Does the Dwarven faction have a weakness?

[Zarkkill]

I started wondering this after having the Dwarven apocalypse trigger in my game because there are just so many armies that are so powerful and I really don't know if there even is a faction that has a roster capable of realistically countering it. The Dwarves are always a really tough enemy to fight no matter what faction I play as and their roster is, in my opinion, the strongest in the game by far, they really have no strength gaps or exploitable weaknesses. I am playing on Very Hard with the apocalypse difficulty set to 200 instead of 100, and with the amount of Dwarven armies pooping up everywhere on the map I feel like it might just be impossible to even survive this apocalypse since the dwarven roster is just so damn good. Even in normal gameplay against a faction of Dwarves once they get strong enough they are almost impossible to beat, they can field more armies then most factions and have stronger units.
I'll give a breakdown of what I think the strengths and weaknesses are of the Dwarves:

Strengths -

Every unit has high armor
Insanely good economy
Can field tons of armies
Has the most versatile and robust roster of any faction
Has the best artillery
Has the best infantry
Every unit has high morale
Strong lords

Weaknesses -

Slightly slower speed than most infantry
No magic
No cavalry


I feel like the strengths far outweight the weaknesses and they are by far the best faction as they always give me trouble regardless of what faction I fight them as. I was wondering though if maybe anyone else can see a weakness that I can't as the strengths they have make all of their weaknesses a non-issue and so there's no real way to counter them.

Let me know what strategies or units you use to counter the dwarves.

[SarmatII]

Armor is irrelevant in mid-game and especially late-game with the powercreep of ARMOR PIERCING damage on units.

Dawi in fact do not have most versatile roster. Robust, yes, versatile no.

Empire has the best artillery. Hellstorm base 480 range, weapon of mass destruction. Empire has cannons matching Dwarf, and Volley Gun outranges even Organ Gun and they both function similarly, though Volley Gun does far more DPS vs single entities.

Dawi Infantry are not the best overall, many of the horde factions wreck them in Infantry v Infantry battles. Dawi infantry is good for holding the line, delay enemies, not so much in killing power.

Dawi Lords are one of the worse. The melee Lord has nothing special, no AP, slow no mounts. High armor, low dps is not valued in mid-game onwards because AP exists. Runelords are lolz pathetic, and so is Rune Magic. New Slayer lords are easy pickings even for archers.

Your list of pros are very inaccurate.

Their biggest pros are in fact their airforce now. Rework Gyros & Thunderbarge are very strong.

To add, recent Empire Engineer & tank addition means Empire armies out range and out firepower Dawi armies easily. Its not even close. We're talking 500 range cannons, to pick apart Dawi artillery, then Hellstorm will melt the entire Dawi infantry lineup before they get into range. Hoc Longrifles & even standard gunners wreck "high armor" targets. Not to mention abusing magic with casters on flying mounts with super speed that Dawi can't touch.

Heck, even regular Skaven & Cathay artillery can be onpar than Dawi artillery. Literally the only thing dangerous in Dawi armies are their Organ Guns & Flame Cannons. If you can nullify those two, the rest of the army is just slow sitting duck.

[RomulanPraetor]

Depends on the composition of the armies- mostly trying to take out the artillery and the shoot them whilst they wiggle over.

I think Skaven/Ikkit has the best tools for that. (Rattling guns, poisoned wind mortars and warplocks for ranged damage and warp bomb as opening for the artillery - if they have any)

If you get an ambush the artillery should be to the back an be done with before the midgets can even turn their noses around, and then they can be shot to pieces in peace (ha) - as you said the only real weakness is the speed, so try making the most out of it. (Flanking, kiting and shooting are the only things that come to mind where speed seems elementary)

[Zarkkill]

Originally posted by SarmatII:

Armor is irrelevant in mid-game and especially late-game with the powercreep of ARMOR PIERCING damage on units.

Dawi in fact do not have most versatile roster. Robust, yes, versatile no.

Empire has the best artillery. Hellstorm base 480 range, weapon of mass destruction. Empire has cannons matching Dwarf, and Volley Gun outranges even Organ Gun and they both function similarly, though Volley Gun does far more DPS vs single entities.

Dawi Infantry are not the best overall, many of the horde factions wreck them in Infantry v Infantry battles. Dawi infantry is good for holding the line, delay enemies, not so much in killing power.

Dawi Lords are one of the worse. The melee Lord has nothing special, no AP, slow no mounts. High armor, low dps is not valued in mid-game onwards because AP exists. Runelords are lolz pathetic, and so is Rune Magic. New Slayer lords are easy pickings even for archers.

