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[Khenal]

I am terrible at having a military.  I am militerrible, if you will, but I want to have a military and have a fort last more years than I have thumbs.  I've used a danger room, which works wonders for melee, but I want a good ranged squad (and to find a way to legitimately have good melee fighters).  So, what tips are there for somebody like me?

[goblolo]

I am terrible at having a military.  I am militerrible, if you will, but I want to have a military and have a fort last more years than I have thumbs.  I've used a danger room, which works wonders for melee, but I want a good ranged squad (and to find a way to legitimately have good melee fighters).  So, what tips are there for somebody like me?

About rangers: at first I usually make tons of wooden/bone bolts and make a squad out of non-skilled dorfs. I don't use archery targets because it's just a waste of bolts (you can if you have a volcano and a layer of magnetite/tetrahedrite/galena etc.). Targets give 1/4 ranged XP as live combat does. So, after making my first bolts I start hunting wildlife. Look at this deer/panda/boar/turkey! They want to be stuffed with bolts! Let's go kill em! It provides me with meat and bones for more "training" bolts.
Also, a giant kea swarm makes good target practice!
I always make walls and fortifications to shoot invaders. While my crossbowdorfs are weak at shooting, I dont put them under risk of being killed through fortification by lucky crossgoblin, thus letting them shoot only melee invaders.

About melees: You can make small squads of 2-3 dorfs (with similar weapons) and put them to train in barracks. Don't forget to set them active in 'm'ilitary -> 'a'lerts. It is much longer than dangerrooming them, but they definitely make progress! You just have to be sure they grab weapon you want them to master. If you have spare dwarves and legendary dining room with waterfall, you can send your fresh recruits directly to battle. those are lucky to survive will raise their skills quickly.

[saltmummy626]

my method on melee fighters is just to assign them and hope.  I am also militerrible. but, ranged fighters arent nearly as hard to get/train. simply draft all your hunters and rangers to the military archery squad and make sure you have lots of bolts. they will train themselves while they do their job ogf hunting animals. srsly, its great. I had a squad of near legendary archers simply because when they weren't fighting the goblins they were taking potshots at local wildlife in an attempt to get meat for the fort. I fill my squads too. 10 dorfs per. thinks about it. ranged combat in DF is nothing to smirk at, a squad of 10 highly skilled archers will mow down tons of enemies. just keep dogs and a few melee dwarves on the front line to distract foes from the guys using the death cannons that are crossbows. only thing you gotta watch out for are enemy archers.

[AutomataKittay]

Ranged fighters to me is pretty much giving every buggers that you can spare crossbows ( even bone or wood ones ) and shield, pile them up in one spot and laugh as enemies turns into pincushions even with bone bolts. I don't uses archery range too often, other than to get them to practice occasionally ( I heard it was broken in current version, I'm using 34.09 ).

Ranged isn't good at all against non-organic enemies, though, nor ones that can't feel pain. Hammerdwarves don't deals with them well either!

[Drazinononda]

The "equip the marksdwarves and tell them to shoot stuff" method works quite well. In fact, I just raised my whole marksdwarf squad by a few levels each of Archery and Crossbowdwarf by stationing them in the tower when there were Moth Men on the map. My turkey farm churns out more bolts than I know what to do with so that isn't a problem.

Most recently, I fended off a quite pitiful human siege with this squad. They fired a few hundred bolts and only managed to kill the leader's Giant Swallow and chip bones in one leg and one arm before the longlegs ran off. Pansy humans.

[Khenal]

My hunters have a bad habit of getting themselves killed while hunting.  If I set a bunch to hunting at once, will they tend to stick together, or will they spread out?

[nbp]

My hunters have a bad habit of getting themselves killed while hunting.  If I set a bunch to hunting at once, will they tend to stick together, or will they spread out?

They'll tend to spread out.  If there's dangerous stuff out there, they'll get torn up.

Training your marksdwarves by hunting works great on certain embarks, and is a terrible idea on others.  My current embark is about half and half terrifying (with clouds of toxic gas, and common undead giant mosquitos, undead giant magpies, undead crowmen, etc, etc, as well as reanimation of anything that dies there) and half joyous wilds (which means I've got undead unicorns wandering the surface now).  You'd better bet that I don't have anyone set to hunting.  No one who isn't clad in full steel armor is allowed out through the heavily defended gates.

Another option is to use cage traps to catch lots of incoming goblins, kobolds, hostile wildlife, etc.  Pit the captives into a hole in the ground.  Have your marksdwarves stand around it and shoot in at them.  To stretch the training out, don't strip your captives before pitting them.  If you want, you can make this a little fancier, with fortifications, walls to prevent spooking the civilians, a hatch to drop the captives through, but you can get away with a hole in the ground that doesn't have stairs or ramps leading out.

[thegoatgod_pan]

When I started out it was awful, now I can comfortably set up a military in a year. If you are new to the matter what really helps is A. danger rooms and B. turning off invasions and letting your squad train for a few years and building a perimeter fence with a few closed, tight corner areas that can be used to funnel and ambush goblins. Make decent armor and good weapons, make everyone train until they blink the blink of the legendary.

When you turn invasions back on expect a bunch of goblin ambushes to appear in succession in a season or two. I think they build up over the years.

[Sutremaine]

Bring skilled dwarves and get them started early (I aim for the end of Granite). In previous .31 to .34 versions I'd go with a little Teacher, a little Student, and Proficient in Dodging / Armour Use / Shield Use each, but since the hauling update it's really important to get Armour User skill so that you can give your fresh-faced military a full coat of metal without it slowing them down too much. So everyone gets that now. Perhaps next time I'll slap some Teaching and Dodging on a dwarf intended for civilian life, and keep them in the military just long enough for them to pass on the Dodge skill. It's consistently the first thing that gets demonstrated on embark.

