Are scimitars especially good weapons?

I'm level 11, and recently defeated a mob of assassin/posse Redguards who all had scimitars. I took one for my weapon collection. The game said it was worth half what a knife's worth.

But I see it also says it does 18 damage, which is what a steel two-handed greatsword does. The table of weapon damages here shows daedric and dragonbone swords as the best, which I've not even seen, doing 14 and 15. I have a steel war axe which does 15 +15 fire if I keep feeding it souls, but as base damage, 18 seems extremely good, no?

Apparently I'm missing something. It can't be that the super-fancy buildable weapons are basically worse than using one of these $5 scimitars, can it? Is it a fine-crafted scimitar, but just not showing that it's especially good except by the damage? So if I had a good crafting skill I could also get a steel sword to 18, and I wouldn't be able to improve the scimitar? The wiki says a steel bar can be used to improve a scimitar, but I don't see that it lists scimitar base damage anywhere.

Do all non-magic swords (including scimitars) in Skyrim vary in performance only by damage?

Where does the scimitar fall on the list of good one-handed swords?

Solution 1:

The Scimitar's base damage is 11, putting it between a Dwarven Sword and a Glass Sword. When viewed in game all weapon stats are shown modified by your One-handed skill and perks, even while the item is in achest or on the ground. If you were comparing it to a Glass Sword in game rather than on the wiki, you'd see that the Glass Sword is better.

(Note that if you've barely started the Smithing line and can't improve a Glass Sword as much as a Steel Sword, which is what a Scimitar improves as, an improved Scimitar might be better than a Glass Sword until you get the Glass Smithing perk.)

Solution 2:

Acutally, a scimitar is only for aesthetic purposes. If you get it on initial levels like 10-30, you have the strongest weapon for that time period. Note I capped at 30. It is cause after that, glass weapons become available as random loot. You can get a glass as early as lv 20 as random loot. Obviously they are better than scimitars. But for a character like a battlemage, they are very good weapons to proceed with.