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[gexern]

I got the military installed, with beds and armor stand and weapon rack. I designated the barracks from one of the beds. The room allows them to sleep, train and ind and squad eqp. I put them on training alert, and set the schedule for training for minimum 5 (have 5 in squad) And they train. When i view them they train fighting and other stuff, but I cannot see any experience gain, at all. They are equiped with iron weapon and full iron armor. What am I doing wrong??

[weenog]

They gain experience incredibly slowly if you do it that way.  A danger room can speed things up substantially, but some players look down on that as exploitative.  If you'd rather not do that, you could reduce squad size to 2 or 3 dwarves (and have multiple squads), with each squad using the same kinds of weapons.  This will increase the likelihood of training taking the form of sparring, which is a faster way to gain experience.  All dwarves in a squad using the same weapon type means you won't have experience gains wasted with things like a speardwarf picking up a little skill in an irrelevant (to him) weapon type by watching an axe demonstration.

[GhostDwemer]

The only thing you are doing wrong is expecting too much. This is not an action role playing game where combatants gain levels every half hour. Training is more realistic, as in real life it takes a long time to become a legendary warrior.

You will find, however, that training gets quicker as time goes on, because your military will become better not only at their primary combat skills, but also at teaching, learning and concentrating. A highly skilled fighter with high teaching skills will train others much, much faster than an unskilled idiot. Eventually, you will probably want to split your first squad up and make most of them captains of their won squads.

Alternatively, if you believe that getting poked in the groin repeatedly with a dull stick actually should turn dwarves into invincible fighting machines, try the danger room suggestion.

[gexern]

Ok, I see. It's not that I expected them to become legendary heroes after a winter, but I register not even a 10 xp increase. I have three macemen, stuck at 2000xp and 2x1900xp respectively.

And my dwarfes definetively don't deserve to get their balls punctured. And how do I get an overview of their attributes? I cannot find it on DwarfTherapist ...

[Anathema]

Training in groups just.. doesn't work well at the moment. In a squad of 2, the dwarves will generally spar, which is good experience even for new recruits - this is what you want to happen.

With 3+ in a squad, one dwarf tries to organize a demonstration while the other dwarves watch. Thing is if the dwarves don't have any teacher/organizer/student/observer skill, it'll take the demonstrating dwarf forever to organize it (during which time the other dwarves sit around 'waiting for demonstration' and learning nothing), and by the time he's ready most of them have gone off to get a drink or take a nap, and come to think of it the demonstrating dwarf wants a drink too by then..

In that brief moment where the dwarf is actually demonstrating and perhaps one other is actually watching, neither get any meaningful progress because their student/teacher/observer skills are terrible, and they're not going to improve those skills anytime soon at that rate. In fact even if his teacher skill is high, the demonstrator won't teach anything if he doesn't have any good fighting skills to teach. It's not entirely broken, I've heard you can get good demonstration training in with the right skills, it just doesn't work for unskilled dwarves.. stick to 2-dwarf squad sparring, at least until you get some skilled champions who might be able to rub off a little on the new recruits.

[INSANEcyborg]

Another issue to be aware of is that a demonstration only teaches one thing at a time.  A dodging session won't train anything but dodging.  This is probably why your macedwarves weren't getting any skill, they were attending the wrong types of demonstrations.

[dexxy]

You can probably train them quicker by getting them to attack things. Try making some cage traps, then put the cages in an arena with levers connected to them. Send in the troops, pull the levers, they get experience.

[Garath]

don't think I saw it mentioned yet, but if your squad size is 5, don't set minimum at 5. It means that they won't do anything unless they are all there and there is a big chance one is sleeping, eating or drinking so the rest will wait for him/her, and by the time that dwarf arrives, another goes on break.

[gexern]

Thanks for all the help, I'm pretty sure the problem is that they were never training, just waiting for the demonstration to start. Guess I'll have to make them do sparring instead.

don't think I saw it mentioned yet, but if your squad size is 5, don't set minimum at 5. It means that they won't do anything unless they are all there and there is a big chance one is sleeping, eating or drinking so the rest will wait for him/her, and by the time that dwarf arrives, another goes on break.

