Mod: Blast from the Past, Return of the Underkings

[PvK]

All good points and interesting valid ideas. I'm not sure there's any material disagreement left here.

Seems to me that for ultimate correctness purposes (not necessarily this mod), it doesn't matter much what the head is like on an axe/mace/hammer/pick - it should be possible to make such a weapon as good at length/attack/defense as any other, with the exception that hammer and especially mace don't need to strike in a particular direction, which advantage might or might not be considered to be worth a +1 relative attack mod. However there might be tradeoffs between those values and the resulting damage and resources too.

[HoneyBadger]

Well-and this may surprise you-the greatest advantage that an axe has over all those other weapons is it's ability to be used fluidly. A properly shaped axe, of a good weight, can not only be thrown accurately, but it can also be used in melee to strike much faster than most other weapons, if the wielder is well-trained.

The axe curves down to strike, but that downward chop can be completed into a circle, by rotating it in the hands, which allows the head of the axe to swing back up, carried by the weight of the head (like a pendulum do), which by the way gave the axe-fighter a bit of a break, since the axe would at that point be carried along via momentum; and causing the blade of the axe to function a bit like a rotary saw-albeit in slow motion. It's quite impressive, even when the axe in question is the size of a hatchet-when it's an English Long-axe, it's frankly awe-inspiring.

Imagine a martial-arts movie wherein two fighters are squaring off with staves, and watch as one combatant rotates her staff in a circular motion-now imagine that the staff itself is "only" 5 feet long, but 2 inches thicker, and that one end of that staff is topped by a 4lb axe blade. It takes a lot more strength in various muscle groups, ofcourse-the axe would be swung more from the shoulders and back than the arms and waist, but the idea is much the same.

You can't do the same with a sword, because the sword has too much blade, and you can't do it as well, with a mace/hammer/etc. because of the bulkiness of the head.

It's one of the reasons why the "moon-shaped" head was so popular, though, because it allowed the axe to easily slice both into, and then out of, a given wound, shearing off with less risk of the blade getting stuck in a bone. Which also gave the axe-fighter a chance to engage more than one enemy at a time, since a long enough axe could "cleave" into and out of one wound, only to be carried-again, via momentum-into and out of another wound, on another combatant.

[Aezeal]

as I said.. axes

[HoneyBadger]

Axes are good...just not for dwarfs. Not particularly, anyway. Just like swords aren't very good for giants.

[Saulot]

Indepth discussions of dwarven tunnel battletactics and equipment aside, however interesting it is*, what is everyone's thoughts about giving them an improved axe or axes (as per PVK's suggestion or something similar)?

*There are still a few pieces of dwarven tunnelfighter's equipment left unmentioned

[Maraxus]

For mechanical reasons, I would not give better equipment across the board, unless you want to make it a more ressource-focussed the gold focussed nation.
Increasing strength, attack and defence has the same effect and makes it easier to compare with the other nations.

Of course there is:
1. There is basicly nothing wrong with making it more ressource-focused.
2. Even if the common soldier uses the average axe you can still add in elite-infantery or commaners that use improved weapons. Think of Tir Na Og and their Gold weapons.

[Saulot]

Well, high resource costs are problematic in terms of weapons, since they're size 1 which means only a fraction of the resource cost is used. I believe 1/2.

So resource heavy they're not. I believe outside of bolt-throwers the highest cost is 25. Which is marginal compared to some other nations, especially once you also add in the production bonus inherent to Underkings.

Secondly, the elite units side-step the axe question completely because they use hammers or magic weapons. The heirarchy tends to be axes, hammers, magic weapons, if one could divide the dwarven units into groups by their level of eliteness (so I made up a word, so what?)

This whole problem arises from the axe and hammer problem. Axes are inferior, so everyone wonders, why use axes? If I improve the axes a bit, they'll be even more similar to hammers, so everyone wonders, why have both axes and hammers? If I improve axes a lot, everyone wonders, why use hammers?

Despite well thought out arguments presented thus far, I am still leaning for my original thinking (which is the easiest and cleanest solution), get rid of the hammer dwarf warrior, and so remove the side by side comparison and choice of axe and hammer.