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[milaga]

I haven't played since the first few versions of DF2010 and I figured I'd see what is new with the recent version.

So it's summer of my third year and I have 40 dwarves plus an annoying 8 children. I've carved out a rather large underground fort, have rooms, a nice hall and several legendary dwarves thanks to lucky moods. I have two squads of 10 dwarfs training. I got almost nothing in terms of military migrants, so my warriors are starting from scratch. After about a year of training with wooden swords and shields, they are all still recruits! Despite delving about 10 zlevels down in a rather wide area the only ore I've found is a modest amount of tetrahedrite (enough for 10 bismuth bronze swords, with traded bars) and 20 copper mail. There is a TON of worthless, yet pretty, garnierite. My floors are littered with it.

As I open the gates to let in the human caravan, hoping for some tin bars, a snatcher appears! The squad training by the gate (with wooden swords and shields) gives chase, and I order the second squad (who is even more green) to put down their wooden weapons and grab the bronze ones. Where there is one snatcher there are probably two or three lurking.

As soon as the first squad steps over the drawbridge, they are ambushed by a hammergoblin and 4 lashers. With wooden weapons and only a year of training, they are wiped out to the man. The second squad rushes up the ramp into the sunlight to face the goblins and ... are wiped out to the man. The goblins didn't even suffer a casualty, though they had a few red wounds.

Is this just a bad break or has something gotten a lot harder? A goblin with a silver warhammer tore through my dwarves, while our bronze swords were being deflected by llama wool caps. Is training much harder? And where is all the ore? If I could make weapons and armor out of nickel things wouldn't have been so bad. I suppose I should have just holed up and defended my fort with an unpassable amount of traps but that's not as fun as losing half my fort in less than a minute to a simple ambush. Advice?

[peskyninja]

In this game you can kill a giant beast made of steel with sand.

[franti]

Silver Warhammers, due to density and contact area, are great against armour, as are whips/scourges.
You'll want more than a Mail Shirt, Shield, and Sword. Combat has been tweaked so that what usually happens is that the first one to lose a limb dies soon-nearafter (finish him!), so if you have less armour, you lose a limb first. Bismuth Bronze is "technically" worse than Bronze, but there's no huge difference except in tightly controlled, repeated testing (see my sig).
Quality counts more than quanity: 5 Soldiers in full Bismuth Bronze/Copper Plate with Silver Maces probably would've won. 20 Soldiers in Copper Chain/Wooden Shields with Short Swords would be a good emergency militia, but not a good full time army.

[franti]

Also, let the caravan guards deal with anything. They're ususally well skilled.

[ImBocaire]

Also also, never let your dwarves fight outside if you can help it. Cave adaptation sets in fast and hits hard if you're not actively taking steps to prevent it, and it's hard to fight effectively while you're blind and nauseous.

[milaga]

Thanks for the replies.

I looked through some of the combat logs and it seems your right. The hammerdwarfs were easily able to break an arm or a leg and that seems to have knocked my dwarves out of the fight as they kept succumbing to pain. Then it was just a matter of enough hammerblows to the noggin.

Hopefully this new embark has some iron. It sure has enough dolomite.

[ImBocaire]

...Also also also, minerals are a lot rarer in the latest version, at least by default. You can change it in the world gen parameters, though.

[franti]

Don't hold out for Steel, or head to the candy asap. Copper, in heavy amounts, can be a lifesaver.

It's better to have a dozen dwarves fully armoured in Bronze than a couple armoured in Steel. Up to a point, numbers matter: 1 Dwarf with a Bismuth Bronze Maul (BB is arguably the best Blunt material due to having both density and firmness) with full candy armour will lose to a dozen or so wrestlers by sheer volume of enemies.

Also, the more worthless a weapon is for slahsing, the better it usually is for blunt. Lay Pewter is the WORST material for slashing in the game, but it's basically Lead and Bronze so it's a good blunt material.
This generally holds true, at least until deformation is introduced.

