Bay 12 Games Forum

Creatures full of adrenaline in a life or death combat should never faint from a broken toe, regardless of whether or not they are faction leaders. The whole "gives in to pain" mechanic should only really happen after the fight is over as casualties are brought for medical treatment (or not, depending on the incompetence of the fort owner). Generals are not intrinsically different from anyone else, and certainly not always the best soldiers. They may have just bought or inherited their commissions and be easier to kill than the average soldier, though they should really get steel gear.

I do not want to see legendary dwarves cutting titans with thick shells in half. If this is only done by strengthening the titans, then this is fine, but legendary dwarves are plain overpowered at the moment. Feasibly, a short sword will not chop a titan in half in one strike, regardless of the strength of the striker, because it is not long enough.

I would like to see the ability of dwarves to fight beasts reduced to sensible levels, and allow beasts to destroy some walls, in exchange for removing the trapavoid nonsense where beasts just walk through masterwork traps unscathed instead of actually...avoiding them by smashing a nearby wall or not going through them at all. Trapavoid should be trap-avoid, not trap-immune.

The lack of amputations in DF disappoints me. Painful, broken limbs could be removed with dwarven technology. Wooden legs should also be within their technology.

As for injuries to major organs, there is little that dwarves can do about these other than euthanasia, which is very popular even for perfectly healthy dwarves. If a dwarf was severely mutilated with no chance of recovery I would give him a magma funeral and commemorate him with a slab.

Ah, but the goblins also have similar considerations - it may be silly for a dwarf to get in a wrestling match with a goblin when 9 other goblins are rushing in... but it may be an *excellent* idea for the goblin!  All the goblin has to do is hold on while his buddies poke holes in the dwarf.

Anyway, all this to say that I'm not too bothered by dwarves bitting, kicking etc, because I know how random and chaotic sword combat can be, and that at some instant, *not* using your sword (axe etc) is the right thing to do.

The goblin would only want to if there were not 9 other dwarves ready to jump in as well. 10 goblins against 1 dwarf is MASSIVELY different from 10 goblins against 10 dwarves. In the former case, yes, the goblin would wrestle. The latter case? No, or at least not as a first choice - he might if he was disarmed or his weapon broke.

Real close combats in battle were NOT usually every man for himself, if the army was remotely disciplined, since soldiers usually want to survive far more than they want to kill the enemy. Instead, soldiers stayed together for mutual protection and picked the easiest fights. They would not get too focused on one foe in case his comrade intervened. This applied to both sides of the combat. Look at the Romans - their sword combat was very bloody, somewhat chaotic, but not random, and they usually beat foes who did not understand this. The same could be said of hoplite battles or the spear formations of the early Muslims. In fact, in all these cases, most deaths usually occurred after one side ran away - the tight formations led to few deaths during the main phase of combat. This is true for most battles at the time, where most soldiers who died died while routing, not while opposing the enemy.

Battles, except between completely wild barbarians, usually involved a lot of teamwork and soldiers protecting each other. They were not like DF's individualistic encounters. Wrestling did happen, but it was usually a second resort after a weapon broke, the enemy closed to very short range or something similar, and prolonged wrestling matches were rare indeed, with one party dumped on the ground and finished fairly quickly.

Biting someone in armour will usually only result in broken teeth. Kicking, punching and wrestling can do damage and be very useful for single combat, but in battle it is generally better to just stay in formation and try to break the opponent's.

Before you think I am trying to dismiss wrestling, I am not - in a 1-on-1 armoured duel, or a dogpiling situation as you described, it is a massive part of combat and very useful indeed. In fact, in an armoured sword duel, wrestling and half-swording are the main tactics. It would just not be the first tactic for battle.

Apparently, my civ declared war on the goblins weeks after my fort was founded. Now I am getting sieges every 2 seasons, which is quite fun.

The first siege was a band of 15 goblins. Nothing a militia of 30 can't kill.
The second one was a motherfucking army of 85 goblins and 30 trolls. I can't possibly fathom how a militia of 40 steel-clad dwarves could kill them all, but they did.
The most recent siege, the third, was a company of 50 goblins. Which is strange as AFAIK sieges should only get bigger with every new siege.

Am I slowly killing the goblin civ, or are they just giving up?

Sieges should only get bigger? Not if the goblins are all dead. You've killed most of them.

Goblins are too weak now compared to dwarves, but expecting them to send bigger waves of easily killed soldiers is not the solution. The gulf of combat ability between legendary dwarves and goblins needs to close, and goblins need to be able to destroy walls and otherwise destroy the player's fortifications. Since even 10 steel clad dwarves can destroy a marsh titan, it is not surprising that 40 could rout any feasible number of goblins.

Generally, everything that is not a dwarf needs a bit of a buff (goblins having better training and equipment, beasts not fainting after having a toe broken and generally not being bisected by swordsdwarves), and the abilities of legendary dwarves need to be reined in a bit. Cutting off a goblin's head in one strike is acceptable. A titan, less so.

On exploring abandoned fortresses and finding loads of gold furniture and magma forges but no means of food production and no bedrooms, I would say dwarf controlled forts were hellish as well.

The only reason why I opposed transgender dwarves is that I doubted whether such creatures would exist in a society which lacked any noticeable gender roles. Since I now know this is not the case, I have changed my position and am now prepared to accept transgender dwarves.

Making everybody asexual would result in no babies, unless all the males constantly ejaculated into the air like they did before the most recent update. Sexuality is an important feature for the gameplay as well as just being a background feature.

A significant minority of swordfights would devolve into wrestling matches.

When two good swordsmen are fighting, they are jousting for position - the "fight for the centre".  You want to outmaneuver your opponent to be in a position where you can easily strike him and he has a hard time striking back.  This is done both with footwork and swordplay. 

Sometimes that means closing in, too close to be using swords, and well now you have a wrestling match.  Sometimes the grappling will be very short - pin the other guy's arm and bash him on the head! - but sometimes the person initiating the grapple doesn't quite manage to finish the job and it's not a swordfight anymore...

All that being said, perhaps it should be a separate thread - and the point that there is no point to a combat system if the foes don't show up is rather pertinent.

Sword fights did turn to wrestling sometimes, and often if both parties were armoured. Many duels ended in grappling. But if the combatants were in battle and both were wary of other foes around them who might intervene and strike them while they were on the ground, they would be much less likely to engage in such combat. Very often the 2 fighters would make a few strikes at each other, realise the other was equally skilled, and move on to attack someone easier. Becoming embroiled in single combat in the middle of a battle is not very wise, since both fighters are focused solely on each other and not on the foe coming up from behind.

The importance of formations is also true here. Wrestling obviously breaks formation and exposes the fighters to the enemy, as well as opening a gap in the lines for the enemy to penetrate.

Battles and duels (fights against multiple opponents and fights against 1 opponent) are fundamentally different in that the former saw much more tentative fighting and less grappling, with most people staying in formation, while the latter often involved wrestling and body strikes like kicks. Combat in DF would also have to be divided in this way - is the opposition 1 goblin, or 10? Tactics would be very different depending on this. In the former case, a dwarf could wrestle down the goblin, but that would be very unwise if there are 9 other goblins waiting to jump in.