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[Buoyancy]

"Hey everybody, partner up and do some sparring!!"

So why do they only do this if there are only two of them in a squad?  If there are more than two, then all but two of them will stand around watching demonstrations forever.

If there's only one efficient way to train, then there's nothing interesting about having to manually control your dwarves so that they will use it.  You simply have to fight with the interface so that you can move units around between many different squads and promote half of your military to be militia captains.

[Mushroo]

"Hey everybody, partner up and do some sparring!!"

So why do they only do this if there are only two of them in a squad?  If there are more than two, then all but two of them will stand around watching demonstrations forever.

If there's only one efficient way to train, then there's nothing interesting about having to manually control your dwarves so that they will use it.  You simply have to fight with the interface so that you can move units around between many different squads and promote half of your military to be militia captains.

From a game-design perspective, there are only two possibilities:

A) All forms of military training are equally effective.
B) Some forms of military training are more efficient than others.

Dwarf Fortress falls into category B. It is well established on the wiki and these forums that the worst form of training is a big mob of unskilled peasants with no teacher, and the best is a training room. It is your choice whether or not to use this knowledge to your advantage.

ps I am sure I have seen more than 2 dwarfs per squad sparring, on occasion.

[Azure]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Hey everybody, partner up and do some sparring!!"

So why do they only do this if there are only two of them in a squad?  If there are more than two, then all but two of them will stand around watching demonstrations forever.

If there's only one efficient way to train, then there's nothing interesting about having to manually control your dwarves so that they will use it.  You simply have to fight with the interface so that you can move units around between many different squads and promote half of your military to be militia captains.

It is because with only two dwarves there i minimal distractions so demonstrations are handled quickly which then opens up more chances for sparring which is observed as they spar more in small groups because they didn't spend 3 weeks waiting for Urist McFatass to finish eating and sleeping only to have another begin the cycle anew.

There is most certainly FAR more than only one way to train. First. If the scrubs don't know WHAT to train they have to piss time away finding out how. This is ranks 1-7 with little to no teaching. So of COURSE it is going to be slow but thats how it is if you cram a bunch of axes, swords, spears and hammers into a squad and want legends to pop out of the revolving door in a couple months. Proper training programs take years to set up and depending on how far you go can alter how you play significantly. As for just ways of training, here's a few:

• 10 dwarf Bludgeon Wildlife all day erry day squad -Good for getting agile dwarves to R7 for training so you'll have some trainers.
• 2-4 dwarf same weapon training squad. Low skills no teacher - Not effective but you'll get there one day
• 2-4 dwarf same weapon trained using prisoners. - Pretty useful especially if you use the stocks menu to disarm prisoners but leaving them armored
• 10 dwarf same weapon with 2-3 Legendary soldiers that have mid-high teacher - Now your getting to a real training program.
• Danger room 10 Spear upright spikes - Legends in months. Small risk of infected extremities. Great for making a doctor into a part-time killing machine. Rest or Die!
• Danger Room 1 Spear upright spikes. - Slower rate for less cheese
• Hallways littered with randomly placed 1 Spear upright spikes. - Slow gradual training for a fort with a Nat. Self-defense program.
• Give all Non-essential quickly training Civvies castoff armor and xbows. let them skill up during sieges/mass arena executions. - Quite useful. If things look grim you can roll out 60+ moderately trained marksdwarves to rain arrows.
• Put skilled marksdwarves into a training squad with two legendary hammerdwarves with high teaching stat to cross-train.
• Have naked squads for wrestling training
• Have a shields only squad for Misc. Obj. training.

Congratz, here is 3 cheese, 4 somewhat effective, and 4 ways to train up and skill up a basic military.

[Mushroo]

Awesome post Azure, very helpful.

One additonal suggestion:

Hunters. Great in the early fortress to train the archer squad leaders of tomorrow. Also useful for spotting ambushes and "shepherding" outdoor civilians back to safety.

[Azure]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Awesome post Azure, very helpful.

One additonal suggestion:

Hunters. Great in the early fortress to train the archer squad leaders of tomorrow. Also useful for spotting ambushes and "shepherding" outdoor civilians back to safety.

Hunters are pretty good since you don't have to micro but they have a nasty habit of finding those ambushes and not getting out alive so it feels safer to just employ them as a process/miller and have the forts alert activate them to a guard tower burrow to plink away at incoming gobbos. Yes, in older versions you could have them train a couple dogs and leave them unassigned to have a pseudo escort but it was still unnecessarily risky.

