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[Girlinhat]

Pikes are rather comparable to spears, if I recall.  Sparring happens most often when you have 2-3 dwarves training of fairly similar skill levels.  They will do drills until they get close to level, and will then spar more.

[Erkki]

So, I'm on my second fort and trying everything. How are pikes? I've had a few gobbos drop them and I'm starting a squad...

Also have a scourge squad training up. Too bad I'm having trouble getting them to spar.

Pikes have superb penetration but are two-handed weapon, so no shield... Most will probably agree that shield + spear works better. Steel and bronze spears you can most likely forge are about as good as or better than Goblin iron pikes any way, especially with the quality modifier...

[Jake]

If swords are good enough for Thorin and company from The Hobbit, they're good enough for my militia. Though I tend to just set "invididual choice, melee" and make a few of everything, as my hand-to-hand squads are primarily intended as backup for my marksdwarves. (See my signature if you're wondering why.)

[Alastar]

Most weapons have their uses.

Most useful overall in my opinion is the mining pick. Applies more force than other domestic weapons (same size*velocity as axes; I expect this to favour the lighter weapon) and has very balanced attacks: decent penetration depth, contact area is just enough to make limb hits dangerous, more makes it difficult to get through armour or thick bones without much gain.

Spears can reach vitals through any amount of blubber and have a reasonable chance to defeat armour made of the same material (picks struggle to do this); little general trauma though.
Axes cause a bloody mess when they hit unprotected flesh but struggle with anything tough.
Maces and hammers would be useful if invaders wore decent armour.  As it is, spears and picks can defeat invader-grade armour and axes get results by disarming and delegging. Blunt weapons also tend to suck against large beasties of any description, although scavenged whips can be decent at crippling them.
Not sure if short swords have a good use: hedging bets is good, but overall they seem worse than picks with their single balanced and vastly more powerful attack. At least long swords and daggers have one interesting extreme.

Interestingly, the best dwarf killers tend to be foreign: Whips outperform other blunt weapons due to a modeling quirk, morningstars and daggers have very fine tips capable of stabbing through superior and are still deadlier than blunt weapons. Scourges are just mean - they lack the penetration depth to kill efficiently but can slice off all small bits through armour.

[khearn]

As others have mentioned, combined arms are the best strategy.

I tend to stay away from pikes and halberds, simply because my weaponsmiths can't ever make them. So any dwarf skilled in one of them will probably never have anything better than a standard quality iron weapon. I'd rather have a masterwork steel spear than a normal iron pike. Maybe I can't make steel yet, and my weaponsmith isn't up to masterwork level this season. But next year he'll be cranking them out and my speardwarves can upgrade. Any pikedwarfs will still be stuck with that goblin-made crap.

Now if I had a moody dwarf make an artifact pike or halberd out of a decent material, I'd train someone up to use it. You betcha.

[acetech09]

My current fort has 3 squads - The lead squad, 5 legendary swordmasters, 2 spearmasters, 2 hammer lords, and an axe lord that I assigned after I got (my can't-stop-talking-about-it) a artifact platinum battle axe.

The secondary squad was the royal guard that came with the king - spearmaster, swordmaster, 2 Mace Lord.

Third squad are light and agile marksdorfs I send after fleeing kobolds and thieves.

Moral of the story: I mix my weapons, mostly swords with hammer and spear backup.

[Teneb]

Am I the only one in this forum that always uses a specialised wrestler squad to make enemies stand still long enough for someone else to kill them?

But weapons tend to come down to:

Hammers: bashing in skulls of dwarf-sized enemies; crippling.
Wrestling: holding enemies in place so someone else can kill them.
Maces: I use them as anti-armor weapons, mostly.
Swords: good for gutting unarmored enemies. love to see those intestines being dragged around.
Axes: good all-around; can easily behead most enemies, good for finishing armored ones.
Spears: killing big fleshy things, dragons, ettings, organic FBs, etc.
Crossbows: thinning the ranks of the enemy so your melee fighters will have an easier job. Also good against syndrome-carrier enemies.

[monk12]

It's worth noting that spears aren't terribly good against anything that doesn't care about its innards- the undead topping that (admittedly short) list. I prefer swords to spears, since you get all the stabby goodness with a sideorder of slashy, and in Adventure mode it's much easier to take advantage of pommel strikes and blade slaps to get your requisite bashy. Swords' biggest problem in Dwarf Mode is that the dorfs aren't quite bright enough to take proper advantage of the sword's versatility.

To briefly boil down the thread, Slashy is good against foes your own size IF they are underarmored- in this case, underarmored means their armor is weaker than your weaponry, and as dwarves are the only ones with access to candy or steel, this category should include any given sentient or wild animal. Stabby is good against things that care about their intestines, and while it likely won't kill as fast it is a more sure way to make somebody bleed out- as noted above, it is not so good against things that don't care about their internal organs or blood loss. Bashy is good against armor and highly skilled enemies, because the accrued incidental damage from glancing hits is greater than that imparted by slashy/stabby. It is not so good when your dwarves are at a significant size disadvantage, or when your enemy doesn't care about the gradual liquification of their outer flesh (again, the undead.)

I would also caution against combined arms WITHIN a squad- in my experience, this drastically reduces training time (especially as regards weapon skill) since each extra weapon means another skill to train, and dwarves will train them evenly. I prefer an assortment of smaller squads- I often only bother training 2-3 different weapons (plus crossbow) so that if one squad gets decimated, I can promote a skilled member from another squad to train the noobs in the new squad.


Huh. This post is longer than intended. SO BE IT

[Flare]

I've never liked hammerdwarves. But after one incident where my sword and axe squads just couldn't finish off a squad of unconcious steel clad giants, due to their armor. The hammer dwarve squad I had lying around just in case finished the giants summarily. There's always a hammer wielding dwarf in my melee squads from then on.

[Crioca]

Hammerlords are clutch warriors. You don't want them making up the bulk of your forces, but there are some jobs that only they can do.

That being said I used to have a captain hammerlord with an artifact platinum warhammer. My longest running fort, he personally has over 200 notable kills, including six forgotten beasts. He also wears an artifact mithril cloak.

[MadocComadrin]

1 squad of Hammerdwarves + 1 Squad of Axedwarves + 1 Squad of Speardwarves + 1 squad of Marksdwarves = Good Coverage

[Psieye]

Pikes are rather comparable to spears, if I recall.  Sparring happens most often when you have 2-3 dwarves training of fairly similar skill levels.  They will do drills until they get close to level, and will then spar more.

Actually, they'll be more inclined to give demonstrations until they get close to level. Problem is, WHAT demonstrations they do is random and thus, unreliable unless you've been carefully limiting combat skills in the raws.

[Hobbie]

I fell in love with hammers the first time I saw a goblin sail across a hall and splatter against a wall.

[FrisianDude]

I've never really seen the point of making one-weapon squads except for Marksdwarfs. I prefer the variety any time because it means a small group has the skills needed for stomping most enemies.

Ofcourse quite a lot of enemies can be killed by smacking them with a shield, but still, that takes too long.

[hjd_uk]

Don't forget Maces. I had a Macelord with an Artifact silver mace... he kicked ass.

Heavy like a hammer, pointy like a spear. ( at least kind of ). Plus a hammer with spikes on is much more Dwarfy IMO