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[Shingles]

So, I've lost several Dorf Forts to Goblin Sieges, I have traps, I have walls, drawbridges, atom smashers, soldiers, burrows, and wardogs. I have what I need, my soldiers train for months and months before hand, my levers are connected and tested, my burrows have the supplies they need for a long siege. And yet, my soldiers who train gain little to no skills and several are cut down with ease by a simple Goblin Hammerman, my levers remain unpulled even when I have a dwarf not restricted to the burrow and far enough from the combat that he should be able to do so. And my dwarves assigned to my Atom Smashers will pull it once or twice, before wandering off. I've just lost another 11 soldier dwarves of my 13 to Goblin invaders, my dwarves were fully equipped with iron gear, and now their shiny armour is littering the battle field on disembowelled corpses. My drawbridge was finally pulled, so my dwarves in my fortress are safe for now, but I'm getting tired of my fortresses falling due to the incompetence of my dwarves.

[Sorcerer]

if you want more competent fighters, make sure you bring at least one dwarf with military skills and 5 levels of teacher, he'll whip those recruits into shape alot quicker than a dwarf without said skill.
For the lever thing, just put your lever in a place there's bound to be lots of dwarves when you hit the alert button, like your main hall.

As for combat tactics, let the goblins come to you, not the other way around. Make sure all your dwarves are grouped up and don't run into combat one after the other, but as a group!
I'd also check combat logs after a particularly bad battle to see what went wrong, goblins are USUALLY not a big problem for a full squad of even poorly trained dwarves.

[Shingles]

I appreciate the advice, I'll check it out.

[Brewster]

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress! Hah - what you're say sounds like the fun of the game.

Check into trap cages - almost cheating how awesome they are.
Check into danger rooms - I make a small 1x4 room and make Upright Spears of 5-10 wooden training spears, and link them all to one lever and have it set on Pull (Repeat). Place your militia stationed there and they will train up fast dodging and blocking the spears.
Check into drop pit entrance - the entrance is one tile wide entrance w/ empty space on both side that drops down 10 z-levels. W/ weapon traps along the one tile entrance so when enemies come by they dodge the weapon traps and drop down the 10 z-level pit.

Check the wiki for additional information and tips.

[bombzero]

yeah about the military, a basic army is handing a bunch of untrained dwarfs weapons and saying go learn combat.

after a year or two of those guys training in a small squad, each one can head up a 5 man squad.
after another few years each of those guys can head up their own squad of 6-10.
at this point you can consolidate your squads by type and focus on only having 3-5.

people will tell you always keep your dwarfs in squads of 2 etc etc. but those methods are only efficient for training the trainers.

if you have trouble with trainers dying, out those original few in a training squad together, and they will quickly train a efficient squad of 6.


one side note: when i use the terms; quickly, efficiently, and fast in my posts. i mean in DF terms, as in most people coming to DF from other games will find it slow, but remember DF is more simulation than game.


Danger rooms, cage traps in excess, and dodge pits are considered cheating by a portion of the community but ok by the other.
it depends where your interests lies. if you want an even military/industrial/economical split or leaning towards military dont use them.
if you want just industrial/economical abuse every exploit you can.

[Loud Whispers]

Embarked with two proficient swordsmen, both proficient teachers, embarked with two bars of iron and enough wood to burn into charcoal.

After one year of sparring alone, they're legendary swordsmen with iron katana shortswords. Even trained a hammerman to legendary in that time, and he was a migrant.

The military is the most important defense in DF.

Bar mad mechanical schemes...

You should try mastering one of the above

Military training, or Mechanical masterminding.

Oh and as for the hammerman part, lashers are called hammermen.

I have a sneaking suspicion... Dirty immortal jedi.

[krisslanza]

If your military is dieing to Goblin Lashers, well... that's to be expected, actually. Without modding, whips are essentially broken and function as, well, lightsaber whips. Even a weak one will cut through steel like its butter.

I forget the community-suggested fix to whips though.

[IT 000]

It's also important to note what the goblins have.

 Ranged attacks can be deadly even for fully armored dwarves. You also might want to check your militia member's inventory to make sure they put everything on.

Don't let your dwarves be woodcutters, miners, or hunters as this conflicts with their uniforms they currently own.

Also crossbow dwarves are very weak in close quarter combat. If you're military's made of all crossbow dwarves they won't last long once the enemy closes distance.

Other then that try to use some mechanical defenses as stated above.

