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[Tirion]

In any squad, up to 4 dwarves will take part in a demonstration. If there are more than 4 dwarves, up to 2 demonstrations can be organized at a time. That means in a 10 dwarf squad, 2 will always be left out of it, and idle/individual combat training/sparring instead. Only sparring is better than combat demonstrations. Smaller squads, such as 2 or 3 dwarves, spar a lot more.

[firelord84]

  Thanks for all your help.  Slight update:

      A few more caravans have come by, which means a few more ambushes and an invasion have happened.  My fortifications and moat is complete, which means my dwarves are safe to wander around outside even when an invasion is out there.

      Notes:  A dwarf is caught in the open by goblin bowmen and killed.  My crossbowmen (who are standing near my entrance waiting for all the slower dwarves to get inside my defenses), decide that this is a good time to go pick up the dead dwarf's equipment one at a time.  It took the life of one dwarf for me to figure out how to make them realize that this is not a good idea.  Their job becomes "Pick up Equipment", so I can't stop it.  I order them to station or move, but they decide they want to pick up the equipment which is behind 2 squads of goblins before they station.  So, I finally get the idea to create an alert that forces them into a burrow inside the walls, which means they insta-change clothes, but finally it brought everybody back inside the walls.  I think these dwarves need a little more common sense.  If you see something you want out behind enemy lines, it might not be the best idea to charge out their alone to attempt to collect it, going past the squads of goblin bowmen.  Luckily, only one died before two more (well-trained because they were hunters previously) were out there and actually managed to stun and severely injure most of the squad, and the rest retreated (I gave them copper and steel bolts by this time).  So I charged down really quick with my 2 melee squads, finished them off, and ran back into the walls and raised the bridges before the other gobs could get there.

      Which leads me to a question.  I then order my crossbowmen to patrol the southwest wall, which another goblin squad happens to be near.  They oblige, but only one of them actually brings bolts with him....  What?  Aren't the crossbowmen supposed to resupply if they have no other standing orders?  Mine certainly didn't, I checked.  Three of them stood on that wall staring at the goblins less than 5 tiles from them until they got thirsty and went to get a drink...  Now, I wasn't in a big hurry because my civilians were still wandering freely in my compound gathering crops, cutting trees and whatnot since they were perfectly safe in the walls, but I found it annoying that I had to stare at goblins for several minutes.

       Finally, the one dwarf with bolts gets up there, breaks the legs of one, kills another, and they run screaming.  By that time, the one other goblin squad of spearmen decide they've seen enough and make a break for it too.  So I killed 4 reachable goblins and lost a total of 3 dwarves, a crossbowmen and two civs.  Let me explain that previous statement.  8 goblins, yes 8, drowned in the moat when it thawed for spring.  They were standing on the frozen moat trying to find a way past my walls.  While hilarious, it robbed me of the chance to loot them because my moat is fed directly from the creek with nothing inbetween.

 In short, the things I draw from this experience. 
      1)  I have several very experienced crossbowdwarves now, and they rock pretty hard with metal bolts.  So thanks for that.  That the two experienced ones were actually able to only be injured in the fight with the goblin bow squad was a welcome sight to see.
      2)  Why don't they actually carry the bolts I've assigned to them for combat use in the military->ammunition menu?  I have wooden bolts for training, and metal bolts for combat.  The numbers shouldn't be a problem, I have over 500 metal bolts assigned to the squad.  And there are many checkmarks next to various stacks of bolts, so I know they're assigned.  Once they run out, it takes them forever to pick up new ones.  Sometimes they're not even doing anything in the meantime.

[knutor]

I don't micromanage ammo material type.  Cannot answer that.  Same issues here.  Way I fixed it, was to keep a lot of ammo piles, around where I station the archers.  3-4 Drink barrels in ammo pile, too.  No food and no bins.  Without bins I can keep a close eye on which are stocked, when I get sieged.  To help me decide where to put the troops.

I'm fairly certain, redirecting a brook is possible, with enough channeling, spread it out enough, ya can block it off, because it gets shallow.  A river however, might be tough without going down and out the edge of map with it.  You should get that goblinite, its great stuff.  Try coming up from below?  With a side branching down and off map, with a grate, so ya don't wash off the goodies?

I'm having that exact problem with my squads, running out to recover crap.  I think I'm gonna turn off stuff in orders, thats where the setting I believe is for preventing that from happening.  My guess is you did what I did, and reclaim the ammo.  He might be trying to pickup 1 bolt from map edge or sip from the stream over there, or upgrade his crap to something else.  Hard to say. 

I've had this happen.  Curious of how you solve it, myself.  Good job killing four of them.  My last game, my militia all died, charging them to melee with wooden xbows.  I never use patrols.  Just staion with melee squad, and defend burrow with ranged.  However the later has been letting me down, since 34.06, and I dunno why.  Knutor

[Werdna]

There's a bug with switching between ammo types (4530).  I've only found luck when I keep the ammo type the same for both combat and training.  So personally, I start with bone and use it for both archery practice and combat until the squad is proficient or so, then switch them entirely to metal bolts, and assign them to train at a weapon rack so they no longer fire bolts in training (from that point on they get live-fire training only).

They were standing on the frozen moat trying to find a way past my walls.  While hilarious, it robbed me of the chance to loot them because my moat is fed directly from the creek with nothing inbetween.

Wait until it freezes again, then channel into the ice over where the bodies are (use 'k' and poke around to locate the bodies in the ice).  You can recover their gear that way.  Just be sure to finish your looting before spring. 

[Finn]

For what it's worth, d -> b-> f will solve all "dwarves want to wander over there" problems.

[DTF]

For what it's worth, d -> b-> f will solve all "dwarves want to wander over there" problems.

Even better: just forbid every death item with the (F)orbid menu right after embarking. If they want to (rather: under no flipping circumstances must not be), dwarves can be incredibly tidy and they will find that one sock out there that wants to be hauled into safety.

[knutor]

Tried both, but the battle was raging.  Didn't solve mine, but might take awhile to sync to the AI logic, as lots of scrolling stuff is displayed.  So dunno. 

They still leave the murderhole burrow, when set up to Defend Burrow.  Regardless of the items on the grounds status.  I got a hunter disobeying me and leaving the civ danger burrow.  He's running around uptop, going into it, then coming back out, as if his AI is broken.  Sometimes he shoots, so maybe if he's engaged in ranged combat, that will trump alerts?  But what I don't understand is why is he coming back out?  Some adventure seeking possibly?  Hmm.  Wish I could stop this its really disturbing the mid game action.  Thanks, Knutor