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[DarkMagnus]

Fun in the purely dwarven sense of the word. I've been playing DF after a long break, mainly because I finally built a computer beefy enough to play with a giant map and over 100 dwarves. Now that I've learned the basics of the military and built a pretty successful few baronies and counties, I kinda wanted to build a purely military fort out in the middle of nowhere. Preferably a self-sustaining one where I could slaughter all the traitors and get sieged left and right. Anyone have any advice or challenges or seeds or anything like that?

Also, what's up with training these days? I had a bunch of peasants I conscripted into a militia dick around and do nothing for like two years in my last fort. I got them to stay active and train regularly, but they barely made it past dabbling. Do you absolutely have to have a skilled dwarf leading them? At what point do the returns on sparring and drilling actually add up to fighting skill?

[Loud Whispers]

1. Peasants without skills, especially ones that don't spar, or have a skilled Dwarf leading them will stagnate in skills until they reach at least novice.
2. Sparring and good teachers really add up the skills. Constant actual combat is often the best way to kick start recruit training though.
3. Try using smaller squads.


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As for the fort, ensure you have at least 1-10 civilians devoted to keeping the fortress full of alcohol and plants.
Embarking in a map with no metals is great for a pure military fort.
Starting with at least two military Dwarves with proficient teaching skills - long term great investment. Just remember to rotate your legendary teachers around to the leading positions of green squads.

[Triaxx2]

I tend to have two capable teachers, and have their students move squads, rather than the other way around. That way I have training squads, and combat squads.

[Oaktree]

Might want to try out the Fortress Defense mod as well.  More races that siege you, and some that are quite tough to defeat.

[peskyninja]

Having iron and flux will allow you to have a steelgasm, my most sucessful and militarized forts where built on top of huge deposits of iron and flux.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Fun or fun?

Fun--Don't build any traps. Rely on war animals as your first line of defense. Only import metal gear, everything home-made needs to be wood, bone, or shell. Kill human caravans and offer elven ones wood before killing all but one of them. Refuse to wall yourself in. Expose yourself to all three cavern layers. Etc.

Not Fun, but fun--Generate a high-minerals world, locate a place with clay and plenty of minerals, embark with two militia dwarves that have skills in teaching, axe/speardwarfship, and a point in civilian skills; optionallly add a hunter/marksdwarf. Get plenty of clay and begin building fortifications and walls and stuff with it. Locate ores and magma ASAP. If you have both iron and flux, prepare your steelmaking industries but don't actually start churning out gear yet. Meanwhile, recruit any migrants without useful skills into either the militia (under your two Starting Seven dwarves) or the Builders' League (which, ideally, will also be a backup wrestling/misc-weapons squad). Any dwarves with military skills in the militia will be put into a squad using their weapon of choice and lead by the dwarf with the highest teaching and military skills, in that order; all others will be put into squads, starting with those under three dwarves and then adding to spear-, axe-, marks-, and optionally hammer-dwarves. Once your gear and wildlife coincide so that the dwarves can kill the wildlife without too much danger, send them out to kill the wildlife for food and preactice. Optionally, use a danger room to speed things up. By winter, choose a few dwarves with proper personality traits (like liking to help others and being impulsive) to be your medical staff--they are exempt from almost all non-medical work, perhaps letting them haul non-dangerous stuff during times of peace. Also (optionally) locate some similarly-endowed dwarves in the militia, and put them into a special "rescue" squad. They get decent armor and a shield, as well as perhaps a weapon, and have most labors disabled. Once there are some wounded, they should rush out to save the wounded; make sure they also have feeding wounded and perhaps some basic medical skills enabled. You'll probably start getting thieves and perhaps ambushes, so start churning out gear before the second spring. Improvise from there; no plan survives contact with the enemy, and the enemy's well on its way.

[Sutremaine]

Civilian skills on embark aren't necessary for military dwarves. If the area you're in is full of plants, get them gathering until they go Novice and use the resulting plants to kickstart the farming and brewing. Furnace Operating is a good default skill if you can't or won't gather plants. Smelting coal into coke gives crazy amounts of XP due to the number of items produced, and coke is always a useful thing to have around. You could have them do two jobs each to push them to Novice, or let them go nuts for a couple of weeks while you make an indoors area for the barracks furniture.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I just give 'em novice in butchery and tanning. Simple professions, not much call for them early on until the militia's done being a military and can clean those fuzzy animals up for dinner.