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[agentanorexia]

I'm pretty new, on my third fortress. First game I got wiped out by a siege. Second by an ambush. I decided the third I'd survive longer. When I hit one of the first migrant waves, I created a military squad. Started them training, no big deal. They trained for some time, as more migrants appeared, I added members to the squad. Finally, a goblin squad appeared. Haha I thought, I've been preparing for this for some time. There was only ~3 of them, macemen. Sent my nine dwarves up to meet them. It was a slaughter, no dwarves survived and all the goblins did. They are now rampaging around, game over.

So few questions:
I was using dwarf therapist, the training dwarves never seemed to increase in military skill level, why? They had no other jobs and I saw them training. The squad was active and training was their only order. Had a min of 4 out of 9 squad members.

I keep reading that they are supposed to pick up gear on their own, but they never seemed to. I had to assign them weapons, and I can only assume they didn't have armor. I was buying crappy stuff from traders, but it was there nonetheless. How can I make them do that without doing the pick specific item all the time?

Other random questions:
What z level does metal generally occur on? I can't seem to find any. What about with shallow metals? I'm on 15, no sign of anything.

How in the world do I build ramps (up). I select build ramp. My walls start flashing green. But no matter what I do, I can't seem to actually build the ramp anywhere. Not next to the wall, not on top of the wall.

Thanks all, off to reclaim my fortress.

[celem]

Ok.  Your dwarves are training, but training is slow.  It takes years to create decent fighters on training alone, the good ones train and survive their battles (which yield a lot more xp).  Check the training schedule for your squad with 'm'-'s', make sure the minimum number needed to train isnt higher than the number of dwarves in the squad.  This can cause them to hang around a lot waiting for a class to fill, best a few below the squad size.

Armor.  Did you have any armor?  Weapons on skins is brutal, you only need to get hit once and you are seriously messed up.  Even dwarves with weapons will die eventually when someone hits them if they dont have armor.  Leather/bone is...meh, it sucks but slightly better than nothing.  Your metals should be there somewhere, dig a little deeper and send some exploratory passages off to look for veins.  Get your military into metal armor as soon as possible, even copper, whatever.

To get your dwarves into the right gear you can customise a uniform in the military screen ('m'-'n') and then assign the uniform to a squad with ('m'-'e'-'U').  When designing a uniform its best to have it fully replace clothing ('r') or they may not fit all the metal pieces on.  Hope this helps.

[Sutremaine]

Make smaller squads, and make your military dwarves full-time. Two-dwarf squads will result in extremely fast skill gain.

Training can be done in two ways, demonstrations or sparring. Demonstrations are done more often when skill levels in the active dwarves are unequal, and sparring is done more often when skill levels are equal. In a large squad, sparring and demonstrations done while dwarves are missing will result in those dwarves falling behind a little, causing more demonstrations to occur. In a small squad, all dwarves are likely to be present for sparring and demonstrations, keeping their skill levels equal and encouraging more sparring.

Sparring is what you want -- it always provides good XP, while demonstrations are dependent on the slow-raising Teaching and Student skills.

Be careful about how much armour you're putting on your training dwarves. Metal armour is heavy, and it will slow down unskilled dwarves a lot. The main culprits are the upper and lower body pieces, and while it's nice to have heavy shields for bashing you can easily swap metal for wood or leather.

[Trif]

Nine untrained dwarfs won't learn how to fight if nobody can teach them - well, they will eventually, but it takes a few years. If you include a dwarf with a high teacher skill in the squad, they'll learn much faster. Maybe you should consider including an experienced military dwarf in the reclaim party.

Also, small squads are most efficient. Two dwarfs per squad will do more sparring, and sparring is the best training.
If you understand the schedule screen very well, you might also try this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You can set the squad minimum multiple times. To avoid managing many small squads, use your big squad and set a minimum of two dwarfs three times, as well as a minimum of three dwarfs once. That has the same effect as making four small squads, but is a bit more complicated.

Celem's advice is good. Armor is very important, and leather and bone armor is a big improvement over the civilian clothing (still, you should go for metal armor as fast as possible).

Regarding your random questions: Metal can be quite random, but if the embark finder said so, there will be some sort of metal in the stone layers. Just remember: in Dwarf Fortress, an iron ore isn't called "iron ore", but it has its proper geological name (like hematite, limonite or magnetite). Check the wiki's guide to rock for more information.

I don't really understand your problem regarding ramps. You have to place it next to a wall (constructed or natural), the dwarfs need a path to it and that's pretty much all there is to it. You can only build them up though, so you need to be on the lower level.

Send a screenshot if this didn't help. Good luck!

Edit: Oh no! Ninjas!

[agentanorexia]

Alright, thanks for the replies guys. I read in another thread that they won't put it on unless I choose put over civilian clothes or something like that (think that may have been the problem). I had a mish-mash of random copper/leather items for them to equip.

With the ramps, I do d-r, which brings up the "x" marker, and my walls start to flash green. I hit enter, and it makes the square like I can put a rectangle of something. I move the cursor one over (still along the wall) and hit enter. Then it disappears and no ramp is built.

Another question: reclaimed my fortress, but there's ghosts. I have coffins, the ghosts own the coffins, but the body parts in my corpse stockpile aren't being transported there. I tried making one dwarf have no labors except burial, and he just idled. The cemetery is a pretty close distance to the coffins. Any ideas there?

Edit - I forgot to mention that the dwarves in my military had minimum 3 in some combat skill (hammer/sword/whatever). My most experienced had 6 sword I believe.

Edit2 - Aha! The metals make so much sense now. Thanks for that page, cleared it right up. Kept looking for them like I was finding gems.

[Hyndis]

I'm not sure why people insist on using only small squads. I've had an entire squad of 10 dwarves sparring at the same time. That is 5 sparring matches going on at the same time.