Your list of pros are very inaccurate.

Their biggest pros are in fact their airforce now. Rework Gyros & Thunderbarge are very strong.

Armor is far from irrelevant at any point in the game, even units that deal primarily armor piercing damage still almost always deal normal damage on top of that and thus still deal more damage to unarmored targets, for the armor piercing symbol to appear on weapon damage it needs only to be at lest 51% of the total damage they deal, it's not like the entire weapon damage of a 108 armor pierce weapon is all actually piercing through the armor, if it's 60/40 that could mean only a little more than half the damage is piercing armor, and from what I remember from when I've looked it's usually about 75% of the total damage is armor piercing on the units with armor piercing damage though I haven't looked at every single unit.

The Hellstorm artillery may have slightly longer range but they are incredibly inaccurate, I've seen entire volleys miss an immobile target if it's really far away. The dwarven artillery is much more accurate though and hits very hard. On the artillery with shorter ranges like flame cannons they can deal insane amounts of damage very quickly.

Units like Irondrakes aren't Artillery but those are another one of the units that can melt infantry very quickly, sometimes faster than you can compensate.

Their infantry is definitely not the damage dealer but unless every one of your armies is equipped with units capable of flanking the front line and getting to their artillery and ranged units you will almost always get destroyed.

But again, even if we disagree on what makes them formidable I still am interested to hear what units you find to be most effective and what counters you employ.

[Zarkkill]

Originally posted by RomulanPraetor:

Depends on the composition of the armies- mostly trying to take out the artillery and the shoot them whilst they wiggle over.

I think Skaven/Ikkit has the best tools for that. (Rattling guns, poisoned wind mortars and warplocks for ranged damage and warp bomb as opening for the artillery - if they have any)

If you get an ambush the artillery should be to the back an be done with before the midgets can even turn their noses around, and then they can be shot to pieces in peace (ha) - as you said the only real weakness is the speed, so try making the most out of it. (Flanking, kiting and shooting are the only things that come to mind where speed seems elementary)

Well that's the problem, most of their units aren't even that much slower than standard infantry for other factions, it's like 2-3 speed less which isn't a whole lot, though Skaven have overall fast speed for all their units so they are probably great at countering dwarves so that paired with the units you mentioned is probably a good counter, I've seen how ratling guns can absolutely shred enemy units.

[dot]

I find dwarves a pain to siege, if it wasn't for magic and maybe a little bit of cavalry cheese they would be a nightmare.

But in the open, they are prey for shock cavalry. Pin them with your frontline supported by some magic and buffs so they are able to hold, and then ram them with your shock cavalry. Charge, go back and repeat, the funny thing is that the dwarf units that have charge protection don't have anti large

[yuzhonglu]

AI Dwarves is very easy to beat. Any artillery or kiting army can wreck them with almost no casualties.

[SarmatII]

Originally posted by Zarkkill:

Originally posted by SarmatII:

Armor is irrelevant in mid-game and especially late-game with the powercreep of ARMOR PIERCING damage on units.

Dawi in fact do not have most versatile roster. Robust, yes, versatile no.

Empire has the best artillery. Hellstorm base 480 range, weapon of mass destruction. Empire has cannons matching Dwarf, and Volley Gun outranges even Organ Gun and they both function similarly, though Volley Gun does far more DPS vs single entities.

Dawi Infantry are not the best overall, many of the horde factions wreck them in Infantry v Infantry battles. Dawi infantry is good for holding the line, delay enemies, not so much in killing power.

Dawi Lords are one of the worse. The melee Lord has nothing special, no AP, slow no mounts. High armor, low dps is not valued in mid-game onwards because AP exists. Runelords are lolz pathetic, and so is Rune Magic. New Slayer lords are easy pickings even for archers.

Your list of pros are very inaccurate.

Their biggest pros are in fact their airforce now. Rework Gyros & Thunderbarge are very strong.

Armor is far from irrelevant at any point in the game, even units that deal primarily armor piercing damage still almost always deal normal damage on top of that

The Hellstorm artillery may have slightly longer range but they are incredibly inaccurate, I've seen entire volleys miss an immobile target if it's really far away. The dwarven artillery is much more accurate though and hits very hard. On the artillery with shorter ranges like flame cannons they can deal insane amounts of damage very quickly.

Units like Irondrakes aren't Artillery but those are another one of the units that can melt infantry very quickly, sometimes faster than you can compensate.

Their infantry is definitely not the damage dealer but unless every one of your armies is equipped with units capable of flanking the front line and getting to their artillery and ranged units you will almost always get destroyed.

