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[Seconis]

It's my understanding that Bronze is now better than Iron for weapons and armor.  Now, I've come to love Dwarf Fortress for its quirks, but it usually makes sense when it comes to things like this.  I know that pure Iron crystals are rather soft, but pure iron is a rather uncommon find in nature.  Bronze being a better choice for weapons and armor when dwarves obviously have the know-how to make good iron weapons, since they know how to smelt steel and adamantine, simply doesn't make sense to me. 

Can anyone explain the rationale for this please?

[twwolfe]

probably the iron the dwarves use is similar to wrought iron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrought_iron

which is inferior to bronze

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

Then how come IRL an army with iron weapons will always triumph over an IRL army with bronze weapons? I mean, if bronze was so great, how come no one has used it since the Roman Empire?

[Deathworks]

Hi!

When the change was first noticed, people discussed this at length.

As far as I remember, the problem is a misnomer - what we think of as iron weapons were actually low-grade steel weapons, which of course beat bronze weapon.

But I am too tired right now to remember all people said.

Deathworks

[Urist Imiknorris]

Iron was cheaper/easier to make.

[Saladman]

I think that bronze being better than iron is strictly correct, but modelling that does get you into kind of an odd corner since iron did in fact displace bronze.  (Though part of that is said to be just the relative availability of iron versus tin + copper, which oddly enough my current map models really well.  I just now found tin, and only one big vein of it so far.)

People were making steel of some kind by accident before they ever knew what they were doing, since carbon isn't exactly some rare element that wouldn't be found floating around a forge.  More interesting to me, the first people to make steel deliberately and reliably still didn't know exactly why it all worked.  Europeans went through a period where they thought steel was the purified form of iron, which is obviously counter-productive when you want to be adding things in.  So the succesful steel-smiths of the time were those who had idiosyncracies or superstitions that lead to them putting in enough carbon to have some left by the time they'd "purified" it.  And the Japanese stalled out even earlier; the multi-folding technique for katanas, while justly famous, partially just compensated for their crappy steel metallurgy.

So...  again conceding that bronze > iron, 2010 seems to model only regular iron, with a straight jump to nearly modern steel, and no allowance for accidental steel or folded/damascene steel.  It'd be nice if masterwork iron weapons "graded up" closer to steel, to represent that.

Or I just need to adjust my view of what's happening in the game.  Maybe the dwarfs *don't* know exactly what they're doing or why when they grab flux for pig iron, and the inventory management end of flux, pig iron and coke is just a convenience for me.

[Ilmoran]

Then how come IRL an army with iron weapons will always triumph over an IRL army with bronze weapons? I mean, if bronze was so great, how come no one has used it since the Roman Empire?

I'd like to know where you're getting your "armies with iron weapons will always triumph over armies with bronze weapons".

But, the answer to your second question is in the Bronze article that was already linked:

Though bronze is generally harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60–258 vs. 30–80, the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age; this happened because iron was easier to find. Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, but, for many purposes, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong. Archaeologists suspect that a serious disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition.

[Golcondio]

Bronze, being a copper alloy, has excellent mechanical properties (aside from hardness, toughness is fundamental in weapons/armor) due to the face-centered cubic crystal structure, which allows it to dissipate energy along more "slip planes" compared to, say, iron, which has a body-centered cubic structure at room temperature.
To obtain the same kind of structure in steel (which is naturally only stable above 723°C or more, depending on carbon percentage) you need to alloy it VERY heavily (while at the same time de-carburising it) which is decidedly tricky; that's why you're generally better served with the quench and temper method (you know, the good old "sword hissing in the bucket" kind of thing)... But that tends to make it more or less brittle depending on temperatures and the quenching medium (i.e. cooling speed).

This said, it is definitely cheaper/easier to produce shitty wrought iron than bronze...

Sorry for the nerdicity, but I guess my first post after months of lurking should be meaningful

[Cardinal]

Then how come IRL an army with iron weapons will always triumph over an IRL army with bronze weapons? I mean, if bronze was so great, how come no one has used it since the Roman Empire?

Because iron is extremely cheap in comparison to bronze.  Rather than having a few guys with bronze breastplates and polearms and shortswords, you could field a massive army outfitted with iron swords and iron armor.  Iron is very common.  Copper and tin, not so much.  Go check the commodities market and compare the price of iron with the price of copper.

Cheap iron destroyed the noble warrior cultures that developed in antiquity (Back when guys like Socrates were soldiers) and replaced it with the classical equivalent of conscripts.

[Cardinal]

Oh, and before you get carried away by Starcraft versions of history, where the uber weaponz upgraydd always ended with victory, remember that the Mongols killed everyone using hardened leather and bone arrowheads.

[Eagle_eye]

but they did it from horseback. horsearchers were the most powerful weapon in the world until the invention of gunpowder

[Boothby]

Iron on it's own is fairly brittle. Cast iron can be used structurally, but you wouldn't want a sword of any form of pure iron. Steel on the other hand, in it's various forms, is an excellent material for weapons, and far superior to bronze. The game accurately reflects this.

[Snoopicus]

"horsearchers were the most powerful weapon in the world until the invention of gunpowder"

This isn't really true either. The Mongolians were very successful as horse archers, in most part, because fighting from horseback was a cultural norm.

-Jesse

[Greep]

Pfffft. Wikipedia ALWAYS saves the day.

"Though bronze is generally harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60–258[2] vs. 30–80,[3] the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age; this happened because iron was easier to find. Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, but, for many purposes, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong. Archaeologists suspect that a serious disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean (and from Great Britain), limiting supplies and raising prices.[4] As ironworking improved, iron became cheaper; and as cultures advanced from wrought iron to forged iron, they learned how to make steel, which is stronger than bronze and holds a sharper edge longer."

[gtmattz]

Pfffft. Wikipedia ALWAYS saves the day.

"Though bronze is generally harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60–258[2] vs. 30–80,[3] the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age; this happened because iron was easier to find. Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, but, for many purposes, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong. Archaeologists suspect that a serious disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean (and from Great Britain), limiting supplies and raising prices.[4] As ironworking improved, iron became cheaper; and as cultures advanced from wrought iron to forged iron, they learned how to make steel, which is stronger than bronze and holds a sharper edge longer."

/thread