How to dawi?

[Oedipus's Stepdad]

I've mostly played Empire and Bretonnia on the campaign and I've had a decent/fun experience with both. Then I started a dwarf campaign and oh boy it's the most frustrating one I've played yet. It seems that everything the dwarf has the empire has better; better melee attackers, better field artillery, better research tree, and better specialists/agents/heroes. I usually have no problem at all besieging any enemy settlement with an imperial army, but as the dwarfs it's a complete pain from start to finish. Why doesn't the dwarfs have any decent long-range artillery?? What is an ideal late-game army composition that dwarf players use?

[Ben Argo]

.....

That’s a grudgin’, lad, plain and simple.

.....

Seriously though, Dawi infantry are some of the staunchest and near unbreakable lads in the game. Their basic warriors can be used for a long time and their ability to destroy stuff with artillery is rivaled only by Vampire Coast and even then it’s a close fight.

Some basic tactics?
Put your dwarf warriors and long beards in front. Quarrellers and thunderers behind, the artillery. Keep a couple slayers in reserve to counter monsters and cav flanking.

You can also use some “checkerboard” tactics to make better use of your straight line artillery/missile units. Search for “how to use gunpowder units” on the Total War Reddit and you’ll find some guys MS paint graphic. Pretty informative.

[Oedipus's Stepdad]

Thanks thats useful, but I should clarify that I have the biggest problems during siege battles (especially against the skaven, as their warp bombs do insane damage even to ironbreakers). AFAIK Dwarfs have really low melee attack ratings and no shock cav, so the siege tactics I use when I play Empire doesn't work on the dwarfs.

[Zim]

Hi there. I think I'm quite expierenced with playing the dwarfs both WH1 and 2 on VH. I have exactly 2 types of armys:

1) Defense Type: (1Lord, 1Engineer, 8Dwarf Warriors, 4Quarrelers, 4Gunbowders, 2 Grudgethrowers). Install them in strategic locations in your moutains and build out your settlements defences. You can beat ANY high end Chaos Army with these cheap and basic dwarf units.

2) Attacking Type: (1Lord, 1 Engineer, 8 Ironbreakers, 4Flamethrowers, 4Granadelauncher, 2Gatling Artillery). You can faceroll every Army with that setup - super expensive though. Playing WH2 right now and this army costs 13k at the moment. Build 1-2 max.

Both on the campaign and the battlefield: Just bunker yourself up, hide in the corner and destroy your enemys with superior firepower. Pretty easy if you ask me. I even believe that dwarfs are kind of op. Like stupid op. Autoresolve is a bit more balanced in WH2, but in WH1 you could just autoresolve 99% of the fights without even losing any units. Even when you fought against Chaos Armys with basic dwarf units.

Edit: Also, dwarfs are extremely rich. I'am at round 200ish now, Abbadon just entered the map, I have almost 1mio Gold and a 25k income with all the armys I need to protect my borders.

[Dominic]

The Dwarfs are immovable object not the irresistible force.
The basic strategy is a line of warriors in front of a line of crossbows.
The crossbows kill the enemy on the way in, the survivors charge the warriors, who hold, the enemy eventually run and crossbows shoot them in the back as they do.

Add in great weapons, slayers, ect to counter charge as the game progresses.
But fundamentally, shoot hold shoot is the way.

This is tricky in a siege, but it is just a war of attrition and you have vast armour, shoot the gates down and pour through

[Gentlest Giant]

As for sieges, I tend to think about it as splitting the assault in several parts.

1. First off, you have to determine where you will do the final assault. The best places are typically at the far left or far right of the walls. Then you deploy your army at that side, as far away from the towers as you can. This can be everything stacked up in a corner. They are safe there.

2. Next, bring up your artillery. (Skip this phase if you have none.) Place your artillery so that they can fire at the leftmost/rightmost tower closest to you. If you can do this while avoiding return fire, great. If not, bring up an infantry unit or lord in front of the artillery to take all the fire. Shoot at the tower until it's destroyed. Now you should have a much wider "safe zone" where you can deploy units without return fire. It is optional to destroy another tower if you need more space. Also optional is to destroy a wall section or two for the final assault phase.