But again, even if we disagree on what makes them formidable I still am interested to hear what units you find to be most effective and what counters you employ.

Most mid-game AP damage is usually 25/75 or even 20/80 AP. Classic example, handgunners, 5 normal dmg, 17 AP. Or some varieties have 5 normal, 20 AP.

Another way to put it, you take 85-90% of the dmg with 100-120 armor instead of 100% naked. Does it help? yes. But certainly not a big deal. Bretonnia's peasant mob with the Lady's blessing ward save takes less dmg from AP units. :)

Hellstorm inaccuracy is its advantage, all those exploding rockets are spread out, hitting multiple infantry units. The solution is just to have a few of them, then their inaccuracy means the entire enemy army is blanketed by exploding rockets. It is an anti-infantry weapon and it excels at that role.

I already suggested ways to counter them in my post, as Empire's example. Other factions have their ways too. But generally, you abuse Dawi slow speed and take out their main firepower, starting with Cannons, then Organ Guns, Flame Cannons shorter range. Once they can't fight back with artillery the rest of the army is easy picking, luring them with your faster units, split up and focus fire with your own range units.

[SarmatII]

What you must not do is to line up and toe to toe when the Dawi army has multiple intact Organ Gun & Flame Cannons, they will melt your infantry.

It's also playing to their strength, since you are taking the fight to them, where their shorter range artillery can be very strong.

[fmalfeas]

Honestly, the best forces for killing Dawi are probably Chaos Dwarf and Vampire Coast.

Plentiful anti-infantry artillery. Flying monsters that are good at fighting flying SEMs (because thunderbarges pretty much need to be melee'd down).

[Dr. Scoots]

best way to beat a dwarf is to take their toy crossbow away and hold it like a foot over their head, they're also pretty sensitive about their drink, they'll sputter for like 10 seconds if you insult bugman's fermented piss and that'll give you a solid opening, just employ these tactics on an army-wide scale
hope this helps

[Lokvi]

Depends on who you are playing, but I would say there are three main strategies to deal with dwarfs.
First is big monster charge - they do not have own big units to stop them, so you can just walk through the front line into their damage dealers, you want to ignore melee inf and kill their ranged damage dealers first.
Second is to surround and swarm them - the plan is the same, to get into their formation and force ranged units into melee, but now you do not have big single entities.
Third is to outrange and outgun them - not many factions can do that, but the chorfs and the ratkind are perfect for smashing them at range.

Basically all you want to do is to clean up their damage sources and they are infantry only faction with super tanky front lines, so you avoid their front lines and go for the meaty back lines. But beware of arti duels, their canons are damn precise.

[StrangestEcho]

You just have to snipe off their ranged damage dealers and then nuke the infantry with AP magic. The dwarves are slow and the AI is not great at protecting their ranged units, so abuse their lack of mobility. Several factions can also just outgun them: Chorfs, Empire, Skaven.

[fmalfeas]

Originally posted by Lokvi:

Depends on who you are playing, but I would say there are three main strategies to deal with dwarfs.
First is big monster charge - they do not have own big units to stop them, so you can just walk through the front line into their damage dealers, you want to ignore melee inf and kill their ranged damage dealers first.
Second is to surround and swarm them - the plan is the same, to get into their formation and force ranged units into melee, but now you do not have big single entities.
Third is to outrange and outgun them - not many factions can do that, but the chorfs and the ratkind are perfect for smashing them at range.

Basically all you want to do is to clean up their damage sources and they are infantry only faction with super tanky front lines, so you avoid their front lines and go for the meaty back lines. But beware of arti duels, their canons are damn precise.

Currently, rats are in a bad place against them, because thunderbarges laugh at being shot at. Thus why I left the skaven out, because they have no flyers to deal with that.

[StrangestEcho]

Originally posted by fmalfeas:

Currently, rats are in a bad place against them, because thunderbarges laugh at being shot at. Thus why I left the skaven out, because they have no flyers to deal with that.

Rattling Guns and Jezzails will melt them. I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe if you are coming at it from a purely multiplayer perspective I could see your point.

The multiplayer guys really need to stop acting like the game balance should revolve around them.

[fmalfeas]

Originally posted by StrangestEcho:

Originally posted by fmalfeas:

Currently, rats are in a bad place against them, because thunderbarges laugh at being shot at. Thus why I left the skaven out, because they have no flyers to deal with that.

Rattling Guns and Jezzails will melt them. I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe if you are coming at it from a purely multiplayer perspective I could see your point.

The multiplayer guys really need to stop acting like the game balance should revolve around them.

No, I'm referring mainly to Malachi's thunderbarges, which can go up to 70% Missile Resist.