How come the Dwarves become so powerful now?

[Vampiresoap]

Their armies rival the armies of Mordor in 3.1

[Keyser_Soze]

They always have been. Of all the good factions, the dwarves were perhaps the only AI faction to actually do well. Due to Mordor, OOTMM and OOG crushing the Silvan elves, rohan and eriador, late-campaign, the dwarves always ended up dominating the anduin vale, eriador, mirkwood and of course, the misty mountains and mountains of gundabad. I even saw the dwarves pushing into formerly rohan territory and Dagorlad once before mordor pushed them back (no idea what happened after that, quit playing as campaign was getting dull).

The dwarves always do pretty well. My experience of 3.1 is that dwarves do worse- in my gondor/reunited kingdom (baron samedi's submod) campaign, the dwarves have lost anzulzibar-dum, and have only expanded as far as gundabad, which is honestly pretty poor.

[Pinkie Pie]

The dwarves do so well as an ai because their armies have the best auto-resolve stats.

[Mikail Mengsk]

The dwarves do so well as an ai because their armies have the best auto-resolve stats.

This.

Good numbers, good armor value, the fact that infantry>cavalry/archers in autoresolve.

[Gigan]

Hmm in my campaign the dwarves are usually idle not expanding past Dains Halls

[WARdrobe]

They expand slower in my 3.1 games than in previous versions to be honest

[IHV]

I dont get it, dwarves have the best auto-resolve stats but are so pisspoor when player controls them. They should have superior armour etc but hand to hand combat with orcs, snagas , Rhun, Harad etc they are equal. They kill as many as they lose. In my experience dwarves are the weakest during battle by far amongst the good factions. And that is with medium battle settings... i usuallyplay with VH battle settings.
Unless KK added some trickery that instead your stats are weakend when you are not playing on VH.

[iffi]

I dont get it, dwarves have the best auto-resolve stats but are so pisspoor when player controls them. They should have superior armour etc but hand to hand combat with orcs, snagas , Rhun, Harad etc they are equal. They kill as many as they lose. In my experience dwarves are the weakest during battle by far amongst the good factions. And that is with medium battle settings... i usuallyplay with VH battle settings.
Unless KK added some trickery that instead your stats are weakend when you are not playing on VH.

They get more losses than other good factions because of extended melee. To shorten it, use merc cavalry and other flanking units. If you can rout them early, you can get those elven 10:1 kill:loss ratios. I had great success with an all-melee army supplemented with one or two cavalry units.

I think one reason the dwarves of 3.1 seem more inactive is the new AI unit handling system. Less units in general, unless they come from garrison scripts. And the dwarves are not in a position to get many 'free' units that way. They have to produce all the units the normal way.
Also, the map area their units are traveling is huge. No doubt it also leads to AI difficulties in deciding which way to go.

[IHV]

I am just surprised that face on with another infantry unit, even with skirmishers they cannot beat them as you would assume a heavily armored dwarf will do. In open field yeah i use dale cavalry.

[Khay]

OOG needs a nuclear strike option to calm their conquering ardour down
It seems however to me that they don't steamroll them as easily in 3.1 than in 2.4, but i didn't played many long campains yet to be sure of that.

[traxx91]

I play on hard/hard and my plain Dwarven Warriors own every other infantry unit. A single unit of Dwarven Halberdmen can even kill a whole unit of trolls.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Custom battle, second unit did nothing, I use it to make sure my general will not die.

[Seleukos_I.]

Of course they are good against heavy armoured troops. But tbh I would prefer if the number of Dwarves per unit would be lowered and their stats would be increased.
Imo they are loosing too many men against pretty crappy infantry.

[Khay]

I don't know, from their stats it's pretty clear to me and properly represented that they are better warriors, stronger, better equiped, and rarer than human warriors, if not in number of warrior per units, then in number of units per effective stack. But are the Middle Earth Dwarves supposed to be on par with High Elven in terms of military rarity and awesomeness? I'm not so sure.

[Ultra123]

they are, except not in experience, hell they even make elves armour....

[Mhaedros]

High Elves make better armours, weapons and are better fighters in general

[Ultra123]

agree better fighters in general but i disagree with the armour point.

[Mhaedros]

Lorewise I'm right, your wrong

[IrishBlood]

Lorewise I'm right, your wrong

the ancient elven smiths of eriegion perhaps, but they arnt around any more, and rivendel isnt exactly know for its vast manufacturing complex

[Burk]

lorewise dwarves are handling steel better, even better then the noldor did!!

[k/t]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=511425
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=512672