Yeah, I usually do that, but the problem is that when I have the minimum less than I have dwarves in the squad only as many as I set as minimum will become active. So if I have 5 dwarves, and I have a minimum on 3, only 3 dwarves are active and the other 2 inactive ...

[vidboi]

don't think I saw it mentioned yet, but if your squad size is 5, don't set minimum at 5. It means that they won't do anything unless they are all there and there is a big chance one is sleeping, eating or drinking so the rest will wait for him/her, and by the time that dwarf arrives, another goes on break.

Yeah, I usually do that, but the problem is that when I have the minimum less than I have dwarves in the squad only as many as I set as minimum will become active. So if I have 5 dwarves, and I have a minimum on 3, only 3 dwarves are active and the other 2 inactive ...

That's the point. You don't really want all your dwarves active at the same time as they'll use training time for breaks, eating, drinking and sleeping. Having a certain number off duty at any one time means that ideally they'll deal with all the distractions when they're off duty and not hold up the rest of the active soldiers.

[gexern]

Ah! I see. So, just to make sure I got this right! If I have a squad of ten, and I have two minimum in the training schedule; only two will train and they will do sparring?

[saintjebus]

What I do is split up my squads into 3-4 dwarf squads, and then put the minimum at 2. Then I rotate their schedules, so that two squads are always training at the same time. I get decent results with that.

[Quietust]

don't think I saw it mentioned yet, but if your squad size is 5, don't set minimum at 5. It means that they won't do anything unless they are all there and there is a big chance one is sleeping, eating or drinking so the rest will wait for him/her, and by the time that dwarf arrives, another goes on break.

This is WRONG - the "minimum 5" (on a squad of 5) only means that you'll never have squad members off-duty in Civilian mode. I've personally had squads ranging in size from 4 to 10 with "minimum 10" and they all train and spar just fine, even if a few dwarves are busy sleeping.

Kindly stop spreading misinformation - like the myth of booze being explosive, it does nothing but mislead people.

[greycat]

I think the whole "reduce the number of dwarves who must follow an order" idea got started waaay back at the very beginning of DF2010 when people thought on-duty soldiers would starve themselves to death trying to follow orders.  Somehow it became part of the DF community mindset after that.  I've excised it from at least one of the military guide wiki pages, but it still persists on the forums, and possibly other wiki pages.

If you want to maximize training speed, without using danger rooms or live-opponent exercises, then it's really this simple:

1) Make a squad with 2 dwarves in it.  Give them a uniform that includes a weapon, shield and some armor.
2) Make a barracks.
3) Assign the squad to the barracks.
4) Change the squad's alert (passive orders) to "Active/Training".
5) Optionally, put their bedrooms, a booze stockpile, food stockpile, and dining room very close to the barracks.

That's it.  Do not mess with anything else.  They'll demonstrate some, and they'll spar some.  The longer they keep at it, the more they'll spar.  Having some combat skills before joining the military may speed things up as well, but it's not required.

Ah! I see. So, just to make sure I got this right! If I have a squad of ten, and I have two minimum in the training schedule; only two will train and they will do sparring?

If you do that, then at any given moment, 2 of your dwarves will be on duty (solid smiley-face icon, military title) and will be capable of following your passive orders, while the other 8 will be off duty (hollow smiley-face icon, civilian title) and will either perform civilian labors or will do individual weapon drills, but will never participate in group training, patrolling, defending burrows, or whatever.

If you want all 10 dwarves to be capable of training at the same time, leave the value at the default setting of 10.  They'll still take breaks for food, booze and sleep, but they'll remain on duty the entire month.

[Xen0n]

Ok, I see. It's not that I expected them to become legendary heroes after a winter, but I register not even a 10 xp increase. I have three macemen, stuck at 2000xp and 2x1900xp respectively.

And my dwarfes definetively don't deserve to get their balls punctured. And how do I get an overview of their attributes? I cannot find it on DwarfTherapist ...

I don't know if vanilla Dwarf Therapist can show Attributes, but the amazing Splinterz version (?) can show all of a Dwarf's Phyical and mental attributes by double clicking their name.  I believe you can find the Spinterz version at the end of the vanilla Therapist thread.