Mod: Blast from the Past, Return of the Underkings

[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.

[PvK]

Since nothing of any other size would ever use the proposed "Dwarven Axe", why would it be problematic to make it cost however many resources would be needed to differentiate it from the hammer?

Seems to me it could be even more clear than the difference between the MA Infantry of Ulm with Battleaxe or Maul - more resources for a slightly better weapon. You could also decide that Dwarven axes are more prestigious personal weapons than hammers and so have them cost +1 or +2 gold more to hire troops with those.

[PvK]

Oh, it occurred to me after I wrote that, that another option could be, if the weapons balance mod you mentioned results in addressing this, to simply suggest that the mod be used with that weapon balance mod, and/or make one that does, or failing all that, wait for me to make one that does...

[PvK]

When you wrote, "there's already a balance mod that's quite well developed", did you mean Conceptual Balance mod or a weapon balance mod that I haven't found yet, or ...?

[Saulot]

I meant the CB mod, even though I don't use it myself. I can only assume that Underkings plays the same way with the CB mod.

I'd be interested to see a pure weapons mod.

I'll play around with modifying axes a bit, and see how it turns out.

[MaxWilson]

Aezeal said:
lol + 10 protection.. that would be nice especially since I guess they already have some armour.. why not sacred with earthbless 9 too

Thematically I can imagine the battle ragers needing a lot of room for all kinds of battle raging maneuvres

Ouch, +10 berserk means +10 encumbrance, which means armor isn't going to do a lot to help them survive the battle. They *will* go out in a blaze of glory.

-Max