So i just had the upteenth fort where dwarves never show any improvement despite constant combat drill and being armored entirely in steel or iron with quality weapons..it takes years to get to even competent.
As others have said, use smaller squads to encourage sparring. Or set schedules to train a minimum of 2 dwarves each month. My latest fort had no trouble getting a semi-decent fighting force together before the first ambushes; I had about thirty soldiers, most of which were well above competent with their weapons of choice. Getting dwarves to progress from dabbling to competent takes less than a year if you're smart about your scheduling and squad sizes. And I don't even use danger rooms.
I'm also sick of seeing dwarves get punched in the head by goblins dying due to the half assed way brains/skulls are depicted. Ditto for instadeath archers and broken fingers/toes causing unconsciousness.
Helms and leather hoods virtually eliminate one-punch deaths, IME. Shields help to prevent archer-related deaths, although you should look up the Battle of Agincourt if you really think archers are a minor threat in medieval combat. Though the material penetration issue (copper bolts piercing steel armor) is indeed something that should be fixed.
And I'm especially sick of waiting for a release that apparently wants to implement every single fix and new feature under the sun instead of you know making basic concepts like the military work correctly. Im sure some players would agree it would be great if bugs were squashed in a timely manner. its fantastic that toady has such huge ambitions for the game and i cant wait to see where df goes next, but cmon can't the basics work right?
While I wouldn't go so far as to say the military works
correctly, it does function reasonably well and I haven't found it to be anywhere near as insufferable as you apparently do. At least, not after I realized that you had to go into the Civilian Alerts section and actually set a squad to be active in order to have it start training. After that, it's been relatively smooth sailing.
Can we please have more smaller bugfix releases instead of a few massive releases over actual years?
Remember that DF is still in alpha; playing any game in such an early development stage is going to yield problems. I think we're lucky that the game works as well as it does, considering it's not going to be finished for another two decades.
I love df and have for years but I'm sick of the same old bugs going unpatched for literally years, in favour of regaling us with lists of new trees being implemented. i can never get a decent military going at all.
I've only been playing for a year, but as stated previously, getting a decent military up and running hasn't really been an issue for me. Nor has it been a problem for dozens and dozens of other players on these forums. If you're the only one struggling with something, then perhaps the problem lies in your particular approach?