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[TheDarkEnigma]

Ok so I've just started playing with 31.01, and everything went fairly smoothly, aside from an initial hiccup with irrigation. I was in my second year and making great progress, up until a goblin ambush struck. Now, I've killed off plenty of goblins in my time, and I had two teams of 6 quite proficient military Dwarves ready for battle, so I sent them in expecting the usual - a quick end to the goblins.

Instead, both teams got totally wiped out, and the goblins lost only a single soldier. Now, I admit, my Dwarves were wearing only leather armor, but most of the goblins were completely unharmed - meaning my Dwarves didn't even do damage to them, except for the one that died. Where did I go wrong? Was there some kind of command I accidentally gave my military that made them refuse to fight, or was it just their lack of armor that made the difference? Either way, what can I do to prevent that happening in the future?

[Supercharazad]

Well, in fighting, one thing I've noticed is that the first one to be injured almost ALWAYS loses, your dwarves had leather armour, and as such were injured before the goblins and were slaughtered.

[Saithis]

What kind of military were they?  Blunt damage in this version is basically worthless and that might be your problem.

[TheDarkEnigma]

What kind of military were they?  Blunt damage in this version is basically worthless and that might be your problem.

They were all axedwarves, equipped with iron battle axes. They were also somewhere between adept and legendary fighters and most of their other skills were along that line too. I thought they'd win easily, but I guess I underestimated the utility of armor...

[Trorbes]

You also overestimated the quality of iron.  The new material brought two things - first, materials have both realistic values for their qualities (no abstract "100% damage" for iron, for example), and second, armor counts as a layer that must be penetrated, rather than a potential shield to soak some of the damage.  In other words, your iron weapons probably could never penetrate their armor far if at all, whereas theirs just cut easily through your own.  You want to arm your dwarves with AT LEAST bronze equipment and optimally steel, and leather armor should only be used as a last resort or against unarmed opponents.

[TheDarkEnigma]

Well, I didn't have magma or anything so my furnace work was going very slowly... I basically didn't think they'd need a ton of armor in year 2. On the penetration note though, one of my Dwarves literally hacked a goblin's guts out with one attack, so I don't know if they actually had any armor to begin with, or were just so fast my Dwarves couldn't fight back. Weirdly enough, that goblin went on to live long enough to run away, sans innards. Darn those crazy critters!

But yeah, not used to the military changes yet obviously, so I'll work on that with my new fortess. I COULD keep going on the old one, but I'd rather not wait for all the spooked migrants to be un-spooked after the massacre that wiped out most of my Dwarves.