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[Tiruin]

However, for a newbie, it isn't necessary since we should be teaching them about traps, drawbridges, and other methods of protection.

The military is the most basic of defenses which have the least chance to fail in regard to static defenses. It's a crucial hardpoint that everyone must learn before they learn of how to use strategic defending on that area.

Because it also teaches unit pathing. The easiest way we could do is to just wall up the whole fort and forego defense, or just drawbridge up the front gate but that won't teach anything, now would it?

[vanatteveldt]

Personally, I would never give my starting grower another profession.
I also wouldn't make my cook and brewer the same dwarf, or give my starting dwarves military skills, but I suppose that just boils down to different play styles.

Think of it this way: in a friendly environment, all you need to survive is a single pick. All you need to survive without relying on surface crops or having to dig too deep is a single pick plus some seeds. In case of an aquifer, some rocks save a lot of pain Everything else is bonus

Now think about your fortress three years in. Did you ever have trouble leveling up your miners, masons, craftsdwarfs, carpenters, cooks, and growers? Me, not really. Since you're doing so much mining, chiseling, growing etc, they will all train up quite fast. Having well crafted trade goods and meals immediately is nice, but you'll have enough crap to buy whatever you really need from the caravan anyways.

So, think about the skills that are difficult to train. For me, these are diagnosing, military, and metalworking. Diagnosing is difficult to train on purpose, although a good diagnoser is only quicker than a bad diagnoser, so it doesn't matter that much.

This setup bootstraps your military by having two guys with level 5 in a weapon plus some levels in teaching does wonders. They can start sparring as soon as the essential fortress is done (should be in summer) and be quite well trained after the first year. By assigning rookies to train with them, their high skill plus teacher will help train them up fast. Of course, you can start training military as soon as you get the first migrants, but you never know when you will need them.

For the metalworking, skill training is limited by available fuel. Since coal is more often absent than present, and wood takes a long time to chop, haul, and burn, it is quite nice to be able to start with a decent weapons/armorsmith. Also, by taking coal and cassetirite+copper, if present, you can immediately start metalworking, training up the smith further and getting gear for your axedwarfs.

After spending points on the essentials (pick, seeds) and the niceties (military, smith, coal, metal, noble plus some food and booze) all else is completely optional. I choose skills and goods to get stuff working quickly, but once you are a couple years in the starting skill of most dwarfs doesn't matter all that much, and the caravan can supply whatever you missed...