[Urist McBeard]

From a game-design perspective, there are only two possibilities:

A) All forms of military training are equally effective.
B) Some forms of military training are more efficient than others.

Dwarf Fortress falls into category B. It is well established on the wiki and these forums that the worst form of training is a big mob of unskilled peasants with no teacher, and the best is a training room. It is your choice whether or not to use this knowledge to your advantage.

ps I am sure I have seen more than 2 dwarfs per squad sparring, on occasion.

I wouldn't say one form of training is necessarily better than the other (well, except the training room exploit), just that they have different strengths. Sparring is great if you want to train a few guys relatively quickly in necessary skills (no biting, little kick/strike/wrestle), and demonstrations are great if you want to train up a lot of guys at once, but it can take a long time to train a good teacher.

Optimally, Toady will allow us to designate the kind of training a group does or favors, and we can have our sparring and demonstration squads not getting interrupted by the other. While we're at it I'd like to see learning styles implemented as well, more active dwarves learning better by doing and sparring, and the patient focused dwarves doing better from demonstrations.

ps Yup, I've seen multiple sparring sessions too.

[Mushroo]

Optimally, Toady will allow us to designate the kind of training a group does or favors, and we can have our sparring and demonstration squads not getting interrupted by the other. While we're at it I'd like to see learning styles implemented as well, more active dwarves learning better by doing and sparring, and the patient focused dwarves doing better from demonstrations.

Cool ideas... what if it were like the Job Manager screen,, you could easily queue up training orders like "dodging demonstration 12" or "sparring 30".

[Urist McBeard]

Optimally, Toady will allow us to designate the kind of training a group does or favors, and we can have our sparring and demonstration squads not getting interrupted by the other. While we're at it I'd like to see learning styles implemented as well, more active dwarves learning better by doing and sparring, and the patient focused dwarves doing better from demonstrations.

Cool ideas... what if it were like the Job Manager screen,, you could easily queue up training orders like "dodging demonstration 12" or "sparring 30".

That sounds pretty cool...

Mayor McIdiot has mandated 100 individual training sessions.

On second thought...

[Splint]

toss together 10 full wrestler squads. Problem solved. Disband after mandate. Or keep for zerg rush.

[Mushroo]

Another training "gotcha" is picking up equipment.
One guy runs from the guard tower all the way down to the magma forge to claim a just-forged steel gauntlet, then the next guy in line runs to get the first guy's discarded bronze gauntlet, etc.
That is why I recommended above no uniform or just a training weapon. Or segregate the training barracks so the trainees cannot path to the armor/weapon stockpiles, trade depot, and forges.

[krenshala]

For the training squad, I have them equipped with a shield and weapon but no armor whatsoever.  Sure, they won't learn Armor User this way, but they will learn dodge and block.

The hand-me-down shuffle can definitely be entertaining, however.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I am surprised so many people are having issues with untrained recruits.  I can barely find a dwarf who doesn't know his way around combat in the recent versions. I just toss them into groups of 10 with orders to train 7/10 all year round.  A few die every engagement every few early combats (say 2-3 years in), but the few that don't become unbreakable

[psychologicalshock]

Dwarves do train slowly, fortunately for melee what they're wearing and what they're swinging matters more. One of my swordsmen is in full steel armor with a steel sword, he's had around 16 significant kills and 15 animals killed (quite a few were dangerous giant types) but he's still only a talented swordsman and a novice shield user, given that he deflected a dragon's breathe twice and easily slices goblin squads apart.

[psychologicalshock]

My recommendation in terms of military is if you want an effective one embark with military dwarves. Besides that get a dwarf with high teaching and a dwarf with diagonosing skills. I find that  those are very hard to train in the actual game and if you don't get migrants with those skills you are screwed.

[TerminatorII]

ok so I have slight problem.... I think I got my hammer dwarves training... but the marksdwarves are just sitting around like the bunch of idiots that they are... any way to change that? (I have archery ranges setup with the squad assigned to it and squad is activated with training on set to minimum 2 and theres 6 archers.)


also.... is it good/bad/indifferent that my hammerers have 3 masterwork silver hammers equiped each? and if so how do I get them to drop two? GAHH!!!!!