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[dagger]

Right now I have 30 dwarves in my military organized into 3 squads, and they have been doing fairly well.
10 Silver Warhammer
10 Steel Battle Axe
10 Steel Shortsword

I was thinking about mixing them up to give each squad a mix of each weapon type.

What do you think of this approach?

[Soapalope]

-Blam!- combined arms, WAR ELEPHANTS!!!!

[Cotes]

Crapshoot. Given that there's no marching order withing a squad and some soldiers might be taking a nap at any given moment, it will just mean you'll have no idea what you are actually sending in.

If you want to have different weapon types working together, the better approach is to just split the squads into smaller ones and order several to the same station. Gives you more control too.

[bluelang]

I mix all of my squads - I even mix ranged and melee. Seriously, you have zero actual control over what's going on anyways and most of the time you just want something dead. Dwarfs regrow on the dwarf tree right off the edge of your map, there's no point in conserving them. All I care about is minimizing the number of @#$!@# uniforms I have to manage.

[Aramco]

I always give all my squads the order to kill the enemy immediately, regardless of how little sense it makes at the time.

[monk12]

Combined arms all the way. My reasoning is that bludgeoning weapons like hammers are good at breaking bones and enemy knockdowns, and that slashing weapons are great for body part severs and quickly ending fights. Slashers are able to do this more quickly once the enemy is down on the ground and less able to dodge, which means buddying up with hammers is a great tactic.

Generally I try to shoot for 8 man squads split between hammers and either axes or swords. Sometimes I mix up the hammers with some maces, if a migrant comes that has skill with that weapon. Even if some of them are sleeping or whatever when the hour comes, a given station order should still yield two or more of each damage type. This also means I can be assured of multiple damage types at the point of attack even if I don't have multiple squads on the scene, which is beneficial during ambushes where attacks can materialize from multiple directions. The swords squad tends to see more frontline action against siegers and opponents with squishy insides (since they get a piercing attack as well)- the axes are first to fight undead and inorganics. I also try to have at least one squad of pure crossbows, more if I can keep them equipped. They're like the cavalry the game doesn't have yet- expensive to maintain, a significant time investment to train, but extremely effective on the battlefield.

You can influence who the first responders in a given squad are by assigning weapons based on agility- high agility hammers will show up on the scene first, and often will break legs and chip bones, slowing the enemy down enough for the rest of the squad to arrive. If you're facing organized resistance, try to order them to a staging point first so they don't get too separated.

[Hyndis]

I use combined arms myself. Essentially I have two different military. My crossbow dwarves are defensive and never venture beyond the walls of the fortress. They also patrol the interior of the fortress and provide ranged fire support for the melee guys.

The melee dwarves are offensively oriented. I allow them to pick whatever melee weapon they want. They go out and meet the enemy head on in glorious melee combat, usually after the marksdwarves have softened the hostiles up a little bit.

[khearn]

I've been segregating by weapon type (mostly) based on the theory that if someone in the squad organizes a hammer lesson, I want the rest of the guys in the squad to be hammerdwarves so they will benefit from it. But I've been wondering if that's really that much of a benefit. Anyone will benefit from a dodging lesson or a shield lesson, so grouping by weapon only helps a minority of the time. I've been wondering if having combined arms at a slightly lower level beats having homogeneous weapons at a slightly higher level.

Another thing I've been thinking of is organizing my squads by skill level. The dwarves with the highest skill in melee weapons go in the elite squad that responds head on to ambushes. The medium skilled squad gets put out in front of the main gate as soon as an ambush/siege is spotted to hold the line while civilians run past them into the fort for safety. The lowest skilled newbies stay inside, behind the entry defenses and act as a reserve.

I'll still keep the crossbows separate from the melee weapons, though. Totally different use cases. A hammerdwarf isn't much good on a wall, behind fortifications. Now if the enemy could come with ladders to scale walls, or battering rams to bash them down, that would make it more interesting...

I'm also thinking the newbie squad should be led by an experienced fighter who has a high teaching skill, so the newbies can learn quicker than if the squad was only newbies.

I'll give this a try in my next fort. My current fort is devoted to !!SCIENCE!! and will be treating any goblin visitors as volunteer test subjects, so my current military has constraints they normally wouldn't have.

