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[ZzarkLinux]

I have a squad of 3 axes, and they are all listed as "spar" on their labor.
They are all standing on-top-of each other and sparring... so yea.

I'm not sure what this means for XP, but my starting 3 have:
: 3 teacher
: 1 student
: 3 dodge
: 3 weapon
and they're leveling pretty decent.

Has this already been mentioned?

[Feb]

Spar was never broken to start with, it's demonstration and marksdorfs that were wonky.

[ZzarkLinux]

Spar was never broken to start with, it's demonstration and marksdorfs that were wonky.

It was purported that its one of the reasons squads train so slow.
If you jam 10 dwarves in a squad, only 2 would spar, the rest would "individual drill" inefficiently.

Update: I just checked the wiki, and saw no mention of the 2-man-band thing.
So I guess it was just a rumor after all, but I saw 3 sparring all-at-once so I guess it won't be mentioned anymore.

[dirty foot]

Spar was never broken to start with, it's demonstration and marksdorfs that were wonky.

It was purported that its one of the reasons squads train so slow.
If you jam 10 dwarves in a squad, only 2 would spar, the rest would "individual drill" inefficiently.

Update: I just checked the wiki, and saw no mention of the 2-man-band thing.
So I guess it was just a rumor after all, but I saw 3 sparring all-at-once so I guess it won't be mentioned anymore.

I have NEVER gotten my men to efficiently train. Military has been a sore spot for me since the moment I installed this game.


I can't stand using them, and I no longer do so. It's better to have those 20 men building JUST base defenses instead of standing around in the sparring room doing nothing, but managing to find a reason to gain unhappy thoughts for a long patrol or being drafted. They literally have the easiest job in the world by virtue of ignoring all training and patrolling, getting to eat and drink all the time, and getting free reign on all the best clothing/armor/weapons; yet, they are the only dwarfs that consistently have something negative to say about their quality of life.

I used to just suicide them the moment one of them got to complaining to the leader about the "terrible" conditions. Cave-in elevators to the circus, bronze colossus wrestling, trader disputes, etc., etc., but it got to be a waste of good hauler dwarfs.

[ZzarkLinux]

It's better to have those 20 men building JUST base defenses instead
I have NEVER gotten my men to efficiently train. Military has been a sore spot for me since the moment I installed this game.

Point taken about the loss of labor. I noticed a lack the haulers/dumpers in my last fort.

My starting dwarves from OP are now all Proficient in weapon and Skilled in fighting, and it's only early Autumn.
I gave them a break for ~2 months cause of grumpyness, so overall it's good enough for me.

[Nan]

Okay lets just be blunt. Melee squads larger than 3 are simply a waste of time except in limited circumstances*. Squads of 2 or 3 are truly excellent investments, producing an excellent ratio of slaughter to investment. If you don't understand this, just try it out. Embark with two proficient weapon users (no secondary skills needed) and put them in a squad together and give them no time off. The results will impress and amaze. Squads of 2 are more powerful than squads of 10. That is, the 2 dwarves thoroughly trained by sparring have more kill-power than the whole squad of 10 crappily trained dwarves. So it's not more work or anything, it's less work, because you only need 2 dwarves and equipment for 2 dwarves, and you get more out of that investment.

* Embark embarking with multiple dwarves as proficient teachers + proficient weapon skill, and putting them into a single large squad, works fairly well. Not nearly as well as putting them into separate squads of 2, but it's respectable enough to be worth mentioning.

[Immacolata]

This begs the question: why is military still so wonky in the training phase? Hope for more focus on this in the coming development cycle.

As far as I know 2-3 men were the "du jour" way to train squads in DF of all 31-releases

[Robsoie]

In 28.x sparring and military were working completely, soldiers equipped what you assigned them, they were always sparring and improving, they were always using archery ranges. 0.31.x new military system was completely broken.

It's sad that even 2 years after 0.31.x, with the new 0.34.x the military training system always feels broken, soldiers that don't even try to spar and prefer to train individually (and so useless in term of improving) , marksdwarf that will never use the archery range etc...

