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[DrKillPatient]

I seem to be failing miserably at getting a military up and running. I know how to make squads and get them to move/kill stuff, and that's about it-- I find the wiki page rather confusing. Is there some kind of tutorial on the military?

EDIT: Also, another question. Can you pressurize water in such a way that releasing floodgates holding it causes the water to be shot forwards and push enemies? Preferably outside into freezing climates.

[DTF]

You know how to get them to train, do you? If so:

- embark with a good Drill Sarge (someting like 4 Axedwarf, 2 Dodger, 4 Teacher).
- produce armour and weapons
- make a small training room and place "Upright Speartraps" with (wooden) training spears all over it
- link the traps to a repeater (f.ex. a pressure plate near your food stockpile that activates when a citizen steps on it; or simply a lever)
- assign some dwarves WITHOUT any weapon skills, i.e. total newbies, to the Drill Sarge, let them equip their uniform
- assign that squad to the trap-training room and set them to train
- ?
- profit!

No seriously, if you have a good mentor and room full of traps that will never hurt anyone but improve skills... it takes mere minutes for the recruits to be good enough for the first few ambushes.
As for armour, I usually go mail, breast, greaves, helm, gauntlets, shield which replaces their clothing.
I know it's far from perfect, but I had quite a lot of difficulties with squads going into battle without their pants on (literally) that I forbid any other clothing other than steel nowadays.

[obeliab]

That would be the danger room way of training, which will yield much faster skill increases than standard training.  More basically, you must build a cabinet or armor stand or weapon rack or a number of other things (1 cabinet will do), highlight it with the {q} selector, and make it into a barracks or whatever the only option is.  Expand the room to suit your needs (it doesn't have to be very large).  Once done, your squads will be listed whenever you highlight the barracks object (like a cabinet) with {q}.  Press {t} to set a squad to train in that room, and use the secondary selectors (default +/-) to scroll through your squads, {t}ing the ones you want to train there.  You'll need to activate squad training by going into the {m}ilitary screen and pressing {enter} on the appropriate squads under the Active/Training alert.  This will set them to train all year, which you may want to change by going into {s}chedules on the main military screen.

Getting them to train efficiently is another matter, but the general advice is to have at least 1 dwarf in each squad with decent combat skills (preferably the squad captain), and encourage more sparring by using a number of smaller squads instead of several large ones.  Training weapons aren't currently necessary, and you'll probably do a whole lot of fiddling with uniform sets and minimum training numbers until you find something that gives you results.

[DrKillPatient]

I've got them training now, working on a danger room. How do I set uniforms and weapons for the squad to use? It seems that the uniforms menu makes them get what I want them to only some of the time. I have metal armor / axes set.

[obeliab]

Making u{n}iforms does not automatically set your squads to use those uniforms, even if you modify one that your squads are already wearing (they'll continue wearing whatever was on the old uniform).  You need to go into the {e}quipment screen and press {U} to assign uniforms, which will be listed on the right side of the screen and can be individually assigned with {enter} or assigned to the whole squad with {shift + enter}.  The uniforms screen is for making uniforms, the equipment screen is for actually getting dwarves to wear those items.

Alternatively, you can bypass uniforms and just set all your equipment on the {e}quipment screen, but it can be time-consuming that way.  Not recommended.

[wuphonsreach]

Smart military commanders define uniforms before creating squads...

Saves a bit of mucking around on the equipment screen.

[Komus]

Material is so important: get them decent gear. Either Bronze, Iron or Steel.

I suspect that the commonly held worry is that danger rooms are making us all too complacent. I doubt that many players are not exploiting this. Make a decent dining hall and all those children impaling themselves will be beside the point: your men (don't enlist women: there's an important life lesson and then there's abusive parenting) will become legendary or close within 2 seasons. By 4th wave, I aim to have my barracks set up with at least 3 dwarves in a danger room constantly.

Forget Teacher skill etc... It's moot if you have a danger room forcing your dwarves to block (weapon/shield) and dodge every second of their miserable lives ...