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[PaleBlueHammer]

Starting out with a new concept (for me): arming all adult dwarfs and making them serve at least a month out of the year in training.  The idea is that every member of the fort, except for children and babies, is at least a little bit prepared to defend themselves and will wear leather armor.  Full time military will wear metal and stay on duty.

Problems I foresee:

1. What to arm the citizens with?  Initially I thought crossbows, but with the wonkiness involved with bolts and training and targets, this sounds like too great of a headache.  It's tough enough to keep full time marksdwarfs training and then fighting with the right ammo.  So I was thinking spears and shields, a-la Sparta.  Anyone ever have issues with this?  I'd rather stick to one type of weapon to avoid a mess, unless the benefits to diversifying are large.

2.  Training schedules.  I can't think of any good way to keep dwarfs consistently happy when activating / deactivating them, although I suppose this would resolve itself over the course of several years.  Just keep the training area as nicely decorated as possible?  I was thinking outdoors in a lavish colosseum, all dwarfs get outside exposure, and there would always be a squad or two topside to address threats. 

     2a. How many months out of the year would the average civilian train?
     2b. Is it still the case that the optimal squad size to encourage sparring is 2-3?

Thanks for your input.

3.  Tantrums. 

[Laserhead]

You'll have an equipment problem with miners and woodcutters, although miners can usually give a decent account of themselves with the pick if they get surprised. Crossbows do seem like they'd be the best weapon. If you can round up some live targets training isn't that bad. As long as they've got levels in both a military and nonmilitary skill, the bad thoughts from activation and deactivation won't be a problem. A simple mist generator never hurts, either, and the pump operating gives them a workout. I'd be worried about an outdoor squad getting hit with an ambush, 2-3 middling speardwarves wouldn't do much against a squad of bowmen.

[SanDiego]

1) I would gou for shield+spear, not only because the cool factor but also because spear has higher chance of piercing and hitting something important. Also, perhaps an extra squad for miners and woodcutters. You would be surprised how much damage can a pick make and they use the mining skill.

2) This is just an idea that occured to me and be advised I did exactly zero experimenting and thinking on it.
Have your militia train one month of the year. You might need to pay close attention to squad makeup, so you don't accidentally cripple important industries by training. Have large dining rooms with engraved floors and walls. Have golden statues in public places. Have industry dedicated to churning out endless stream of hedonistic meals. This should take care of the happiness problems. Ad 2b - if you set multiple squads to the same barracks, they will spar together.

3) Stash your barracks with armor stands and weapon racks and setting your militia to only equip items on duty and store them in barracks will take the care of the problem. And as a side effect of the training, most dwarves will be tougher and less likely to be killed by random punch/thrown goblet. And you will probably want to grab a DFhack to fix the armor stand/weapon rack bug.

[itg]

Crossbows might work, but you'll have a serious problem getting isolated dorfs not to stand and fight when they really, really need to run away. Every lone civilian with a crossbow thinks he's gonna be the badass who slaughters half a siege single-handedly, but it always works out about how you'd expect. Civilians with melee weapons don't seem to do this.

I'd go with hammer and shields for the common folk, since a low-skill hammerdorf with a mediocre hammer can still do some decent damage to a goblin. Transition to whips as you collect war trophies.

If you go this route, you might want to keep an elite squad of axedwarves for killing FBs and a couple marksdwarf squads for suppressive fire.

[Pinstar]

Mining Picks and Shields.

Don't have them train in the traditional sense. Give everyone who comes to your fort a pick and make them all a miner and have them carve out some arbitrarily large room...or maybe dig up a whole mineral vein. This should get them to ~5 skill in a fairly short amount of time and net you some extra stone/ore/room for your troubles. Manufacture/buy enough picks to supply your whole fort and keep them and the shields in a central location. Be sure to turn off the mining labor once they 'train' up enough.

Mining picks, especially bronze or better, are absolutely disgusting. Skilled miners can one-shot skulls. Unskilled miners will probably just chop off a foot, make them fall down and then start tearing up their spine. Here is an example of a team of newbie miners fighting a troll with bronze mining picks.

[Naryar]

Picks are your best weapons, yes. They are exceedingly choppy, bloody and hilarious.

also bronze picks ? Try *iron pick*s and then masterwork steel picks. I'm pretty sure you can maim anything with a steel pick.

[squidgen]

Picks are your best weapons, yes. They are exceedingly choppy, bloody and hilarious.

also bronze picks ? Try *iron pick*s and then masterwork steel picks. I'm pretty sure you can maim anything with a steel pick.

I'm pretty sure they don't stop at maimed. Try "chopped into tiny bits that will take your haulers months to clean up"

[Veylon]

I'll take inspiration from this. I've never formally used picks as weapons.

And in keeping with the Spartan theme, woodcutters and others unworthy of weaponry can be assigned to the 'Helot' class. I'd also like to suggest Girlinhat's article on Dwarven Day Care as the proper way to raise future warriors.

[Merendel]

Here's an idea make a wrestler squad.  they mostly train year round except when its time for the anual clearcut of the forest.  During that time you take them off duty give em an axe and tell them to go chop wood.  You never know they might at least hold something down while a hauler with a real weapon kills it if an ambush comes out.

your idea of a spartan society is actualy very similar in implementation to a standard pratice in large, long term forts.  Many players will put every dwarf but the miners/hunters/woodcuters in a military squad so they can assign armor and a weapon.   Partly this is because armor does not decay like clothing so you dont have to replace the stuff other than what the children wear.  Secondary benifit is they might survive a hit or will be able to fight back if cornered by an enemy.   The everybody trains part of the year bit is more an optional addon based on player preferance(or just nothing better to do)

[Repseki]

Dwarven Day Care would definitely be the way to go. Bonus points if you can find some training children with grudges against each other to set as sparring partners.

The Spartan's weren't exactly gentle.

[Pinstar]

Picks are your best weapons, yes. They are exceedingly choppy, bloody and hilarious.

also bronze picks ? Try *iron pick*s and then masterwork steel picks. I'm pretty sure you can maim anything with a steel pick.

The only reason I used bronze in the above screen shot was because on embark, bronze making ore is DIRT cheap and very fuel efficient, and this fight happened very early on in the fort's life. Once I get established I start upgrading to iron/steel as soon as possible. The point being, even with a non-top-tier material in the hands of under trained miners, mining picks are disgustingly effective.