So, I just won my first full scale battle in fortress mode. A pack of frogmen burst out of the river and launched an ambush at a particularly inoppurtune moment- just as the village representative was crossing the bridge. One stepped on a stone-fall trap and quickly died in a pool of his own blood and vomit, but the rest of them jumped onto the bridge and proceeded to attack the representive and the couple of pet cats nearby. The representative was hit over the head and dragged into the water, and one cat was killed and the other injured, but the frogmen found the cats to be surprisingly tough foes. The cats bought enough time for the nearest soldiers to rush in and make short work out of the frogmen. The representative, meanwhile, crawled back onto the bridge and went to his meeting.
Have I mentioned lately that this game rules?
Anyway, the whole thing gave me a few ideas for the military:
-Escort orders: Soldiers could be ordered to serve as bodyguards for certain dwarves. A dwarf given this order would closely follow whoever he or she was ordered to guard. Certain nobles might demand bodyguards, and it could be useful when you had dwarves in dangerous areas. You could also assign them to guard children when they start getting kidnapped.
-Keep track of kills: Self explanatory, really. Every major roguelike has a screen listing everything you've killed- obviously adventurers would have one, but dwarves could as well. Enough of one kind of kill could lead to some kind of title, eventually- "Death of Goblins", "Bane of Frogmen", "Bearslayer", etc.
-Military decorations: Another thing for metalsmiths to make. There could be all kinds of different medals for various things- killing a certain number of enemies, being injured in the line of duty, serving as a soldier long enough, or reaching a high skill level in a weapon(there could be one for the transition from Swordsdwarf to Swordsmaster, for example.) Medal construction would be mandated by certain nobles when a soldier met the requirements for one, and receiving one would give the soldier a happy thought.
-Some way of commemorating heroic animals: Animals that get a kill or are killed by certain enemies could end up in the legends and recieve a coffin burial, if it's available. This idea was brought on by the fact that the pet cat's body ended up in the refuse pile, which felt somewhat disrespectful since he'd torn a few chunks out of the frogmen and bought enough time to for the village representative to be saved.