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[Saber Cherry]

Hello!

I just started a game of DF:2012 after a 3-year leave.  I thought it would be fun to start near a volcano instead of burning millions of trees for fuel!  But...  my primary layers are now igneous or metamorphic.

So, I have a couple questions.

1)  How do I get dwarves to spar?
I've gone almost 2 years, and with (for the last year) 20 dwarves correctly designated to permanent military training and (half of one squad to) patrol, and I have NEVER seen anyone spar (though I did witness 3 accounts of people sparring when examining old logs; mostly it was animals fighting each other).  I set up some archery targets (and set squads to train on them) a few months ago, and my marksdwarves don't use them.  Everyone in my military will only do "individual training", "wait for training", "lead a demonstration", or "watch a demonstration".  Nobody has gained more than 500-ish experience in any military skill during that time (but most have gained 100-300 exp in dodging, shield, armor, and mostly instructor or student).  Most of my military has their primary skills listed as "Rusty".  Granted, I can only give them wooden swords, axes, spears, crossbows, and shields, but sometimes even those skills are getting rusty.

Therefore - when I got attacked by a pack of monkeys, several of my soldiers lost hands, feet, or nerves (which might regrow?).  A goblin thief with a silver dagger demolished one of my long-trained dwarves.  Note that they're somewhat buff, as I have them operate pumps exclusively when they choose not to be on military duty.

The wiki says to organize them in groups of 3 and then maybe they might spar.   Another wiki entry says to organize them in groups of 2 with the same weapon.  I mean, if there is a recipe that works, that's fine, but...  has anyone here actually gotten their dwarves to spar more than 1% of the time?  Is there some trick, like making a 1x2 barracks for each squad of 2 dwarves who have identical equipment?

2)  I started in a volcanic zone, thinking free fuel would be neat!  So I have a volcano.  And igneous rock.  And I made sure there was flux stone so I got.... marble (which is of course metamorphic).  And a little bit of sedimentary...  rock salt?  When I look in the wiki, it says rock salt is sedimentary, and also that sedimentary layers contain metal, but I have yet to encounter any.  Rock salt is the ONLY sedimentary stone I have.  Can it contain (military) metal, or should I restart?  The site finder said there was metal, but I have no idea what kind that is.  I found a small deposit of tetrahedrite in silt, which is not particularly useful.  Can non-sedimentary layers contain iron?  Without a functional military, I have no chance of collecting enough goblinite to do anything useful, which I can only collect using wooden weapons and cage/stone traps (no sand on site).

3)  Furthermore...  is it even useful to play this version - if military training is utterly ineffective - or should I just revert to an earlier one?  And if so, which one?  Ultimately, I want to have a military that can do things other than lose their limbs and work pumps.  I know it was possible in 40d.

[i2amroy]

1) Make squads of two people with the same weapon to encourage sparring, as the wiki states. Larger squads are only useful if there is a large difference between one of the dwarves and the others in skill levels, and only if the skilled dwarf is also a skilled teacher.
1a)Nerves never regrow. Once they are damaged they are damaged forever.
2)Turn tetrahedrite into silver and make silver hammers. Stuff the hammers into weapon traps (especially if they are in a Goblin Grinder). Collect the weapons and armor of the defeated ambushes and use it to outfit your military. Also trade for everything iron and steel. Not just bars, everything. Melt it all down and make weapons out of it.
3)Military training works great, it's just that starting from dwarves who are completely unskilled is fairly difficult (as it would be in real life). In the future a good piece of advice is to embark with a military dwarf or two that also has some points in the teacher skill, and then stick them in a group with 9 unskilled recruits. They will quickly raise the skill of the recruits through demonstrations, at which point you should break the recruits off into 2-man squads in order to promote sparring.

[melphel]

1. Go to your military schedule (m > s) and edit the order for each month they are actively training.  It should say something like "Train 10 minimum" change this to "Train 2 minimum" (e to edit an order then +- to change the amount) having only two dwarfs needed for training increases the likelihood of sparring rather than demonstrations.  You can add another order for the same month (o instead of e) to put on another "Train 2 minimum."  This way you can get the same effect of having a 2 dwarf squad without having to make a ton of squads.  Different weapon types shouldn't matter afaik.

1b. Slightly unrelated, but animals don't spar, they will attack each other or your dwarfs if they are in confined spaces.  Crowded pastures, or too many unpastured animals in a meeting hall will do this.

2. Tetrahedrite ore gives copper and occasionally an additional silver.  Both are weapons grade metals, copper is also armor-worthy.  Copper isn't great compared to iron, but you can still mangle an enemy with it.  The site finder is a bit wonky, things it claims to be metals may not be what we commonly think of as metals.  Rock salt doesn't contain iron veins.  The wiki says the only time iron appears out of sedimentary layers is hematite occasionally showing in igneous layers.  Personally, I would stick it out with copper armor and silver weapons, but that is your call.

3. I kind of like this latest version, but for various reasons.  To put things into some perspective, using the method outlined in (1), I had 6 occurrences of sparring with 12 military dwarves (two squads of 6) over the course of one year.  So...no, they won't be sparring ALL the time (but maybe that's because they are still rookies)

[Saber Cherry]

OK...  thanks for the help!  Particularly the note that rock salt does not contain iron.  If only the site finder would display sand, like it used to!

I'll reorganize my squads and see if I can get any real weapon training done.  Too bad military management is a huge downgrade from prior versions, though.

