Spears vs Swords vs Hammers...

I pretty much always use spear, Krax or not. I use a front line (3-4) of spear chargers (on wargs) and a backline of bowmens (also on warg - also chargers, but never move). I still haven't seen anything survive this set up. Hell, Vetrar died in one round. Heh.

I use always spears or bows but with three exceptions:

1. Heroes (you are a lot more likely to find a great sword than a great pike/lance)

2. My first unit if I am not playing with "Defensive" and if I need it for tying up enemies and absorbing damage. (i.e. I'm playing a wussy sovereign like Procipinee or Ceresa)

3. If do not have "Defensive", but have "Lucky" and am building an "Elusive" unit.  Then I want the shield for the dodge bonus.

I love the defensive trait, so I am almost always going with spear and shield.  But if not, I still build a lot of spearmen.  Now, if I don't have deensive, or if I just want the best no resources unit I can build, I will go with a mace.

Oh, and I rarely build units with swords.  Only if I have Assassins or wanderlust and have those advanced swords.

I use clubs/maces/hammers against elementals those crags and earthe shrills and earth elementals and those crystal snakes. All of them deadly, lots of hitpoints but against militia ... punch punch dead, they are even bashed from time to time for a added trick.

Swords? use them for defense and never attack you get +5/+10/+15 on defense, get hit for 5 hits, retaliate for 30, good exchange.

ice staffs? yes they are faster in the tech, but ... they need crystal, and I want crystal for initiative belts

axes ... ponder ponder ... yeah axes are a mistake, 

Yea, axes.  They are weapons I use the absolute least.  I even use those monk staves more than those.  The two handed axe only has an attack of 15 with backswing. A spear has 11 at the same level, and has armor piercing and no counter attacks.  A broad sword has bonus to initiative, 12 attack, and counterattack.  A mace is slow as shit, but has 16 damage, and requires no resources and is one handed.

Pretty much what he said.

Except exchange nr 2 with the following: I sometimes build early custom designed units made specifically to help sovereign or hero(es) to mob up monsters, they consist of: "Staffs, weakness trait".
Later on I use Leather armour + Spears.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

axes are good if your falling behind in tech a bit and you need the extra chance to hit, otherwise, meh.

mind you, the fire bonus on the fire axes are nice.

the hunting short sword irritates me. it arrives too late on the magic tree to be useful.

i find spears to be worthless since you can't use a shield with them. On frontline troops, the extra defense is critical. The fact that they penetrate armour is nice, but i tend to use spells and staff-mages if someone starts spamming heavily armoured troops at me.

axes and maces i don't really find very good either, due to the initiative penalty. their other bonuses are nice, but they don't make up for low initiative.  For me, the sword is the only choice. counterattacks are amazing for normal troops, and the initiative bonus only compounds things.

perhaps it's just my style. i tend to focus on ending battles before the enemy gets a turn, if i can. or at least, before they get close enough to land a hit. high initiative units, combined with slowing spells, allow me to dominate the battlefield.

For my lastest game I decided to not to play sovereign concentrating on magic as I usually do and play Gilden instead. 

Since Gilden gets great hammers I used them for my melee troops.

What I noticed was that I most likely would have been better off with swords at the same level.  While hammers do more damage per hit, between their initiative penalty and weight they attack 2-3 times less often than a sword (with its initiative bonus and counter attack).

I made two heavy armored foot troops where the only difference was mace or board sword and they had 8 initiative and 4 attack difference.

Nakisisa

First off, weapon and armor tiers:

Tier 0:  clubs and staffs (what you start the game with), no armor.

Tier 1:  Spears/Short Spears, Daggers, Axes, Warhammers, leather armor, wooden shields.

Tier 2:  Boar/Winged Spears, Shortswords, Broadswords, Maces, Battle Axes, Chainmail or Light Plate, Kite Shields

Tier 3: Pikes/Short Pikes, Longswords, Greatswords, Mauls, Masterwork Chainmail or Plate, Tower Shields

Against leather-armored opponents, just about any weapon of a given tier is about as good as any other weapon in that tier (exception: daggers - never use these against anything if you can avoid it, that +4 initiative isn't worth dealing half the damage an axe would, though it might be on par with the warhammer due to the low initiative).

Against any form of chain armor, you're better off with piercing or blunt weapons than with cutting weapons.

