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[Michael]

So, almost exactly a year after DF2010 was released, I've finally gotten around to trying out the new military system.  (I tend to go into spontaneous "DF comas" often, so I haven't been playing constantly....)

I've encountered a problem in training.  In 40d, my procedure was to start with 2 dwarves (set to ambusher on embark for free armor) and let them spar as soon as I can spare them.  But it looks like this simple command may not be doable.

The problem is that the orders display wants me to set a "minimum dwarves to train".  Obviously setting it to "3 or higher" is meaningless, notwithstanding that "10" is the default.  "2" would appear to be problematic as it would give both dwarves no break ever. "1" would be dumb as it would lead to the dwarves alternating break and then never being together to spar.  And "0" simply isn't offered as an option.

I'm starting to fear that the answer is that I must dedicate at least three dwarves to my first squad if I want any training done sustainably....

Comments?

[Langdon]

So, almost exactly a year after DF2010 was released, I've finally gotten around to trying out the new military system.  (I tend to go into spontaneous "DF comas" often, so I haven't been playing constantly....)

I've encountered a problem in training.  In 40d, my procedure was to start with 2 dwarves (set to ambusher on embark for free armor) and let them spar as soon as I can spare them.  But it looks like this simple command may not be doable.

The problem is that the orders display wants me to set a "minimum dwarves to train".  Obviously setting it to "3 or higher" is meaningless, notwithstanding that "10" is the default.  "2" would appear to be problematic as it would give both dwarves no break ever. "1" would be dumb as it would lead to the dwarves alternating break and then never being together to spar.  And "0" simply isn't offered as an option.

I'm starting to fear that the answer is that I must dedicate at least three dwarves to my first squad if I want any training done sustainably....

Comments?

The latest forum consensus seems to be to set 3 per squad, 2 minimum at first, then when you have a legendary dining hall and proper housing to offset the bad mood from long patrol duty, set them to 2 per squad training constantly. This is of course, if you want to maximize sparring time. Other methods of training include:

1) embarking with a skilled military dwarf with Teacher skill, who can hold effective demonstrations for his entire squad (slower than sparring, but least micromanagement-intensive)

2) setting up a "danger room" filled with wooden training spears, connected to a lever on repeat. Considered by some as an exploit, as it will quickly train your dwarves at 40d speeds (i.e. Legendary under a year or so).

3) live training on goblin prisoners, released from cages in an arena.

[obeliab]

Well, setting it at 2 minimum training with a squad of 2 won't stop them from eating/drinking/sleeping, if that's what you're worried about.  They'll still do those things.  If you're talking about having a break to do civilian things like work at a workshop, you may want to consider staggering your training schedules, such as having 3 months Train and 1 month No Order, alternating.

[Shoku]

Unless it has changed significantly taking early points in teacher doesn't really help with the learning process.

Taking different skills on your military dwarves may slow down their training (kind of hard to tell for certain,) as they'll waste a lot of time trying to teach each other. If they start out with the same skills though they'll only do lessons as one skills up and the other should be close to a skill up as well.

Now once they actually have 10 points in a skill (fighter seems to come first nearly always) the instruction is much much faster. If you can stand to slow them down a bit you want to take your first group to 10th skill level fighters and have them seed it to other squads- after that basically everyone will learn fast and you can just have you best champion doing demonstrations for your recruits to get them into decent fighting shape in around one season.

The order they gain skills after fighter is weapon, shield, armor, dodge. You basically have to take each of those items away from them to really get them to focus on learning the next. Shield still goes quick enough but unless you're real lucky with one guy learning armor and dodge to give them to everyone else it's gonna take a long time.

Though that's not too big of a deal. Legendary fighter, weapon-er, shield user makes them plenty deadly. It's really min-maxing to try and force more stats on them.

As for teacher and student you probably won't get more than 7 levels in those before you've got a bunch of legendaries on your hands.


Now if you don't want to waste about 6-10 seasons waiting for them to train up to skilled-at-anything I highly advise the live enemy training. Using training weapons on a chained up hostile should get a dwarf quite a few skill ups at which point they'll be suitable for regular growth via sparring. If you happen to get an enemy that's immune to blunt damage you can hammer train on it until the dwarf is collapsing from exhaustion then send in the sword/spear crew to help him conclude combat.

-although all of my testing for this was done back in .16 it should still mostly hold up.