Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LittleJP]

So, I've been curious. Has anyone been able to set up a every dwarf military? I don't mean just all males or females. I mean every single dwarf is in the military.

I did a quick test earlier with fastdwarf and autolabor to set up everything, along with modded raws for easy steel. Females avoided danger room training for the sake of the babies and were therefore markdwarves, and males were danger room trained. Everyone was heavily armoured.

What ended up happening was that the miner/carpenter/hunting uniforms seemed to interfere with the military uniforms, leading to a lot of unhappy dwarves and subsequent tantruming.
Any success on this line?

[Drazinononda]

The only way to get around those three jobs is to assign no weapon and leave the uniform on "over clothing," though IIRC even if your miner is not assigned a different weapon, he'll still go store his pick before running off to beat goblins with his fists.

Last I checked, hunters automatically fire on enemies that are in range, despite being civilians. So if you don't care about a disorganized militia (i.e. un-orderable, just do what they feel is best) then giving your female soldiers the Hunting labor and setting them loose might work. Over time they become excellent marksdwarves and eventually will bring in more bolt-making material than what they use. The drawbacks to this are that your fort gets flooded with skulls and meat, and your women will spend all their time hunting instead of pretty much anything else. Still, a handful of hunters are nice to have when a snatcher does manage to take your woodcutter's baby and tries to run off with the brat.

Alternatively, you could leave those jobs out of the conscription, or give them their own non-uniformed squad, and put everyone else in regular squads. You could even set up full Miner squads by setting your peasants to mining and then drafting them when they reach Legendary: Mining doubles as a weapon skill, and would give your recruits a head start on training (since mining stone trains the skill faster than military drills).

[Tally]

In order to make a full-fort conscription feasible, it may be in your interest to mass-produce leather sets, assuming you've got a reasonable income of leather; probably more feasible if you just buy out leather from every caravan. Your other option is to make resource-light metal armor sets. The baseline for such a set would be a copper or iron mail shirt and helmet of the same material; add other armor pieces if resources and time are available: Leggings, Low or High Boots, and Gauntlets.

The purpose of a full-draft would be to allow your dwarves to wear armor should they run into trouble, ergo in order to keep your fort running efficiently and to give your dwarves a better chance at running away from danger, despite the bulk of armor, make your armor sets light, either by material weight or armor pieces.

[AutomataKittay]

I've had almost entire fortress under civilian militia pretty often. Yeah, you can't get miners, woodcutters or hunters in, because of uniform conflict, but I only have very few of the first two and disables the hunter job ( since they tend to get themselvs killed with goblins around ).

Pretty much all you need is good animal husbandry, a lot of leather and bone equipment and a whole gaggle of bone bolts!

[I am Leo]

I don't mean just all males or females.

I've missed something, why is this clarification necessary?

[Oaktree]

I draft most of my dwarves.  Militia/army gets full metal gear, reservists and cadre get light gear.  Miners and woodcutters go undrafted most of the time to avoid the uniform conflict.  (Though I have also put them in inactive squads as an experiment.)

I also took a bunch of experienced miners, turned off their mining labor, and drafted them as axe dwarves in order to get them training fighter, dodge, armor user, etc.  They will be given full armor and steel picks and unleashed on the goblins soon enough.

[AutomataKittay]

I don't mean just all males or females.

I've missed something, why is this clarification necessary?

Some people refuse to draft females into the military because of babies problem. I have no idea why they wouldn't with male, though, but someone's probably done it.

I drafts pretty indiscriminately, if they can hold a shield and a crossbow, they're in my militia.

[Oaktree]

I don't mean just all males or females.

I've missed something, why is this clarification necessary?

Using a danger room and avoiding putting females in danger room trained squads to avoid getting babies spiked.

I don't use danger rooms and thus do not split squads between males and females.  IF anything my current fortress is a matriarchy - queen, duchess, female mayor, and some of the leading military figures are female as well.

[Loud Whispers]

So, I've been curious. Has anyone been able to set up a every dwarf military? I don't mean just all males or females. I mean every single dwarf is in the military.

...

Any success on this line?

1. Yep.
2. Double yes.

~Basically~

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The fact that there are more soldiers than the adult population up there is caused by the were-civets screwing with the system.