Against any form of plate armor, all weapons of the same tier as the armor perform more or less equally again.

The real test comes in how long you can make use of a given weapon. The basic spear will outperform any similar-tier weapon against most later game armors, and will perform about as well as broadswords against any form of chain (and better than shortswords), despite these weapons being a tier better than the basic spear. Basic spears will never outperform maces, but will outperform warhammers against anything superior to chainmail (this includes light plate, since light plate is better against blunt attacks). Thus, by merely researching Training, you've gained access to a weapon whose maximum damage will only degrade from 4.9 against leather to 1.8 against plate and a tower shield. Other weapons degrade much more rapidly - broadswords can deal at most 2.88 damage against a chainmail and kite shield armored unit, while basic spears can deal up to 2.72 damage to that same unit, and cost far less. If you face masterwork chainmail-armored units, basic spears actually outperform broadswords (maximum damage is 2.45 for spears against unshielded MW Chain-armored units, while for broadswords maximum damage is 2.25). Against plate, broadswords fare somewhat better, having a maximum damage of about 2.77 against plate and a tower shield as compared to basic spears' maximum of 1.81 (boar/winged spears, however, have a maximum damage against this target of 3.90, and maces can deal up to 2.91, despite plate having twice as much defense against blunt attacks as against cutting, though you'll make more attacks with the broadsword than with either the mace or the boar spear).

Thus, for trained melee units, I would recommend using spears, because:

1. There are no armors in the game currently that specialize against piercing attacks

2. The damage capabilities don't degrade as much as with normal weapons over the course of the game

3. You aren't risking a powerful counter-attack with each attack your troops make

4. Spear-type weapons generally perform at least as well as cutting weapons against plate armors, and at least as well as blunt weapons against chain armors (accounting for the initiative penalty of blunt weapons).

5. Archers don't act that frequently, and bow damage is pitiful against armored targets (for reference, Yew Longbows, the best bow not unlocked by the 'Archers' faction trait that you can give a trained unit, has a maximum damage ranging from 1.33 (full plate and a tower shield) to 1.88 (masterwork chain without a shield) against late game armors, while against the same armors the basic spear has a maximum damage ranging from 1.81 (full plate and a tower shield) to 2.45 (masterwork chain without a shield)). Since you can deal roughly 50% more damage with a beginning of the game spear than you can with an end of the game bow, why are we concerned about arrow fire? Granted, against start-of-the-game armors, the damage balance is reversed, but if you've researched up to Yew Longbows you should have been able to research at least the Boar Spear, which can out-damage the Yew Longbow against Leather Armor by roughly 20%, and the relative performance only gets better for boar spears with improving armors.

So, yes, in my opinion there is little reason to bother with any weapons other than spears for trained troops, especially since spears are among the lightest weapons in the game (most one-handed swords have the same weight, but you'll probably also have a shield with those, and they may be exposed to counter-attacks, one-handed blunt weapons and the axe are heavier, all two handed weapons that are not spears weigh at least twice what spears do).

Spears are also the only melee weapon with a consistent upgrade path. Axes and swords use the same path and thus you can't really upgrade them.

And one-handed blunt weapons disappear after tier 2, unless you play with Great Hammers, while two-handed blunt weapons don't exist on tiers one and two, and I would hope that you can't upgrade a staff to a maul, as those are completely different styles of weapon despite both dealing blunt damage. Also, why would you be using possibly the worst weapon available for trained units all the way up to when you researched the technology for Mauls?

All this being said, there is an advantage for blunt weapons, despite their initiative penalties:  many monsters - particularly rock anythings, earth elemental type units, and Ophidians - have significantly lower defense against blunt attacks than against cutting and piercing attacks (last time I checked, these creatures had no defense against blunt damage, but 5, 10 or more defense against cutting and piercing damage, but that may have changed - the last time I checked was in 0.990, I think).

You can.

Spears have even more advantages than joeball123 listed in his very thorough post:

6. Their weight is constant (10) across the board, so you can upgrade them without worrying about messing up your carefully tuned build.

7. The high end spear (lightning pike) is head and shoulders above all high end weapons, once you add the level bonuses.  I seldom lose units, and in pretty much every game I've taken to the victory screen, I have upgraded at least one (sometimes many) level 10+ unit to lightning pikes.