Also with the larger squad there are more demonstrations that can happen and more knowledge diffusion.

So a big squad means more potential sparring partners, and more potential teachers for a new recruit.



Alternatively, just danger room them.

[celem]

Getting a 'safe' danger room up is a fair task for a new player though.  He'll be learning hospitals and tantrum spirals rather than danger rooms.  To be honest you may want to buy yourself some time.  Dont engage the first goblins, trap em.  Either training spears in weapon traps to make them dodge off a drop or cages.  If you have glass or lowgrade metals like copper then spikes in traps work well too.  Buy yourself time to get a military established and trained.  Your entrance design is going to be key here.  You can always lookup defensive design on the wiki too.

Once you understand the military you can wing all sorts of stuff but its hard to learn except by doing, and doing wrong kills everyone so take it slow.

[Trif]

I'm not sure why people insist on using only small squads. I've had an entire squad of 10 dwarves sparring at the same time. That is 5 sparring matches going on at the same time.

Also with the larger squad there are more demonstrations that can happen and more knowledge diffusion.

So a big squad means more potential sparring partners, and more potential teachers for a new recruit.

This is assuming that you have skilled teachers who are experienced fighters. If none of the dwarfs knows how to fight, they'll waste their time trying to ineffectively teach each other.
In small squads, there isn't only more actual combat, but multiple dwarfs can organize demonstrations at the same time; so they learn how to fight and to teach faster.

With the ramps, I do d-r, which brings up the "x" marker, and my walls start to flash green. I hit enter, and it makes the square like I can put a rectangle of something. I move the cursor one over (still along the wall) and hit enter. Then it disappears and no ramp is built.

Ahh, you're using the designations menu, which means that you order the dwarfs to dig ramps into the walls. Your constructed walls flash because you can't dig into constructions.
If you want to build a ramp, you can do that with (b)-(C)-(r).

Another question: reclaimed my fortress, but there's ghosts. I have coffins, the ghosts own the coffins, but the body parts in my corpse stockpile aren't being transported there. I tried making one dwarf have no labors except burial, and he just idled. The cemetery is a pretty close distance to the coffins. Any ideas there?

You probably didn't enable the coffins for burial. Check the coffins with the (q) menu and set them to allow dwarf burial.
You said that the ghosts claimed them though. Is your cemetery outside? Dwarfs might not be allowed to gather the remains from outside. You can change that in the (o)rders menu - try (o)-(r)-(o) .

[agentanorexia]

Ahh, you're using the designations menu, which means that you order the dwarfs to dig ramps into the walls. Your constructed walls flash because you can't dig into constructions.
If you want to build a ramp, you can do that with (b)-(C)-(r).

Well now I feel silly.


The coffins were set to burial. Said ghost was from previous game, maybe there's a bug or something (I seem to be far from the only one with this problem). Eventually fixed it by engraving memorials, no big deal. I had one dwarf die since then and he got buried just fine.

Thanks for all your help guys.

[Rabbit86]

Hey all.  I have a related question.  Since dwarves will gain experience more quickly when sparring, how do you encourage sparring?  I have a fort where the dwarves never sparred until after they were already really good via danger room.  Will they not spar until they reach a certain experience level?  Does the weapon a dwarf is wielding influence this?  I noticed a thread noting fatal sparring for wresting.  Will raw recruits only wrestle when sparring at first?  Personally I haven't bothered with wrestling

[i2amroy]

Dwarves will only spar if they have similar skill levels. As such the best way to encourage sparring is small groups of two dwarves so that they can train quickly.

Also a note here, but there is one scenario where demonstrations can train dwarves faster then sparring, if the teacher has both a high teacher skill and there is a large difference between their skills and the recruit skills. As such an easy way to get a military off the ground is to embark with some military dwarves with a high teacher skill. Then just throw untrained recruits at them in large groups and they can quickly raise the recruit's skills to the point where the recruits will begin sparring on their own to get farther. This can actually be much faster then just throwing groups of two dwarves out their and having them spar, assuming your teacher has a high level and is skilled in military skills.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Send the dwarves out to fight little fuzzy animals. That trains the survivors up pretty well.
Invest in gear and a metal industry.
Don't be afraid to use traps if you need to.

[Sutremaine]

Will raw recruits only wrestle when sparring at first?  Personally I haven't bothered with wrestling

I don't remember off the top of my head whether shields count as weapons for the purpose of training, but if your dwarves don't have weapons or shields then they'll certainly train wrestling. It's not dependent on skill.

[DavionFuxa]

The coffins were set to burial. Said ghost was from previous game, maybe there's a bug or something (I seem to be far from the only one with this problem). Eventually fixed it by engraving memorials, no big deal. I had one dwarf die since then and he got buried just fine.

Before you don't get an answer for this - did you make sure to 'claim' all the fallen bodies of the Dwarves from the previous fortress? After you reclaim a fortress you need to reclaim everything including the Dwarves and their individual body parts. Were corpses or parts of Dwarves inaccessible, like in a river or on another cavern level? Any piece that isn't claim will result in the ghost not being completely buried.

You can't really find out since you engraved slabs but if you had problems in the above two areas, then that would result in ghosts.

[agentanorexia]

I don't think it was claiming, I went level by level and claimed from corner to corner. No caverns/underground rivers to speak of.

So another question. I've got about 25 goblins trapped in cages from a siege/ambush. I'm trying to get the items off them. I've tried d-b-c, d-b-d, then going individually through each one in k, enter-d to unselect the cages themselves, but my dwarves never get the items from them. The cages are in an animal stockpile, and I have a garbage disposal set up. If I hide the cages, I can see hidden items in my stock, so they must have them. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?