But at least in 0.34.x soldiers equip their assigned weapons before going to fight monsters, as in 0.31.x i more than often had my squads rushing without them and trying to wrestle goblins that came with spears/swords/wips, always ending in the wrestlers all dead in a few seconds.

So indeed 0.34.x military works much better than 0.31.x, but it's not yet at the level of fully working like it was in 0.28.x

[simonthedwarf]

"I have a squad of 3 axes, and they are all listed as "spar" on their labor."

This is why its working. But if you want to join in on my !!!Science!!! try going to your schedule and assigning multiple train orders. I have a yet to be proven theory that this can make them spar more, thinking that it sort of means that individual group of 2 for a training order of 2 forms within the group of the squad itself. But I've yet to  reproduce consistent results.

But at least in 0.34.x soldiers equip their assigned weapons before going to fight monsters, as in 0.31.x i more than often had my squads rushing without them and trying to wrestle goblins that came with spears/swords/wips, always ending in the wrestlers all dead in a few seconds.

The really dumb thing? How legendary kicking and striking (I assume this is boxing) is actually useful and deadly, while I never see dwarves really wrestle with results.

[Yaotzin]

Well it works, because you can do 2-3 man squads and they'll spar which works fine.

Hopefully Toady fixes teaching (so the guy with dabbling in dodging doesn't try teach it to the proficient one...), then larger squads should work out nicely. An option for something like "prefer learning/prefer sparring" would be good too. Have them learn while they're nubbins then switch to sparring when they're pretty good.

Sparring should only produce good results once the basics are down, ie they're at least competent.

[simonthedwarf]

Or simply that you can mark dwarves as students or teachers. Meaning that you could put the best dwarves to lead demonstrations, and the crappy ones to observe. Instead of the dabbling wrestler bee keeper trying to teach legendary UristMcDeath sumo tricks.

[Yaotzin]

Yup that sort of thing. Make that formerly great soldier who lost his arms into a teacher, that sort of thing.

The basic system is really nice, I think. It just needs polish.

[simonthedwarf]

Lacks polish? It's the real Hell, just in menial labour form targeted at the player.

Oh man, and we haven't even mentioned the lack of squad names or other lacking functionality of the military screens. Nothing like guessing if the Caverns of Threating or Deeply Shielded Flowers is your axes or your hammers.

Having to browse through every dwarf on a list ingame each time you want to assign a new one to a slot in the squad, dwarf therapist not allowing you to assign dwarfs to squads, not being able to browse military and civilian skills at the same time so you dont end up making your noble/bookkeeper/trader/metalsmith/legendary brewer into a recruit. Or end up drafting a hunter/miner/woodcutter which messes up his uniform.

And what about the fact that a uniform sword weapon will cause the dwarf to show up as a "no relevant skills" even if he has legendary speardwarf. Its however possible to deal with by having the uniform without weapon assigned so you can browse them with weapon skills showing, and then you have to assign a weapon to every last one of them.

If only the "individual choice" wasn't actually "random quality and random type of weapon in the fortress" instead "best quality weapon of the type i am most skilled with". 

Or what about military dwarves leaving their rotten plump helmets all over the barracks if you enable individual or squad equipment, which you have to manually dump because they are "claimed".  ARCHERY targets broken in the most recent version, injuriy creating job cancellation spam, dwarves who will either rest forever or not at all having yellow injuries annoying you to death.

Seriously the military system even though I use it in 100% of my forts is one of them most time consuming shit to wade through in DF. And the product is either clearly overpowered dwarves or wuzzes that get strangled by a single troglodyte.

 

[dirty foot]

The really dumb thing? How legendary kicking and striking (I assume this is boxing) is actually useful and deadly, while I never see dwarves really wrestle with results.

We all know the answer to that though.

Do you remember how wrestling used to be? Flashbacks man...terrifying.

[dirty foot]

Yup that sort of thing. Make that formerly great soldier who lost his arms into a teacher, that sort of thing.

The basic system is really nice, I think. It just needs polish.

There should be a military leader that isn't included in the squads, and treat him much in the same way that we treat the chief medical doctor. HE can just be a trainer/leader like how we deal with other high-ranking officers in the real world. They paid their due, now they get to live on a solid pension and just tell people what to do, or help with instruction.