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[Xinael]

I feel embarrassed asking this because it must be a pretty basic military question, but I just got my military stood up in my first game in about 3 years. Everything seems to be configured fine and my dwarves will all go train... except my militia commander. He just keeps doing his civilian labours even though his squad has an alert set telling them to go train, and the other squad members will all train reliably.

Anyone seen anything like this and know how I can get him training?

EDIT: btw this is nothing to do with which dwarf it is. I fired the militia commander and replaced him with his second in command, and added the old militia commander to the new squad as a regular soldier. The new militia commander now won't train while the old one, who's now a regular soldier, has started training.

EDIT2: It's also not the barracks, I removed it and created a new one and still nothing.

EDIT3: Finally! It was this bug: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=751 Be careful setting the training minimums!

[Shonai_Dweller]

Well, the default is 10, so if you never touch it, there's no problem. Sadly way too many guides state with authority that setting minimum to 2 is the only way to get dorfs to spar properly, when in fact it's preventing training from taking place for the most part.

[anewaname]

Xinael's dwarfs were doing exactly what they were supposed to do, and there was no bug involved.

There is a misunderstanding of the orders section, and of the contextual meaning of the word "minimum".

This is an explaination of the military screen's orders section, where the word "minimum" is shown in context.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are three Train orders with a minimum of 1 dwarf, and one Train order with a minimum of 7 dwarfs. The game understands these orders to mean that 3 dwarfs will Train separately (which limits them to individual combat drills or archery practice) and 7 dwarfs will train as a group (doing weapon or skill demonstrations, or observation and commentary while two spar, etc).

If your orders use less than 10 dwarfs summed, the remaining dwarfs are not on active duty and will behave as any off-duty dwarf would (hauling, socializing). They rotate based on three values: squad position, month, and year.

That bit about "They rotate based on squad position, month, and year" may need clarification, so as an example... Create a new squad, add 10 dwarfs, give them a barracks and activate the squad. Modify the default order to "Train" "1 minimum"> You will observe each month that 1 dwarf is on-duty and 9 are off-duty. Each month when the on-duty dwarf is replaced, look at what squad position those dwarfs have.

So, Xinael, when you reduced the default order to "2 minimum", and did not add another order to involve more dwarfs, you limited your active dwarfs for that squad to 2 per month.

[KevinM]

Think that can be added to the wiki?  I had no idea about this as well, despite playing off and on for years.   I think some of my issue was early confusion about not correctly setting up the barracks and I just never managed to learn about it until now.

[knutor]

additionally, the edit order feature fails to allow the prefered soldier option. Only issuing brand new orders lets ya, setup a prefered soldier for a specific order.

[anewaname]

Think that can be added to the wiki?  I had no idea about this as well, despite playing off and on for years.   I think some of my issue was early confusion about not correctly setting up the barracks and I just never managed to learn about it until now.

I wrote it up so that it could be used, but seeing this thread and Mechanixm's image guides, I think there should be more reference to those guides instead. They are concise.