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[TheDarkEnigma]

Now I know there's a whole ton of bugs with the military and stuff, which for a crucial system is not such a great thing. However, this appears to be an intentional thing, so I thought I'd discuss it with people and see what they thought.

Um... in a previous fortress my well-trained military was wiped out by a gang of goblins, and I figured it was my fault since I didn't equip them with armor, though I expected them to do a little better in the fighting department at least. Next fortress I make, it's year one and some deer wander past. "Cool," thinks I, "I'll send my already proficient wrestlers to go wrestle one for experience." Now remember, these are deer we're talking about here, not cougars or bears or... or dogs even.

So what happens? My three trained Dwarves get owned by a single deer. ONE DEER. One guy collapses with a broken left elbow, the other guy breaks a finger and manages to do some serious damage to the deer, except lo and behold the deer is capable of magical healing as well! So the damage that's being done to this badass deer is rapidly un-doing itself, including supposedly severe wounds to internal organs, which quickly heal to full health. Anyway, with only minor injuries left, this deer runs into my fortress, through TWO stone fall traps, and stumbles on with broken front legs, a broken lower spine, minor injuries everywhere, BUT IS STILL NOT DEAD. As it does this, my Dwarves are now getting up and limping at it (except the wuss with the broken elbow) and they wrestle it for like 5 days, wherein the only thing that happens is the deer laughs in their faces, kicks one guy in the throat, and heals all but the broken legs and more serious yellow injuries. By now it's disrupting all the Dwarves by stumbling around on two legs and yet still being more badass than my entire military.

I know wrestling's been nerfed in the newer versions, but perhaps it (and Dwarves in general) has been nerfed a little much, don't you think? If 3 well-trained Dwarves can't even take a deer with two broken legs and a broken spine, they're never gonna make it past the kobolds XD

On the up-side, it was awesome wrestling exp, though I didn't have a hospital to heal wuss Dwarf and his broken-fingered companion so I'ma load back my save. Still, seriously? You'd think skills would count for SOMETHING in a fight, especially when the military system is so bugged it's hard to even get Dwarves to train. Meh, maybe Toady is just used to Dwarves decked out in full steel/adamantine gear...

Also, to that crazy deer? Respect.

[uber pye]

have you ever tryed to wrestle a deer to death when it has horns to stab you with and you have you bear hands?
blame the new wound tracking thingy

[DasGuntLord01]

It has been my experience that wrestling is not very useful.

Give your dwarves stabby/slashy weapons: battle axes, swords, and spears.  Hammers and Crossbows are, apparently, a bit nerfed.

[TheDarkEnigma]

It has been my experience that wrestling is not very useful.

Give your dwarves stabby/slashy weapons: battle axes, swords, and spears.  Hammers and Crossbows are, apparently, a bit nerfed.

Yeah. Actually, one of them was supposed to bring his battle axe into the fray, but for some reason he left it behind and thus was all "manly wrestle time!" Still, I wasn't expecting them to get beaten down so badly by a single deer e_e

[DasGuntLord01]

Interesting.  Did you have (or need) an arsenal dwarf?

[Golcondio]

Did you check the deer's stats? Last time I had an annoying calel shredding my unarmored military to pieces was "gigantic, unbelievably muscular" or something like that...

[Vulkan]

My militia commander, in her wrestling days, was strangling or throwing crundles into walls left and right.

She didn't even get touched, but now she uses an axe, it's faster after all.

[lanceleoghauni]

It's my experience that bludgeoning is useless.

Stonefall traps don't do anything anymore, just take up space really. and Wrestling is hopelessly incapable of doing any amount of damage.

[Kazang]

I've killed goblins with stone fall traps.  They just need to score a head shot to actually kill, the result is smashing the skull and destroying the brain, or similar wording in the combat log.  Regularly knocks them unconscious as well, which leaves them easy prey for a dwarf or war animal to finish off.   
Possible with a crushing chest blow too maybe? Although I've not seen that happen.

Stone fall traps are just cheap defence for a early fortress I think.  I wouldn't rely on them past the first couple years.

[Miggy]

Some aspects of the military is overpowered, some of them are underpowered.

As it is, steel/adamantine battle axes are unbeatable. Seriously, those things cut off limbs like no business, my axe dwarves with exceptional steel battle axes kill everything thrown at them that can be killed: If they don't kill immediately by cutting off the entire lower body or the head of their opponent, they kill it by mortally wounding the upper chest (smashing the hearts to bits) or by simply cutting off so many different limbs that their opponent bleeds to death in seconds. For instance, here is one of my legendary axedwarves against a goblin ambush.



Not even close. Notice how in those fights, there were a total of 3 hits done to the dwarf (of which all glanced off the steel armour)? That's because stuff died before it could manage an attack.

On the other hand, wrestling is... Yeah... Here's the personel files of a blizzard man. This Blizzard man was assaulted by 10 trained war dogs as well as 5 combat dwarves, 3 of which using training axes and 2 of which were unarmed.



They were at it for a few in-game weeks, until I could get one of the dwarves off it and go get a real axe. After that it died in a swing or 2.

But what annoys me the most about the combat system is the fact that surgery doesn't work. I've pitted some of my dwarves against unarmed animals or goblins. Even the legendary skilled dwarves eventually let a blow slip in despite their steel armour, and woops something's a compound fracture to never be healed ever again. This limits my fortresses combat training to purely individual combat training (since regular training is broken too) , which doesn't raise very fast and doesn't touch armor user and shield user.

I haven't experimented too much with blunt or piercing damage, since I've only used axedwarves (they just kill stuff too fast to consider otherwise), but from my encounters with goblins I'm not sure what to believe. I had an unarmed civilian dwarf get pinned down by 5 goblin archers and a human pikeman, and he took forever to go down. His corpse had 15 arrows on him, and I didn't count just how many times the pikeman impaled him. On the other hand, I had a sully-steel clad military dwarf (albeit with low skills, none of which were armor/shield user) go down to a single shot. I guess it's all about crits.

[baruk]

I've killed goblins with stone fall traps.  They just need to score a head shot to actually kill

Also, knocking out function from both lungs will kill them - they stumble around for a while, though.

[TheDarkEnigma]

Some aspects of the military is overpowered, some of them are underpowered.

*insert a lot of interesting stuff here*

Yeah, the steel thing is what I thought - seems the only way to get good fighters now is to equip them with steel everything, since training is broken, surgery is broken and skills are apparently underpowered. Really it kind of cripples 31.xx, since combat is such a major part of gameplay, but I guess that will be worked out soon enough. Seems though that the general consensus is the same so far - most fighting skills and even stone traps now are a little under-powered.

Pity, 'cause so much else in 31.xx is awesome.

[ZeroGravitas]

have you ever tryed to wrestle a deer to death when it has horns to stab you with and you have you bear hands?

99% sure my bear hands will beat dear horns any day

THEYRE FUCKING BEAR HANDS

[DasGuntLord01]

You can have a lot of success with straight iron weaponry and armor, but not against against the late game HFS.  Iron is more than useful for killing goblins, for example.

[Satarus]

Only because goblinite now contains copper  .  You still want steel weapons for those that wear iron armor for consistent penetration.