[doctoxic]

do you have to specifically equip your dwarfs in training with "training" weapons or will they auto use one if its available or doesn;t it make any difference?

thanks

doc

[goblolo]

Too bad military management is a huge downgrade from prior versions, though.

just get used to it. Everybody did.

In your fort, as it was said, you ahve silver and copper which is better than nothing for making weps and armor. Just start with a bunch of axedorfs with silver axes (they seem to be slightly better than copper ones) and a full squad of marksdwarves. State rangers on top of the walls as a support and put your axedorfs in the main gate gap. It'll leave no chance for 1-2 sword/mace gobbo ambushes.
Beware of lashers, they'r cheaters! Better shoot em fom walls.
Avoid fighting crossgobbos in melee - they'll surely cripple some of your dvarves. Better dig moat and set fortifications.

do you have to specifically equip your dwarfs in training with "training" weapons or will they auto use one if its available or doesn;t it make any difference?

They won't auto-switch weapons for training/battle.
i'd recommend you avoid use of training weapons because dwarver cannot harm each others while sparring even with steel axes. At least that didn't happened to me. Wrestling sparring seems to be the only way to damage opponent in training session due to throws.
Only way of using training weapons is to train your squad when you don't have direct acces to metal weps (before 1st caravan arrives i suppose).
The downside of use of training weapons is that your axadorf that has spent 2 years in barracks can stick to his -willow training axe- and then be unhappy to change it to steel one. Another issue is that you have to change weapon from training to battle-grade when ambushed. And if you forget to to that you'll end up with 20 speardwarves with training sticks being massacred by an ambush of 5 swordgoblins.
However, in my last fort i haven't brought a spear on embark, but wanted my dorf to start training in spears. And I gave him a training spear. And unleashed him on louse men (approx. 2 times smaller than dorf). Even with dabbling speardorf and novice fighter he poked to death 2 lousemen quite fast (3-5 strikes on each).

[doctoxic]

thanks

just found that my dwarfs aren't training but then noticed in the squad screen that it says "Inactive, no scheduled order"  BUT i have set up there orders as you described but can't see how to 'activate them'

i thought it might be in the alerts screen where i have 'inactive' and 'active/training' but i can't seem to find a way to use it to set it to active

at the moment i have a green A next to 'inactive'  so i assume this activates 'inactive'
and a green CIV next to 'active/training' - what does CIV mean
i thought i could delete the 'inactive' alert but that doesn't work

so how do i activate my squad to do full time training (i have turned all their labours off)

your very confused

doc

[i2amroy]

Go to the alerts submenu, press up/down to select the desired alert (in this case probably "Active/Training"), press right once and then up/down to choose the squad you want to give the order to, and then hit enter. A green 'A' should appear next to the squad name to let you know if you've done it right.

As for the [CIV] it tells you what the current civilian alert is set to, which is used in conjunction with burrows to create "safe zones" that you can order all civilians to go to in the event of an emergency.

[goblolo]

to activate your military go to alerts (you have already found it by yourself))), then select active/training in the left column (DO NOT 'enter' it, just select with up/down buttont), then go right to the central column (squad list) and 'enter' squads to activate them.
If you 'enter' in the left column (you did it, i know) you'l set 'CIV'ilian alert to inactive or active/training. It will apply on every civilian dorf (hovever they wont train) except your military (thus useless for setting dorfs to train).
But civ alerts have a great usage in burrowing in extreme situations. Imagine, you have 80 dorfs civilians. When attacked, you want them to go to the burrow. then you should add them manually there, ignoring military dorfs.
Other way, you can go to alert screen, select (not 'enter'ing) Active/training, then go right to the left column (burrows) and 'enter' desired burrow. It will be associated with civilian alert. Then, if you set civ alert to 'inactive', your farmers and woodcutters will be free to go everywhere they want, but when you activate Active/training civ alert it'll have the same effect of adding them to selected burrow.

ninjaed my answer!!!

[doctoxic]

thanks guys - very much appreciated

[doctoxic]

damn dwarves still don't seem to be training - how do i know that they are (or have been)?

[AutomataKittay]

damn dwarves still don't seem to be training - how do i know that they are (or have been)?

Have them assigned barracks, and make sure it's set right. They'll train on their own when they're not eating, drinking or sleeping.

You can see by them getting more skilled, but that's more subtle

[doctoxic]

[/quote]

Have them assigned barracks, and make sure it's set right.
[/quote]

I have a barracks which they seem to go to - when you say assign do you mean they have to be individually assigned somehow?  i used the a key and chose the 2 dwarfs i wanted to train (squad settings already checked) but it didn't seem to do anything and no visual clue i could see that they had been assigned - how can i check they are really assigned

I have set it too ZTIQ - is this OK?

[AutomataKittay]

Yeah, it's squad assigned to a barrack, they need one to train in first place and being left to their own device with schedule on training ( which's the default )

Sounds like you just need to let them do their stuff, you can check their jobs ( not in dwarf therapist ) and see if they're doing something, if they're in the barrack, they're usually doing something.

[Jetman123]

You need to set up the barracks room and assign it so that that squad is given permission to train in there. Make a room from a bed, give it barracks status, and then use + and - to select the squad you want in the menu that should appear below it on the right panel. Press T (or Z, I, or Q for the various permissions that are also available - sleeping, individual equipment and squad equipment respectively) to give them permission to train in that area. Make sure it's a big enough room, at least 4x4.

Seriously, folks, this should have been the first thing you checked. Military dwarves will train even without being scheduled to do so (using individual combat drills, when idle), but if they're not training _at all_ it's because the barracks isn't set up right. The scheduling is only to set up group training times. You all should know this! (No offense, of course.)