3. Bring up the quarrellers. Thunderers work too but quarrelers are better at this thing. (Again, skip if you have none.) Find a safe zone where they can stand in front of a wall and fire at the defenders with impunity. Usually this is at a >45 degree angle from your target. Do this until all of your ammunition is out. If you notice the quarrels are hitting mostly walls, try another angle.

3.5. Retreat. Optional phase - if you did not cause enough damage to the defenders to force the assault you can either retreat from the field and get a defeat while taking no losses or wait until the battle timer runs out for a draw with no losses. If you chose the draw you can besiege again and repeat step 1-4. There is a risk that any artillery piece you have might get destroyed if you do this and the lord will get negative traits for failing the capture.

4. Assault phase. Use whatever infantry you have to capture the settlement. Do this however you want, but keep in mind soldiers that climb ladders get exhausted. Quarrelers without ammo are fine for this.

[fmalfeas]

Dawi have a dirty trick for siege battles. They have a dirt cheap T1 unit (with a t2 variant that throws a limited number of AoE fire grenades) that specifically are good at hacking down gates (they're also anti-large, so it can be funny to see the result of the enemy trying to get them off the gate with a monster or cav). The Runesmith heros have Damage Walls as well, so you can have one of them run up and make some breaches, letting you force enemies into melee with unyielding dawi troops.

Dawi hammerers damage multiple enemies with every attack, making them utterly brutal against swarm enemies like orks and skaven.

And Irondrakes...oh man they are /not nice/. The damage is very nice, and the morale damage is off the charts. You get a good line of fire for some irondrakes, and you can basically guarantee a rout in seconds from anything but unbreakable troops...who will die if the irondrakes aren't stopped.

[-Easy-]

Originally posted by Oedipus's Stepdad:

I've mostly played Empire and Bretonnia on the campaign and I've had a decent/fun experience with both. Then I started a dwarf campaign and oh boy it's the most frustrating one I've played yet. It seems that everything the dwarf has the empire has better; better melee attackers, better field artillery, better research tree, and better specialists/agents/heroes. I usually have no problem at all besieging any enemy settlement with an imperial army, but as the dwarfs it's a complete pain from start to finish. Why doesn't the dwarfs have any decent long-range artillery?? What is an ideal late-game army composition that dwarf players use?

Dwarfs are one of the hardest bunch of midgets out there to break i've never had so much pain with orcs going upfront with dwarfs there's no way of beating dwarfs without attacking from the flank goes for every faction.. But once attacked from the flank they kinda are defeated fast..

[Bladiumdragon]

Don't know how to Dawi?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ci6rSA5VEAAgicT.jpg

[Dorch]

its a culture shock to be sure going to a faction that has no cav or monsters, but the Dawi have Da crossbow and the crossbow has the 80 armor stat, also the other Dawi also have the 80 armor. Did i mention nobody in your army has less than 80 armor?

Get 6 quarrellers per army and corner camp/box formation alot, you will win, but you NEED the crossbows to actually get kills.

[Oedipus's Stepdad]

Originally posted by Dorch:

its a culture shock to be sure going to a faction that has no cav or monsters, but the Dawi have Da crossbow and the crossbow has the 80 armor stat, also the other Dawi also have the 80 armor. Did i mention nobody in your army has less than 80 armor?

Get 6 quarrellers per army and corner camp/box formation alot, you will win, but you NEED the crossbows to actually get kills.

Problem is Quarrellers do no AP damage, and by late game every opponent you're facing (most especially chaos) has mostly heavily armored units. I like their extra armor, but I question the usefulness of quarrellers and thunderers in late game.

[fmalfeas]

There's plenty of Dawi that will punch through armor though. Starting with the lowly Miner (though they're awfully squishy for dawi and should generally be used in flank and rear attacks).

And never underestimate what the various slayers will do to some poor enemy.