutting anyone wearing steel, not that you should be fighting steel users.

[strainer]

The fact that it's not 50/50 shows some measure of the randomness in play.

Interesting there is the same ratio (45/55) seen with the equally matched test of thousands, it suggests a strong bias is present. Ive not done the math but according to a quick simulation, 5% discrepancy or more in a test of 1000 coin flips, should only happen once in about 700 tests.

In a hundred coin flips it can happen about once in every 4 tests.

Maybe units attacking from the east are more likely to win - or the first unit placed, or odd numbered cordinates, or the smaller unit id always gets first attack in, or... ?

edit - I forgot to say --thanks for this research it is great to get the accuracy of such big sample size. At that sample size equally matched fights definitely shouldnt work out with 5% discrepancy. There must be some effect from the order of how the units are placed. Redoing a test with the units swapped in the set up script should show that.

[Bumber]

Armour user doesn't seem to do much of anything compared to just having slightly better armour.

Armor user reduces the effective weight of armor. This affects movement speed and exertion. In a longer fight, you might have issues with dwarves collapsing from exhaustion.

[Bjiip]

The only reason your axedorfs are getting anywhere, Bjiip, I suspect, is you're all missing the 2nd glove and 2nd boot, so those bits they can cut off, and then they have a disarmed dorf to fight! Who mostly passes out from the blood loss, gets his helm removed, and is instantly decapitated.

AAAAAHHHHHHH YOU WERE SERIOUS

Holy cannoli, I had no idea this was happening.  When you go to add the item, it says "iron gauntlets", not "iron gauntlet".  I assumed they were getting a full pair.  But you were absolutely right.  They had a right boot, and a right glove.  Nothing on the left.  Man, what a bunch of wasted effort.

I ran another test, to figure out how much of a difference that makes.  Both sides were axedwarves equipped with iron.  One side had one gauntlet and boot, the other side had two gauntlets and boots.  The results?

Fully armored won 60% of the time, missing extremities won 40% of the time.  That's as strong an effect as anything else I measured- I'm going to have to basically throw away my previous numbers.

[tussock]

I noticed after doing a few hours of testing myself, that most of my surviving mace dorfs had smashed left feet, and smashed left hands. Which let me recall long ago something about how yes, indeed, much like an armour stand only holds one boot and one glove, test mode dorfs need you to give them two of each paired item.

You've got a awesome set up for testing going, hopefully runs pretty quick for you to take another crack at it. For XSCIENCE!X

[Bjiip]

New science!  This time, win rates of Axedwarves, by material of their equipment.



This does seem to vindicate the common wisdom: the question seems to be, not how much better your material is than the enemy's, but whether it is better at all.  If your material is better, it seems to give you about 2-to-1 odds, with some variation by material.

Each test is based on 196 1v1 combats.  All dwarves are "Skilled" in all combat skills (including unarmed ones).  They have the full set of armor described previously, an axe, and a shield, all made of the material indicated. 

[GoblinCookie]

Switching to spears might be interesting Bjiip.  Axes have a pretty powerful blunt attack. 

[Enemy post]

Switching to spears might be interesting Bjiip.  Axes have a pretty powerful blunt attack.

They do, but NPCs are 100 times more likely pick edged over blunt weapon attacks regardless of context.

[Bjiip]

All right, here's an update to the Equipment Material chart- this time I included Bronze.

It looks like the conventional wisdom, that bronze is a bit better than copper and a bit worse than iron, is supported here.  But boy, Steel is such a step up.  I know armor material affects hammerdwarves differently than axedwarves; I'll try to do some tests about that later.

Switching to spears might be interesting Bjiip.  Axes have a pretty powerful blunt attack. 

You got it.  Here's a test of weapon types.  As standard, all dwarves are Skilled and using Iron equipment.

It looks to me like the conventional wisdom holds here: when fully armored, the order is something like Hammer > Axe > Sword > Spear.

But what if the dwarves are unarmored, and just have a shield?

Again, the conventional wisdom seems to hold pretty well: when enemies are unarmored, the order is something like Sword > Axe > Spear > Hammer.

[Dorsidwarf]

I think that if this thread has made anything clear it’s that having 100% armour coverage is much more important than you might imagine, giving the huge distortion of numbers caused by the missing gauntlets and boots!

So rather than scrap together some copper bits and bobs until you can get proper steel running, we should instead take the time to make full armour sets of whatever we have available as a military  priority

[strainer]

Great research. Sword looks really good, looses only to hammer in armor. I wonder about leather/bone armor.

[mightymushroom]

The supposed advantage of the spear is greater "length" represented in-game as penetration depth, it might be interesting to compare a weapon test run of dwarves vs. larger opponents. Say, trolls at about 4x the average adult dwarf.

(There are still larger opponents but since size=strength, more or less, I expect the results would be increasingly flattened in 1v1 matches. All those stories about a civilian one-shotting something huge are retold precisely because we know how necessary/lucky it is to get a critical hit when fighting above your weight class.)

I think that if this thread has made anything clear it’s that having 100% armour coverage is much more important than you might imagine, giving the huge distortion of numbers caused by the missing gauntlets and boots!

So rather than scrap together some copper bits and bobs until you can get proper steel running, we should instead take the time to make full armour sets of whatever we have available as a military  priority

I agree. I'm probably still choosing weapons more for RP value but I won't dare stint on armor.

[Bjiip]

How important is a shield?  Is it as important as armor?  That's the subject of the next test.



My reading had given me the impression that shields were incredibly important.  If so, it must just be for protection against ranged enemies; here in melee, against axe-wielders, the shield offers only a minor bonus.  In fact, the dwarves with armor but no shield beat the weapon-only dwarves by a larger margin than dwarves with both armor and shield.

(As usual, skilled dwarves, unarmed skills included, all gear is iron.)

[Bumber]

They were probably doing ineffective shield bashes in addition to using their weapons. Maybe adding misc object user would help.

(This probably goes without saying, but you gave them shield user, right?)

[strainer]

Very intriguing, half your chance of dying against certain enemies by ditching the shield ?? Shield weight slowing them down ? Arena dwarves are quite weak, with strength and endurance at 4 or 5. Maybe wooden shields wood do better.