   Keith

[BurnCruise]

I split squads by weapon with no more than 2 in a squad. That way i know which squads with which weapons im sending where. I try to keep all marksdwarfs in a single squad and i make them all hunters so they will actually practice. I enjoy the variety and i REALLY enjoy watching body parts go flying.

Quick question about hammers. Arent they supposed to be able to send enemies flying? I have yet to see that, even when my stronger dwarf is swinging. Can maces do that too? That would make blunt weapons insanely useful for crowd control during those large fights.

[xordae]

The only thing I separate is ranged and melee. And then set the weapon to individual choice. Usually the first two squads I make are the dwarves that have some combat skills already. That necessitates mixed squads. Then later when it's not that urgent anymore, peasants get drafted.

That may mean they begin with shit weapons, but those are filtered out over time and replaced with steel/silver. They tend to pick the good stuff themselves, and those few who grow attached to a bad quality weapon, well, let 'em keep it. Either they wisen up or they just kill more slowly. Steel armor makes sure they last in battle anyways.

[Urist Da Vinci]

If I have any choice in the battle location, I attempt to flank the enemy. The game does keep track of "from the side" and "from behind" in combat, so I have the melee fighters engage first, and then have the marksdwarves approach/shoot from the rear or side. I tend to seperate melee fighter squads by weapon, because I like to assign custom squad uniforms.

[Jake]

I tend not to assign melee weapons by squad except for the fortress guard, who get a custom "truncheon" weapon I've modded in (it's basically a metal training sword), as I've a hazy idea that dwarves without any strong preference will grab the nearest weapon regardless of whether they've practiced with it. Better to have people forced to learn on the job than have half one's forces still rummaging through the armoury when some Forgotten Beast is kicking in the door, and in any case I use a lot of imported or salvaged enemy weapons; I find it wise to leave magma well alone until I have at least one crossbow squad who can all reliably hit a fire imp from a safe distance.

[krenshala]

I separate ranged from melee, and tend to put single weapon types in one squad, but don't stick with it exclusively.  As someone posted above, having someone teaching dodging or shield use doesn't matter what weapon they have.  I also tend to go with more squads of smaller numbers, at least at first (e.g., i'd rather have three squads of 4 than two squads of 6, or a squad of 10 and another of 2).

I do make sure I've got at least one or two higher level dwarf in each squad, however.  This is because a higher level trainer seems to produce results faster in noobsrecruits.  Of course, two dwarves with wooden shields and training spears can train from zero experience to level 2 or 3 in two seasons through sparring (but not a danger room).

And don't forget to set your "training" number to something less than your squad size.  If you have four in the squad they will always show "cannot follow orders" if you are telling them they need 10 dwarves to train still. Set it to two, so even if two are asleep/drinking/eating/wandering the statue garden, you will still have the other two training.  If you run full squads of 10, I've found setting that number to 6 seems to work best for continuous training.

[Hyndis]

Weapon skill isn't particularly important. Defensive skills are where its at. Anyone can learn weapon skills on the job so long as they survive with dodge and block skills.

[iyaerP]

Did anyone else see this topic title and think that the OP had developed some kind of dwarven air force?

Because that is what I had thought. We already have artillary in the form of catapults and ballistae, So I figured that combined arms meant a !!SCIENCE!! post about advances in dwarven avionics.


Hmmm. There's got to be some good way to do this. What if we made a GIANT sky-structure based from main fort that allowed you to drop soldiers in on enemy heads.  We know that falling damage is prevented if you land on a creature, but does it cause damage to the creature being landed upon? If so, with good map control via walls and bridges/airlocks, you could have a setup whereby your squad plummets from low orbit to crush whatever goblins dare threaten your fort, and then get up and slaughter any that weren't crushed by the falling dorf army. Key to this working would be having your airlock small enough that there is guarenteed to be a goblin to cushion your dwarves' falls.



MAN I wish my motherboard wasn't dead. My current mega-fort could be modified to test this in quite short order.




Oh yeah, and on an on topic note? I go 3 axe, 3 spear 4 hammer/mace per squad with a full squad of marksdwarves to round it off.