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[Wrex]

So, I have a number of giant subterreanean animals in cages, so by what means could they be trained without putting the animal trainers in mortal danger?

[GoombaGeek]

They can be trained normally, I'm pretty sure - my amateur animal trainer trained a GCS without getting maimed and eaten. I think they just take an acceptable food item for the animal and get them to behave, then feed it to them through the bars (without freeing them).

[DisgruntledPeasant]

the problem seems to be KEEPING them tame.  As far as I can tell, the skill of the animal trainer dictates how long the animal will remain trained,  if you have animals that are particularly dangerous, or animals in large number that will go wild again then keep a dedecated trainer.

[Wrex]

How do you keep them tamed then? Will the trainers perform upkeep on their tameness, so to speak, or do you just pray your small army of GCS don;t go apeshit?

[weenog]

Once the animal is trained in the cage the first time, it should be moved to a pasture or a restraint, and it will receive training upkeep from there as necessary.  A highly skilled trainer (try practicing on bycatch you don't want to keep and will just butcher) helps, but make sure he's not taking higher priority jobs... a dedicated trainer might be your best bet.

I like to build a containment room that includes multiple chains (spaced far enough apart that the creatures have no chance of reaching one another) and an airlock system to keep critters where they belong.  For really dangerous stuff I throw in a drawbridge blast door as an extra security measure.

[celem]

Keep an eye on how tamed they are.  Also i seem to remember that a tamed animal falling to 'semi-wild' (last stage before it goes feral on you) triggers an announcement.

To make sure they stay friendly you want to keep a trainer assigned to them who will do this 'upkeep'.  This is the guy you assign through the 'z' screen using 't'

If you breed from your tamed animals then the offspring inherit the mothers tameness level at birth.  I think you can actually get these 2nd generation all the way to domesticated (never decays).  The wiki indicates this at least though ive never tried this aspect of it

FakeEdit: 1/3 points ninjad

[EvilBob22]

If you breed from your tamed animals then the offspring inherit the mothers tameness level at birth.  I think you can actually get these 2nd generation all the way to domesticated (never decays).  The wiki indicates this at least though ive never tried this aspect of it

I have, it does work - I have a fortress full of domesticated giant Keas.

[DisgruntledPeasant]

After training a bunch of captured ravens in a previous fort, i got an anouncment along the lines of "the dwarves have learned something about taming ravens",  in your Z animals screen you have a general animal training knowledge.  I 'think' that repeated training of a certain type of animal will boost your dwarves familiarity with them too (perhaps allowing permenant training after some time?)

[Iosyn]

Just a FYI any caged beast that got named from kills/notable kills can't be completely tamed. Once tamed and it may still wish to go and breathe fire across the dining room.

However if one were to have two named dragons pastured in a secure nesting room it may be possible to tame the offspring from birth.
That is if you mess about with the raw tags.
I wonder how long dragon eggs need to mature.

[Hyndis]

Build some safeguards into your animal training room. Put some cage traps at the door. Cage traps will only capture hostile creatures. If its tame it will be safe from the cage trap.

Ensure your animal trainers aren't being busy somewhere else so they have plenty of time to train the animals.

You will always get some backsliding, but if you have cage traps to catch any backsliders and plenty of animal trainers on hand it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[Sutremaine]

Tamed creatures won't necessarily be moved to a pasture. I've tamed animals and forgot about them, then got the announcements about the animal reverting, still in the cage. How many trainers do people generally have? I have two trainers maintaining 22 animals, and I'd estimate they spent most of their skill levels maintaining half that amount. They were also picked out in DT for their aptitude for the job, and I got quality training right from the start.

Just a FYI any caged beast that got named from kills/notable kills can't be completely tamed. Once tamed and it may still wish to go and breathe fire across the dining room.

I think that one was fixed. Captured siege mounts are still untameable.

[Blucher]

I've had good luck with chains.  When the creature gets to "semi-wild", move it from its cage to a restraint and continue training there.  I've read here that if a creature reverts to a wild state they become immune to traps, but I don't have any first hand experience with that.  I've had a few go wild from semi-wild, but have never lost one once they've reached any degree of "trained" status.  I keep animal training on all of my dwarves and the first available dwarf with free time takes care of any training job that becomes active.

[Seraphim342]

It seems that in your "animal knowledge" or whatever it is, all the animals you have knowledge of can be requested from your liaison for trade, and the ones initially there as domesticated are available on embark.  Is it possible that your civ can learn this, and that you could request, for example, dragons and rocs if you tamed them successfully?

[Di]

It's not like my animal trainer is overloaded with jobs but my caged animals spend half of the time in wild state while former hangs out in dinning hall not giving a crap. I'll see if pasturing an animal will ensure more frequent training upkeep, but I'm really hesitant to rely on trained giant black mambas as a defense.

Edit: Pastured animal did receive training reinforcement before turning all wild indeed. Black mamba is still better kept in cage.

[Seraphim342]

If you train their young right after they're born they should get Tame status, according to some stuff I read a while back, aka no retraining.