Sure, it costs 400-700 gold to upgrade units (depending on size) but a four men level 14 unit deals 80 lighting damage that almost no one resists. And that's on top of the very respectable 60 or so piercing damage.

Also, by the time you have arcane weapons, your units come out with a few levels under their belts.

Nicely written. Thank you.

In Defense of the Dagger:

Daggers can be pretty good if used appropriately.  They have some nice attributes: they are weightless, do 6 cutting damage, have +4 init, +4 crit, have counterattack, andcost 1 metal and 4 production.  That is less expensive labor wise than any weapon but the basic staff.

I used them quite effectively my last game by creating a fast (+2 init, +10 labor), finesse (+3 damage vs. lower init, +6 labor), lithe (+10 dodge, -5 weight cap, +6 labor) unit (I call mine 'Courtesans'). I recommend no armor to reduce production cost, which is one of the biggest strengths. 1metal 51labor.  If you don't care about being able to beat heroes you could drop the 'fast' to pump them out faster (or drop in fury to make them more of a glass cannon).  Your typical tier1 spear/hammer/axe unit with full leathers will cost twice as much (before traits).  It will have less DPS too.

The vast majority of other trained units, and most early game heroes, won't match its initiative (26), so the +3 damage bonus from finesse is nearly always in effect, putting the single hit damage on par with axes - but you also get a 1/20 chance to crit, have counterattack, and get to move/attack/counterattack about 50% more than your up-armored front line spear/axe/hammer units.  Their most effective use is tearing through the low init hammer, archer, and mage units. They also hold up well vs. low level (low accuracy) units and mobs.  Keep them away from other counter attackers, especially if they have respectable accuracy.  When I have lots of extra wargs laying around I start tossing them on those too for the cheap additional dodge and init (warg is +10 dodge, +2 init, no additional labor cost).  Usually I have less wargs than horses though, and while not quite as good, the +2 move from a horse in combat helps close on the weaker less armored units right away, you'll just be a little more likely to die.

ps. It looks like the +2 lightning damage per level was replaced on the lightning pike with a flat +3 bonus (for a total of 19 damage).  It isn't as ungodly strong as it used to be.

Wow.  I had not noticed.  I guess I'll look a bit harder at Lighting hammers.

I am not very experienced yet (only my first game going on) but so far I found that initiative seems really important as it allows you to attack more often of course but also move more often which gives you more tactical options and increases you survivibility.

Because of that I stayed away from Mace type weapons and went with swords mainly.

But since I don't like to limit my options too much, I would like to know what are good situations to use slow blunt weapons ?

Sloppy!
Was even opening a game to say the same except in my current game the lightning pike (from queen porcupine's side) says "+13 Pierce, +6 Lightning damage"

Generally like the things I see in this post, would love if someone made a spreadsheet with the "vanilla" weapons and armours.
(would like to look at it)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Blunt weapons are very useful in combat against Earth Elementals, Earth Shrills, Ophidian and certain Golems, like the Obsidian Golem, because they have no defense against blunt damage.

The only good reason to use a mace is that it doesn't require metal or crystal.  Or if you are Gilden and have the one handed sledge that does 28 damage.  That's a lot of damage one-handed.  

The reason for spears:

1. Safe and can never be countered. This allows them to charge in and attack almost anything without worry (only need to worry about fire aura).

2. Armor penetration. The AI tend to think armor is the best thing in the world (there isn't a sustained effort on dodge), and spears negates this big time. If you play against AI with bonuses, you need the armor penetration or you'll be clinking all the time. I don't even bother with Lightning Pikes anymore after the nerf (it was bit too much IMO), but just your regular pikes x 7 does more than fine if you are pumping them out from a fire enchanted fortress.

The reason for bows:

1. Sniping spellcasters. Self Explanatory. Once you build the strike garrison on your fortress, a back line of archer can decimate the enemy before they move.

2. You can't have too many front line units or you'll be wasting all your movement running around your own units.

3. People are underestimate archers way too much, especially a well designed one (not your crappy generic archers). Kiting mounted archers with an emphasis on initiative is a nightmare for pretty much every melee troop.

Oh yea, archers and magic staff troops are great.

Are mounted archers better at some task than mounted mages? Or is the benefit of archers more the cost-to-benefit ratio (aka no crystal needed)