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[GrayFoxUA]

I've heard a lot of talk  about how in the latest (31.) versions the military is broken. To me it seems fine but I haven't played d40 and was wondering what makes it broken.

[Lamphare]

training is wacky, especially when you wanna get dwarves sparring.

[PopeRichardCorey]

That's mostly old news; the big deadly flaws got fixed up mostly.  The big problems now are pretty small.  For example, the military screen alone has a learning curve nearly as steep as that of the game itself.  Sometimes military dwarves will exchange their weapons and armor for ages at a time in an effort to wear the best, but they dont' do it for an eternity like they did in the early 31.xx editions.  Once you can figure out all the quirks, and it sounds like you at least think you have a grasp on it, it works pretty well.  Like Lamphare says, training gets a little funky.

[blue emu]

... the big deadly flaws got fixed up mostly.  The big problems now are pretty small.

I still haven't had much luck with Marksdwarves. They won't stand right next to the fortifications (or at least, they only seem to do so by accident) and they can't seem to shoot diagonally downward off an elevated firing platform. v31.19

[Girlinhat]

I think they don't see the enemy if they're not directly beside a fortification.  As in, the goblin on the level below is behind the floor from the dwarf's point of view, and thus has no clear view, and doesn't even try to shoot him.  Patrol routes help, have them patrol the very edge of your battlements to ensure they move around a lot.  Bonus points if the walkways are 1 tile wide, so the troops are forced against the fortifications.

[CrossBolt]

There is a workaround with training, the famous danger room. Upright spear traps filled with training spears will do the trick for weapon skills, armour skill, shield and dodging (slightly).

Although I agree that the military screen is an absolute pain to grasp (Yes, I DID tell them to keep uniform on at all times put why does the one with the artifact gold breastplate ALWAYS drop equipment?!)

[Greiger]

I haven't had many issues with military training or deployment recently.  Only one I get is the difficulty in getting marksdwarves to train.  But just having them patrol the walls and take potshots at wildlife seems to fix that.

As for getting your marksdwarves to stay near the fortifications there's a trick for that. 

1) Make a burrow for where you want your marksdwarves to stand during a siege, only include tiles directly adjacent to the fortifications.
2)(optional but recommended) place an ammo stockpile within the burrow
3) Set up a custom alert, call it siege or something.
4) go to the schedule menu in the military interface and then cycle the alert to your new alert.
5) Create a defend burrows order for your crossbow squad, set them to defend your new burrow
6) (optional) repeat 1-5 for every wall you want to be able deploy your squad to
7) Set your crossbowdwarves on the alert next siege
8) Collect goblinite
9) Profit!

[Levi]

I don't mind the military screen, but my dwarfs always seem to train so slowly that they get slaughtered in most sieges in 31.18.  I don't really think I should need to make a danger room to get a competent military going.  These are dwarfs, not the X-Men.

[Greiger]

Dwarves train faster with higher level teaching and higher level student skills.  That's one reason why training seems so slow.  Chances of getting a highly skilled military dwarf with even competent teaching is 1 in a thousand. 

Most don't have teaching or student at all and dabbling teachers try to teach dabbling students which results in little to no skillgain.

[agatharchides]

I never had problems getting marksdwarves to train or shoot down, but I've never managed to get more than half of them to have bolts at one time and most of those are usually wood or bone.

[Girlinhat]

Beginning military is severely daunted, namely because soldiers don't learn exceedingly fast without a good teacher.  Luckily, we have traps to tide us over.  Make traps, a few cage traps and some lethal ones, like dodge-me pitfalls or weapon traps, so that you can actually survive.  If you're thinking "A true dwarf doesn't use traps, that's why I always die in the first siege!" then you may want to re-think your opinion of traps... or else keep dying but stop bragging about it.  Get a few good soldiers, and keep them inside.  Have that older, high-ranked teacher kept indoors and safe, training recruits that are then moved to active-duty squads.  Armies are never so straightforward as "arm and deploy" there's a bit of thought and infrastructure involved.  Make a boot camp where your skilled teachers spend their time prepping new recruits, don't just toss everyone outside.

[JimboOmega]

Marksdwarf issues here as well.  Ammo in particular.  Trying to set combat and training ammo separately seems to result in them never training and becoming bad hammerdwarves when asked to go in to combat.   There really aught to be code for "Wait, I'm a marksdwarf!  I have to get some bolts before I go to my station!  Otherwise I refuse!"

Another issue I've found is that the dwarves spend a lot of time in wrestling demonstrations even when equipped with weapons (striking, kicking, etc).

The issue with dwarves having fistfuls of weapons seems to be fixed, though, so yay for that.

[Girlinhat]

Yeah, training/combat ammo is still bugged.  I usually just stick with bone bolts anyways, it clears up most ambushes quickly, but I can produce some silver (or un-forbid the silver bolts) if danger occurs.