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[saintclair]

Okay, I'm not fond of being ambushed by goblins or murdered by plains elephants, so I have the tendency to build my military early and get a few guys ready pretty quick. As the fort goes on, however, I need these guys to keep the fort running. Even once I get a dedicated military going, I generally want my citizens to be capable of swinging a sword from the right end, because I'm pretty bad at fortress defense.

Exposition aside, how do I make dwarves civilians off-duty, but train when on-duty? Currently I have the following set up:

Squads are 5-men strong, with orders of 4 to train to prevent starve/dehydration.
Their schedule on inactive is set to 1 month on, and either 1 or 2 months off.
They are assigned to wear their uniforms over clothing, as their training gear is only a shield and weapon.

The issue, then, is that no matter what, off-duty dwarves have a strong preference to train rather than to, say, chisel rock blocks, or plant seeds for harvest. I have no idea how to "make" them act as civilians without tediously unassigning and reassigning them when I feel like it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm open to the possibility that these dwarves are doing "Individual Combat Drill" in only their leisure time and I'm just stupid, too.

[FortunaDraken]

I believe that if you don't set I when assigning a squad to a barracks/archery range, they won't do individual stuff in there, only squad stuff. Though it's hard to tell sometimes.

[Mike_B20]

Okay, I'm not fond of being ambushed by goblins or murdered by plains elephants, so I have the tendency to build my military early and get a few guys ready pretty quick. As the fort goes on, however, I need these guys to keep the fort running. Even once I get a dedicated military going, I generally want my citizens to be capable of swinging a sword from the right end, because I'm pretty bad at fortress defense.

Exposition aside, how do I make dwarves civilians off-duty, but train when on-duty? Currently I have the following set up:

Squads are 5-men strong, with orders of 4 to train to prevent starve/dehydration.
Their schedule on inactive is set to 1 month on, and either 1 or 2 months off.
They are assigned to wear their uniforms over clothing, as their training gear is only a shield and weapon.

The issue, then, is that no matter what, off-duty dwarves have a strong preference to train rather than to, say, chisel rock blocks, or plant seeds for harvest. I have no idea how to "make" them act as civilians without tediously unassigning and reassigning them when I feel like it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm open to the possibility that these dwarves are doing "Individual Combat Drill" in only their leisure time and I'm just stupid, too.

If you increase the size of the squads to say, ten, and lower the minimum number of dwarves training in a squad to one(not necessary to give them months off with small numbers training), this should fix your problem.
Set the squads to "A" active training in the militia alert screen and give them a barracks to train in.
This basically forces one dwarf to train while the rest will go on with their civilian duties each month, equipped with the shield and weapon you provided(Miners, Woodcutters and Hunters will not equip new weapons).

Edit: Ok, I set up three size 10 militia squads, equipped with individual choice melee weapon and shield as a test.
Minimum one training in each squad every month, carrying no water or food.
Each squad is set to "A" in active/training.

After setting all the new militia to haul stone, I set up a mass stone dumping.
The first squad shows one dwarf training and the rest doing odd jobs, including stone hauling; the second and third squads show one dwarf training but several of them ARE just standing in the barracks doing nothing.
Will let it run for a while and see if they sort themselves out.

[PatrikLundell]

If your test squads are green recruits you probably need to run the test for some time, since the individual training obsession sets in only after they've reached some level of proficiency, so you won't see it early on. Thus, if you have some veterans to spare, reorganizing those for a test would provide better test conditions.

[Mike_B20]

I let it run for a month or so and tried another mass stone dump.
Still one dwarf in each squad is training and all the other dwarves in all three squads are active hauling or doing other things; so all the squads are behaving the same way now after a little settling in. Maybe they were distracted thinking about equipment and such.

[GoblinCookie]

Can you not set training months in the militery screen?

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, you can set the schedule to provide down time, but it doesn't help. Once somewhat trained they do individual training during the down time rather than work, so any work performed is very sporadic (it's on par with children, or probably even worse).
If Mike_B20's test works out even when the militia has gotten some training under their belt it would be the first work around I've heard of (which in no way guarantees there aren't methods I don't know of...).

[Sutremaine]

Squads are 5-men strong, with orders of 4 to train to prevent starve/dehydration.

?
Dwarves won't starve or dehydrate when doing active training.

I believe that if you don't set I when assigning a squad to a barracks/archery range, they won't do individual stuff in there, only squad stuff. Though it's hard to tell sometimes.

You mean an I in the menu you see when you q over a barracks? If so, they'll still do individual combat drills even when there's only a T there.

[FortunaDraken]

I believe that if you don't set I when assigning a squad to a barracks/archery range, they won't do individual stuff in there, only squad stuff. Though it's hard to tell sometimes.

You mean an I in the menu you see when you q over a barracks? If so, they'll still do individual combat drills even when there's only a T there.

Yeah, that one. And huh...maybe you have to turn I and T off :|a I know I got it working once before where they'd only do squad exercises, otherwise they'd do either their normal stuff or wander around with no activity, depending if it was a training month or not.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I is currently useless.  It's for "individual equipment," IIRC.  ☺

[Mike_B20]

A couple of years into my test and the militia squads still have one dwarf actively training with the rest doing their usual jobs.
If there are no jobs, they stand around in the barracks, perhaps training through osmosis.
Their military skills are slowly rising.
Have begun equipping them with leather armour uniforms to reduce clothing industry needs.
It works well, so far.

[PatrikLundell]

How good are their slowly raising skills? Also, is sparring needed for some skills, or can everything be trained alone?

I'm hoping it works out.

[Mike_B20]

How good are their slowly raising skills? Also, is sparring needed for some skills, or can everything be trained alone?

I'm hoping it works out.

Military skills range from 0 to 6, with the majority 0 an 1.
So, yeah, it's slow.

"Armour User" and Shield User" skills range from 0 to 3 with many still blank.
That's slow as well.

No idea about whether Sparring is needed.

[ChocoCrowbar]

Maybe having ten per squad and only two set to train might speed up their skills a bit more. Sparing works a lot better than just individual combate, and you still have 8 dwarves working.