[HUGE_WALRUS]

You may want to regen your world if you're encountering the metal-is-too-rare problem and set minerals to frequent or everywhere.  Me, I go for the former; I don't cotton to the less metal = more fun school of thought at all.

[Shook]

It's better to have a dozen dwarves fully armoured in Bronze than a couple armoured in Steel. Up to a point, numbers matter: 1 Dwarf with a Bismuth Bronze Maul (BB is arguably the best Blunt material due to having both density and firmness) with full candy armour will lose to a dozen or so wrestlers by sheer volume of enemies.

Skill and armament matters a lot here, since I've had an axelord jump into two squads of armed hostiles and emerge victorious. But yeah, if you only have raw recruits, then numbers matter a whole lot. Large enemies lose their biggest advantage (continuous knockdowns) as soon as they're outnumbered, since they can't hit more than one at a time. However, outnumbered dorfs tend to go in martial trances, which basically spells doom for all hostiles while it lasts. It's probably more reliable to have a large military though, because any dorf can fall victim to a lucky shot.

[franti]

It's better to have a dozen dwarves fully armoured in Bronze than a couple armoured in Steel. Up to a point, numbers matter: 1 Dwarf with a Bismuth Bronze Maul (BB is arguably the best Blunt material due to having both density and firmness) with full candy armour will lose to a dozen or so wrestlers by sheer volume of enemies.

Skill and armament matters a lot here, since I've had an axelord jump into two squads of armed hostiles and emerge victorious. But yeah, if you only have raw recruits, then numbers matter a whole lot. Large enemies lose their biggest advantage (continuous knockdowns) as soon as they're outnumbered, since they can't hit more than one at a time. However, outnumbered dorfs tend to go in martial trances, which basically spells doom for all hostiles while it lasts. It's probably more reliable to have a large military though, because any dorf can fall victim to a lucky shot.

Assuming equal skill, 10 Dwarves in Bronze Helms, Chain Shirts, Chain Leggings, Shields, and Axes will destroy 3-4 Steel Dwarves of equal skill/armament. Weapon material only really matters against other armoured sentients, and even then since they don't use boots/gauntlets/leggings an attack will most likely result in a bleed-out regardless of what material it is. Obsidian Shortswords or Adamantine Shortsowrds, both will destroy an un-armoured creature.

In fact, I'm going to go do a test: 10 Dwarves with Lay Pewter Short Swords, the WORST slashing metal in the game, against 10 unarmed Dwarves, and 10 Dwarves with Rathesteel Short Swords (custom metal: superior to adamantine against organic tissue, but can't penetrate adamantine) against the same bunch, and see what happens.

[milaga]

You can make things like pewter swords now? Interesting ... I suppose I should have been making nickel weapons and armor since I had so much of it last embark. It can't be much worse than copper, can it? I imagine it would be better. Wait, are you running a mod for that?

This new embark does not appear to be much better. All I have found is Galena, but since Silver warhammers don't sound that bad I might just field some hammerdwarves in lead armor. After things get fun, I suppose I'll look into cheating my worldgen.

How are crossbows? Last I played they were worthless since bolts couldn't even penetrate clothing. Is a hail of wooden bolts effective or do I really need to go for the metal tips?

[MarcAFK]

You can test all materials in the arena rather than just the ones you can make weapons and armour from in fort mode... Ithink.

[malroth]

i think your problem is that your squads were too big,  7 squads of 3 train much better than 2 squads of 10.

[Urist Da Vinci]

i think your problem is that your squads were too big,  7 squads of 3 train much better than 2 squads of 10.

This. You want them to be sparring, not attending classes.

Also, you can have them train using lethal weapons. "Training" weapons are pretty pointless, except to keep your fortress guard from murdering people. You get training messages like this:

The Axedwarf hacks The militia commander in the head with her -copper battle axe-, lightly tapping the target!