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[Quietust]

What you *can* do is draft all your peasants, train them in wrestling for a while, then undraft them and send them back to their jobs. They'll get some mild unhappy thoughts...

Dwarves only get unhappy thoughts from becoming a Recruit or from becoming a Peasant (except when growing up from a Child, of course), so your solution actually has a significant advantage - once a Dwarf has been trained as a novice Wrestler, you can activate/deactivate the dwarf all you want and (s)he'll never get an unhappy thought from it.

[Ze Spy]

Result of training woodcutters = half a dozen crippled dwarfs , i mean , unless the axe is made of wood , its easy to get lots of sparring accidents , remember to not enable woodcutting before he comes out of the millitary with abit of axe skills

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

On this topic, but I can't remember if it works or not:

Can you make a bunch of leather armor, draft everyone to get them to put it on, then de-draft them? Will they keep the armor on after they're demobilized? What about leather clothing (jackets, cloaks, etc)?

[JamPet]

Leather clothing doesn't interfere with wearing leather armor, but by the same token, it doesn't offer any (or hardly any) more defense than any other kind of clothes.

I've been putting my entire population through military training recently in hopes of having enough able troopers to counterattack a goblin siege while it is still on the surface and defeat it in a feudal-era infantry battle.  With leather armor and copper weapons I'm averaging 1 sparring accident in 30 dwarves.  The copper gear is forbidden unless I am drafting another wave of recruits, so that all dwarves activated for serious service go right to the steel equipment.  Similarly, when I am activating a wave of new draftees, all the steel weapons are likewise forbidden.  After a sampling of random dwarves reveals mostly proficient weapondwarf/no-adj wrestler I consider their training complete, and send them back to the workforce.  They always then drop all that armor and weaponry, either right away or right after a drink.  So it doesn't seem possible to armor a civilian outside of activating hunting on them and hoping they don't get into a sticky situation.

Those attributes bonuses and the wrestling practice has been incredible armor for everyone since the training has started, MUCH better than leather armor alone anyways.  Ambushed dwarf stragglers have been seen to outrun gobbo ambushes for weeks of game time straight until the goblins lose interest and do something else.  Attacks on large masses of dwarves result only in widespread suplexes and strangled gobs.

[Shaio]

well in my last 3 forts, after getting over 40 dorfs ive enabled hunting on every single dwarf and armed them with crossbows, them going out to hunt isn't that much of a problem, no animals no matter how vicious last very long with that many hunters, so time spent hunting is minimal, and now my dwarves happily fire away there crossbows while they run away from scary things...

Ofcourse its halirous when the usal rush to pickup items that would normally introduce those hualers to a  horrible death instead results in a very bad day for goblins.

[Jacob/Lee]

Couldn't you use (S)oldiering and hunting to give dwarves weapons?

[Acanthus117]

The info on that menu only applies if they have a job with the need to use weapons (soldier, etc.)

[Demetrious]

Couldn't you use (S)oldiering and hunting to give dwarves weapons?

Then you have everybody in the workforce wandering the wilderness fighting grizzly bears, as opposed to woodcutting, where they only venture forth when you designate trees for chopping, and the trees get cut faster.

[zwei]

Couldn't you use (S)oldiering and hunting to give dwarves weapons?

Then you have everybody in the workforce wandering the wilderness fighting grizzly bears, as opposed to woodcutting, where they only venture forth when you designate trees for chopping, and the trees get cut faster.

Which is not issue. You eventually run out of animals to kill, and then it is just pointless labor that has benefit or arming dwarves and downside of sleeping on ground/drinking only water.

[Forumsdwarf]

I'm a big fan of the "Hunter Militia" strategy.  You can't arm your entire fortress until your wildlife situation allows it, but 20-30 dwarfs with crossbows will fix pretty much any wildlife situation in very short order.
My starting strategy is to make 5 of my starting 7 hunters (miner and "time-sensitive agriculturalist" [animal processor/farmer] exempted from duty).  I'll usually take all but 1 off hunting duty right away, but once the first wave of immigrants arrives I switch the 5 back on, the first 5 of what will eventually become a fortress-wide militia (miners and farmers exempted.)

The advantages of a militia are many:

Also, keep in mind that if a tantrum spiral starts, and you have ALL your dwarves armed to the teeth... things will go downhill even faster

"An armed society is a polite society."
-Robert A. Heinlein

I've never had a tantrum spiral -- knock on tower-cap wood -- but I've had a few tantrums, and instead of the berserk offender killing a bunch of his former friends and kicking off a tantrum spiral what tends to happen is he gets cut down in a hail of bolts the second he goes crazy, and the situation soon stabilizes.

Kobolds and snatchers fare poorly as well.  They invariably wander into high-population areas and find themselves surrounded and shot to pieces once discovered.

Ambushes are handled particularly intelligently: the dwarf under attack, being a civilian, runs away, and being a hunter, fires his crossbow.  Who could ask for more?  Your civilians armed or not will tend to draw the ambush toward your military as they flee, but I've seen entire ambushes defeated by a single fleeing dwarf.

The final advantage is armor.  Leather armor is cheap, doesn't seem to hinder mobility or productivity, and protects your civilians better than just clothing.  Civilians with the hunting occupation will wear leather armor all the time.

A word of warning, which others have mentioned here: never make waterskins, and destroy any you come across.  You want your militia drinking booze, and if they get their hands on a waterskin they'll only drink water.

[100killer9]

Would 20-30 dwarves with crossbows kill about 20-35 giant ants? (dig deeper mod)

[Forumsdwarf]

If it bleeds and isn't a GCS the answer is probably "yes".

[Jacob/Lee]

If it bleeds and isn't a GCS the answer is probably "yes".

Even if it won't bleed it would get its organs shot out and it would explode from having a 5x5 area shooting 15 bolts every 5 frames.