The military dwarves usually help out with mining or herbalism for the initial setup, when you need seven working bodies. It gives them a civilian profession, and in the case of mining trains up a skill they can use with weapons.

I don't really deal with ranged squads beyond giving everyone crossbows. Generally by the time I allow dwarves to face ranged squads on open ground they don't get hit at all. Before that point, LOS is restricted so that goblin and dwarf don't see each other before they're very nearly in melee range, and I wait for the goblins to come to me. Makes cleanup a lot easier too.

[LittleJP]

In my last fort, I had advanced to the point where every non-essential dwarf was drafted into a ranged squad and given a set of leather armor over their clothes and a crossbow. This proved incredibly devastating when backed up by a strong core of melee fighters in sharp corners. By stationing my dwarves in a small bend in walls, this lessened the impact of ranged goblins if they are close to getting butchered by the melee dwarves, while the rain of bolts slowed everything else down. Un fortunately, I wasn't able to test this on a larger scale as I accidentally swept part of the fortress into the caverns through a cave in while simultaneously penetrating the aquifer.

[fourpotatoes]

Controlling the battlefield is an important part of an effective military: with the right terrain and a little luck, green dwarves can hold off a horde of goblins, but under the wrong circumstances goblins can massacre your veteran soldiers. Make sure you meet the enemy at a place of your choosing.

I recommend arranging your walls and tunnels to force the enemy to meet your melee forces in a narrow corridor, where you can best negate their numerical advantage and prevent your dwarves from being surrounded. A path that twists before it reaches the point you've selected to fight will reduce the advantage of enemy archers because they won't be able to shoot at your troops without closing to melee range. It'll also reduce the problem of single dwarves running off after the first goblin they see and getting surrounded and cut down far from your defenses. Twists after the battle area help you to stage reserves out of sight of the enemy and get your medics back behind cover quickly when they come out after wounded. A guard animal out front will give you some advance warning of attacks.

Before committing melee troops to battle, I recommend assembling them out of sight of the enemy to give stragglers time to catch up. Alternately, you can use the military schedule and Defend Burrows order to have them go to a burrow you define. This is also a good workaround to no longer being able to tell dwarves not to chase fleeing enemies.

A balcony that overlooks the battle zone is a good place to put your marksdwarves where they can provide supporting fire without exposing themselves to danger. Even untrained recruits will help here. Position your marksdwarves so that they shoot down the long axis of the attackers, providing enfilading fire.

A tower for marksdwarves to use outside your defenses can also be effective. You'll need to keep your marksdwarves right up against the fortifications, so I recommend a one-tile-wide path between the fortifications and a wall backing them; alternately, you can use Defend Burrows orders to keep them up against the fortifications. As long as you're not facing enemy archers, an open platform atop the tower is also a great place to put them. You'll want to bring them down from the platform if marksgoblins show up and down from the tower if facing elite marksgobins, but otherwise they'll be safe and sound.

I've had issues with hunters, so I prefer to turn off hunting for all my marksdwarves and send them (with melee troops as backup) on paramilitary hunting expeditions using squad-level station commands. It's a good way to get them some basic training, and it means they have backup if things go wrong. I keep an eye on the unit list, and if there's anything tasty or annoying up top, out the marksdwarves come. I try to avoid fighting anything tougher than ordinary wildlife away from the safety of my fortifications, but if I must, I deploy ranged and melee troops in support of each other and try to use the terrain to my advantage.

I draft everyone who shows up with military skills, but those who also have valuable civilian skills end up assigned to reserve squads that I only employ if things are looking grim. I build a barracks near the entrance and set it so that all my squads (including marksdwarves, if I have no archery targets) can train there. I don't have to touch the alerts to have dwarves  go there and practice when they don't have anything else to do, and it keeps their military skills from rusting away. The barracks is also a good staging point.

Anyone I don't know what to do with gets handed a crossbow. As long as you keep them out of melee and don't let them get pincushioned, marksdwarf quantity makes up for quality and makes things easier for your melee forces.

Once you've got the population to support a full-time militia, other folks' advice on training is quite good. I rotate melee troops into training if I get around to it, but I usually don't do more for marksdwarves than setting up a few archery ranges that they can use when off-duty. Quantity and effective deployment is usually good enough for me.

[Drazinononda]

Another defensive design I've had success with in the past is a cross or T as a wartime entrance to my fort. For example:

Code: [Select]

        OOOO       
        O..O       
        O..O         
        O..O         
        O..O         
 OOOOOO O..O       
OO^^^OOOO..OOOOOOOOO
..^#^..............[===]
...#...............[===]
..^#^..............[===]
OO^^^OOOO..OOOOOOOOO
 OOOOOO O..O       
        O..O         
        O..O         
        O..O         
        O..O       
        OOOO       

I usually build this as a separate entrance, generally a tunnel under the main entryway to the fort. The bridge on the right is the gate to the outside; when a siege shows up (admittedly, this design is less effective against ambushes without extra planning) I lock up the main gate(s) on the surface, station my military in the ambush hall shown here -- marksdwarves behind the fortifications, melee soldiers in the north and south arms -- and open the lower gate. The goblins path through the lower hall into the interior of the fort, come under fire when the reach the bridge, and are charged by the shock troops at the intersection. With a good number and/or skilled marksdwarves, a good number of the invaders can be incapacitated before they reach the intersection, allowing even moderately trained melee troops to defend effectively.

The arms help keep your melee dwarves from charging prematurely; the fortifications protect your marksdwarves from any crossbowgoblins that come in. The entryway can be closed off between squads to mediate the flow of invaders into the trap, or to keep routed enemies from retreating. Likewise, the back end can be closed off with a bridge to allow a second level of protection in case your military gets overrun.