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[Jacko13]

Anybody found good way to persuade your military dwarves to actual train with and ultimately use their equipped weapons?

I am playing 40.04 and the problem seemed less severe than originally reported but a long way from fixed. My two dward squads have sparred and trained their way to elite wrestling but only skilled with their weapons. Looking at sparring logs I cannot see the last time an edged weapon was actually used. And yes they are still equipped.

Ideas gratefully received.

[Pancakes]

Are you using an old save from 40.03 or earlier? There have been reported issues of old saves not using the fixed training system.

[Orange Wizard]

As far as anyone can tell, the sparring system is currently broken (more than usual broken) and dwarves will generally not use weapons. However, in actual combat, they are perfectly happy to use sword/spear/axe/hammer.
One solution would be live training. Catch a few goblins and dump them in a room with military dwarves. Sponges are also a possibility, seeing as (at least in DF2012, maybe not now) they're almost unkillable.

Are you using an old save from 40.03 or earlier? There have been reported issues of old saves not using the fixed training system.

The training system hasn't been fixed. Combat was fixed so that anyone would actually favour weapons over fists, but sparring was not part of that.

[Jacko13]

It's a fresh. .04 world.

I tested the advice about live combat and that worked rather well. My two legendary wrestlers fought with a pair of invading undead and actually won. Seems despite the average weapon skills the legendary boosts made them reasonably effective. Live combat training next.

[Panando]

Danger rooms or live training work. Also, wrestling still builds up fighter, shield user, dodger and armor user perfectly well. It's only weapon skill which suffers. Of course having weak weapon skill sucks, mainly because of a loss of parry, but fortunately most enemies in the game have low defensive skills themselves, a low weapon skill works okay against low defensive skills.

[Jacko13]

I am on a no danger rooms diet. ;-)

Low enemy defensive skills still true in 40.04? Looking at combat logs it does not feel that way?

[martinuzz]

Single dorf squads are your best way to go to get weapon skills now. No sparring, just individual combat training. It's not even that slow either.

[greycat]

Single dorf squads are your best way to go to get weapon skills now. No sparring, just individual combat training. It's not even that slow either.

If you just want individual weapon drills, you don't even need to change squad sizes.  Just take them off duty, but keep their barracks assignment.  They'll all go to the barracks (as civilians) and do nothing but individual weapon drills.

[Moonshadow101]

It's true that Individual Combat Drills seem to have been buffed considerably. Keep them set to "inactive" for a while until they get decent weapons skills, then swap them to sparring to develop well-rounded defensive skills, then swap back as needed.

[Jacko13]

Fantastic advice. Thanks folks. Off to experiment with a new fortress. (The last one survived a dead invasion then succumbed to the military dwarves tantrum murder spree)