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[Heavenfall]

Maybe I just want to see them bleeeeeeeed!

[Encased in burning magma]

Maybe I just want to see them bleeeeeeeed!

Bleeeeeeeed longer?

[Greiger]

I have noticed they train quite slowly from scratch, but it seems to get faster as they get better.

it took my military of 10 swordsmen and 10 spearmen(I have 10 crossbows too but they just refuse to train period) a little over a year to get from dabbling to novice.  Next year in about the same amount of time they went from novice to proficient.  So it seems that their skillgain speed increases as their skill increases. 

Also, remember if they aren't incredibly strong, suddenly loading a full set of non-adamantine plate on them when they have no armor skill to speak of will slow them to a crawl as well.  The slower they can move, the slower they will gain skill.

[Gormaz]

Splitting the squads and playing with naked gobos did not exactly help much, the gobos die a bit too quickly to get any real skill increased done I think.
Skill is still progressing very very slowly.

I guess I might restart a new fortress and try again, looks like I might still be doing something wrong

[SomberDwarf]

-- The Non-nudists Approach to Disarming Slaves --

This isolates particular items on your prisoners, instead of leaving them wimpy and naked. I perform this ritual before every execution, when my prisoners are all in one cage, but you could to it as easily with a stockpile of cages. We'll use hide because only you can flag items as hidden. It can be quite confusing to sort out which items are forbidden or dumped and when and where they were designated.

*stocks and bookkeepers: I'm not sure how bookkeeper accuracy works, but I haven't missed any weapons yet and my bookkeeper is only at high precision.
**Achiles Heel method: Instead of removing weapons remove their footwear. If your dwarves are armed with wooden weapons it may take several lucky hits to cripple their opponents.

   1. d-b-c, to claim everything in the cage(s)
   2. d-b-h, to hide the cage and it's contents (oh no, the cage disappeared... It's still there, no worries)
   3. z, stocks*, weapons**, tab, d any item marked h
   4. d-b-H, to make the cage visible for your own sanity, because your dwarves don't care either way...

Source: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010_Talk:Captured_creatures#ixzz0vguaBCqG

Once that is done I send in my dwarves with heavy metal armor, and training weapons only.

A note about training:  Dwarves only seem to level up if they're facing an opponent with a weapon.  Your opponents will use shields as weapons.  And a warning:  A goblin can become very handy very quickly with only a shield.

[carkaton]

If you go the weapon/teacher embark guy route, I am thinking there is something that may be important in helping speed up the process.  Don't let any of them be higher rank in any military skills, especially dodge, than the drill sarge.  Instead of substantial weapon gains with help from teaching that will lead to early sparring, you'll get stuck with one of the noobs spamming dodging demonstrations.  I haven't done any testing to confirm this, but I've noticed it with my last fort start up.  It may be better to pick completely skillless dwarfs when starting your military up...

[Gormaz]

I have actually restarted another fortress, this time bringing 2 swordwarfs (at max embark level).

After the first big batch of migrants I have created a 4 dwarfs squad including these 2 dwarfs and 2 random Urists that had at least some sort of military skills (one came as a Trapper and one as Fighter to Competent as well as Dodge for some reason).

Same stuff as usual, put them in a barracks, no other jobs allocated etc.
Gave them all steel swords and put them as "Metal Armor" in the uniform selection (all my previous tries I put them as No Armour choice)

I do see them gaining skills faster than before, both the 2 already skilled dwarfs and the 2 others.
It's not lighting fast but it's much better than my previous attempts

I think you may have a point carkaton, my previous attempts were very often into some dodging demonstrations from someone with very low skills.

It's either that or the "No armor Vs Metal Armor" for some reason, this try was the first time I selected "Metal Armor" (as I previously selected the No Armor since I usually give them armor later on)

I do think the current systems allow you to get "struck" into some sort of situation where your skill experience is more or less stalled but I am not totally sure of the reasons so far

[ledgekindred]

So sort of along this same vein of military questions:

I currently have three squads.  One of marksdwarves, one split with 5 war hammers and other 5 battle axes.  The third is a combination of swords, scourges, swords, spears and marksdwarves; 2 of each.

Am I hurting training by having my dwarves split up like that?  Should I, for example, make several squads of only 5 dwarves with all the same weapon types?

As with the OP, my military still only has mediocre skills and they have been training for a couple of years now.  My fort is like 11 years old now so I'm not about to start over.  And I have like 30 goblins in cages for sparring practice.