[krenshala]

See my "Standard Military Training Results" thread for info on how to effectively train your first four military dwarves together.  It takes two to three years to reach legendary that way, but after 6 months you have a Competent half-squad, and after 18 you have Professionals that are all set to train 12 to 16 more (in four squads of 5, 1 trainer + 3 or 4 recruits each).

[Sus]

if you want more competent fighters, make sure you bring at least one dwarf with military skills and 5 levels of teacher, he'll whip those recruits into shape alot quicker than a dwarf without said skill.

FFFFFFFF...
Little wonder my entire militia gets pwnzored if set against a pair of goblins with pointy sticks. *Face, meet Palm*

As for the lever problem, I usually set up a burro(w) that contains the relevant levers and nothing more, located in my main dining/meeting hall. In case any of the dorfs aren't feeling like Ringo Starr, I order them into that burrow so they have nothing to do but pull that goddamn lever, NOW!

[SixOfSpades]

I'm still in the training-wheels, glued-to-my-cage-traps mode of fortress defense because, frankly, the military setup of DF is even less user-friendly than the rest of the game, and considering the game in question, that's really saying something. At the rate I'm going now, the first military Marblehalls will have is gonna be the retinue of royal guards who accompany the king.

Frankly, I make no apologies for loving my cage traps: As long as my civilians think that the proper response to being attacked by a goblin is to dodge toward said goblins, and as long as my recruits think that my command of "Go stand on this particular square" translates to "Go stand somewhere relatively near this particular square--and if you see a goblin, run directly at it, ignoring your overseer's frantic commands to run the flux away," then I shall continue to stand by my main defense of a long, narrow, winding hallway with a cage trap crammed onto every single square. But I'm growing up--by year 6, I expect the traps will be almost completely replaced by a bitchin' setup of walls, towers, moats, and bridges, all bristling with shifty-eyed marksdwarves.

Oh and as for the hammerman part, lashers are called hammermen.

So why do I have a handful of caged Goblin Lashers? Though I haven't actually checked to see what they're carrying . . . they might have scourges, not whips.

Don't let your dwarves be woodcutters, miners, or hunters as this conflicts with their uniforms they currently own.

Although a fair level of skill in an "athletic" profession is a very good form of paramilitary training to prepare for actual military service: If the job trains strength, agility, and/or toughness, those dwarves will thank you for it when their hands are only cut open instead of being cut off.

[GalenEvil]

So why do I have a handful of caged Goblin Lashers? Though I haven't actually checked to see what they're carrying . . . they might have scourges, not whips.

I think that scourges are technically a type of whip. But I am not entirely sure... >.<

Don't let your dwarves be woodcutters, miners, or hunters as this conflicts with their uniforms they currently own.

Although a fair level of skill in an "athletic" profession is a very good form of paramilitary training to prepare for actual military service: If the job trains strength, agility, and/or toughness, those dwarves will thank you for it when their hands are only cut open instead of being cut off.

I agree that "athletic" professional training is a good thing while they (the military unit) is not active. Also, at least in 31.25 you can set their active-military uniform to be worn either over their civilian clothing or instead of it. That may be a good thing to keep in mind if you don't want your workers running about in their military uniforms all the time?

Something about the cage-traps...
I really like using cage-traps. I have a large partition of them set up to capture anything and everything that tries to come in through my front door. They will suffice until I have more than just two Legendary Swordsdwarfs with Copper everything... Having a pitting room close-by to the entrance will allow the peons to move and reload the traps rapidly, and then I can go about training up some Marksdwarfs with live targets and Wooden Arrows!!! *laughs maniacally* >.>

I didn't know that after getting a set of trainers I should move them into larger recruit groups. I had just gone under the assumption that they should only be moved into groups with a singular recruit to get them trained up. Also, may help also if I was to get some more copper/steel/iron to make new armor/weapons first.

An additional note, to round out my !!first post to this forum!! ^_^:
Pissing off the second dwarven caravan, when they have everything that I want, because I somehow dont have enough $1000 prepared roasts to hand over to them for free is rather annoying! I could have made two whole sets of armor/weapons, or a little more, and they wanted to get a surplus in trade of >5000 Urists...

Urist McPhailNegotiator cancels Get Items From DWARVES.....they pissed off
Urist McPhailNegotiator goes melancholy...
Urist McPhailNegotiator collides with something wet at a high speed --> Cliffdived from my fortified walls into the River
Urist McPhailNegotiator has drowned...

~GalenEvil