DF wins in combat, but... dragons, bronze colossi, giant cave spiders, man-eating fish, zombie elephants, magma held back by wooden walls, short people who live underground, hippies elves, doomsday machines, humans that managed to survive all this. That's realism?
There are completely different types of realism in play here, and you're talking about the wrong kind. There are elements of DF that are supposed to work via similar rules of real life (physics in general, material systems, how bodies function, geology in most cases, etc.) and elements that are added on top of that (fictional but otherwise mundane creatures, magical systems, presumably-magical creatures like fairies and giant cave spiders, hell-pits, etc.). We're currently talking about the former.
Furthermore, if someone is sufficiently strong, they could probably do a lot of damage with a maul.
It doesn't matter, because they could still do
more damage with
something else, at least in most cases, so you'd still probably be better off with something different, unless you're so ridiculously large and tough that you don't need to worry about penetrating armor or ability to cause serious damage at all (which would rarely be the case unless your dwarf is fighting groundhogs and rabbits), in which case you'd still probably be better off with a lighter weapon.
I also realize, that with time, swordsmithing has become much more complex. However... before, when it was actually needed instead of just a hobby of people who have too much time, it wasn't all that complex. Get iron. Heat iron. Smack iron against hard surface with hard surface. Wash, rinse, repeat.
You're completely wrong. When something is a practical trade and not just a hobby, it's
a lot more finicky and complex because the product needs to be useful instead of hanging over your mantle. Seriously, if you think more people put care into making a shitty display sword than when it's a matter of life and death for everyone involved, you're extremely far off. Weaponsmithing was an extremely important part of military society, and as Lord Shonus just said, anybody making a sword that way would be making a death wish, because either he'd get himself killed trying to use it, or get himself killed by the widowing families of people who did.
Weaponsmithing and metalworking were developed for
millenia prior to the current era. Any sort of cursory research whatsoever would make it clear to you that the aspects of it we're currently talking about applied back then as well as they do now. No, they didn't have liquid nitrogen, but they had to exercise an extreme amount of care and training.
Also, just-plain-iron was barely ever used to make weapons, to my knowledge. Maybe sometimes, but generally speaking, that stuff was made out of steel of some variety or another.