Got around 1/2 to 2/3 of the Fortress training at any one point every year, ensuring pretty much everyone is equipped with some armour or weapon all the time. Having a great deal of your Fort on duty and ready to roll out to meet ambushes/undead fliers helps tremendously too, as often you can't afford to wait for your Dwarves to grab their equipment. This can mean the difference between injury and death.
Secondly, legendary marksdwarf teachers. I brought two proficient marksdwarves/teachers with me on my embark, and ever since they've been shooting down undead fliers to earn their place in myth and legend. But they are also incredibly capable teachers after such long times, and so are capable of teaching archery skills to novices without firing a single bolt.
Thirdly, there are no hunters. Only marksdwarves. Woodcutters and miners are put into the auxiliary groups. They stay out of conflict unless needed (a brilliant example being when a few were needed to dig out the animated corpses from the cursed tombs, and later kill them) as though they are incredibly skilled Dwarves, they are also kept mostly unarmoured. If they do fight, it is with the support of the full time military.
Training is done all year, both military and civilian. Each military squad is done in 3's, with notable exception for specialist squads. This is mostly just a personal choice I made (also not knowing you could make multiple training orders before then), but I've kept it. Something so satisfying by individually stationing 100 Dwarves to prepare for the onslaught.
Civilian skills tend to be entirely uniform. A result of this constant military training is that there is few room for extra industry. As a result the main body of the military is focused on building (masonry and architecture) or farming (for food, booze and cloth - metal isn't cheap and cloth goods are oh so good).
Training would be slow if it were not for the often large periods of undead migration all year or the excellent teachers.
As well as equipping all of my Dwarves with a variety of all the Dwarven weapons available, there are more specialist squads.
Elite close quarter/sniper marksdwarves led by the warrior mayor and legendary sharp shooters Baron Urist Muthkat and Urist Uvash, garrison marksdwarves for the myriad towers and gatehouses across my great castles in Silentthunders, fast runners (to chase down Kobolds), fully armoured incapacitation squads (when prisoners escape), anti-undead CQC fighters, big beast slayers, battle miners (fully armoured, carry a sword and pick), my favourite were-civet squad (armed with large daggers and morningstars when in Dwarf form, training all year by destroying constantly resurrecting undead), my hazardous science squad (currently with 0 members) and more. Much, much more.
Possibly one of my more Fun Forts in a long while. No danger rooms used. Those aren't fun.

[LittleJP]

That sounds like a true military fortress.

Here's my sketch for my next one. Miners and woodcutters uniformed, with extreme micromanagement of the military. No hunters, miners and woodcutters in their own uniformed squad.
Woman as markdwarves to stop the whole baby as shields thing, training on archery ranges that double as archery towers so I could have an instant response from all training dwarves.

All males keep their civilian jobs, but rotate several months in the year training in various barracks outside to guard for ambushers/snatchers etc. I think 10 squad training with 2 different positions assigned to train at different months would make sure all recruits get some training time.

The only problem I could think of is that if they eventually get to Lord levels of skill, would they not go back to their civilian jobs?

[AutomataKittay]

If you don't activates them and assign a barrack to them, they'll train while not working ( for most part, I've found, but less than active ). I've not trained any far enough to end up on Lord level of skill, so I don't know, outside they're always civilians until activated.

I sticks to dedicated professional military with militia civilians, the militia is pretty much self-defense and backs up the professional as needed. And you can't uniform hunters, miners and woodcutters without turning off those jobs ( unless somene's figured it out, I don't see anything about it on magmawiki ) so I've not included them in the militia.

Having a professional military also helps with the lord issue, and well, they tend to end up better than part-timers

[Oaktree]

That sounds like a true military fortress.

Here's my sketch for my next one. Miners and woodcutters uniformed, with extreme micromanagement of the military. No hunters, miners and woodcutters in their own uniformed squad.
Woman as markdwarves to stop the whole baby as shields thing, training on archery ranges that double as archery towers so I could have an instant response from all training dwarves.

All males keep their civilian jobs, but rotate several months in the year training in various barracks outside to guard for ambushers/snatchers etc. I think 10 squad training with 2 different positions assigned to train at different months would make sure all recruits get some training time.

The only problem I could think of is that if they eventually get to Lord levels of skill, would they not go back to their civilian jobs?

That would eventually happen.  That's one reason I keep inactive "Cadre" squads that hold my industrial specialists.  The squads lets me put them in uniforms (light armor) and do some training with crossbows for self-defense, but they mainly stay in the fortress and do their specialized tasks. 

My reservists train one season a month, wear light armor, and do a lot of masonry, hauling, etc. work.  Their training schedules are staggered so that I generally have enough haulers and such to keep the fort running.  If they get advanced in a weapon skill they might be promoted to a militia squad for more intense training.

My militia trains half the time and wears full steel armor all the time.  Squads staggered in training/patrols so that various barracks always have a squad on-hand.

Dwarves reaching "lord" status go into full-time military units (Army).  They get one month off-duty per year and otherwise spend their time training and sparring.  They get the brunt of patrol work and dealing with sieges and thieves since they can be moved to a location at any time and most of a squad will show up.  (And since their stats and Armor Use skill is developed they tend to get there quickly - I have axe dwarves that can outrun kobolds while wearing a full set of steel armor.)

(The one month off-duty is how I get the full-time squads to switch out worn clothes and pick up better quality weapons if they are not too attached to their current ones.)

Edit: Oh, and I noticed that I had a Lord level Marksdwarf in an inactive squad that Dwarf Therapist (and watching him) still showed him doing civilian tasks.  I assume that if I activated his squad he would then stop working.

[LittleJP]

So, I would maintain a full time military and a civilian militia that's only activated for oh shit purposes.

If the military is inactive, would they pickup their armour?

[AutomataKittay]

If the military is inactive, would they pickup their armour?

Yep, I have a lot of inactive civilian squads JUST for the armoring. Though it's more symbolic for me, since I like to give dwarves special outfit to represent their place

Edit: Oh, and I noticed that I had a Lord level Marksdwarf in an inactive squad that Dwarf Therapist (and watching him) still showed him doing civilian tasks.  I assume that if I activated his squad he would then stop working.

Gonna bet that dwarf's going to go lord and disable their job after they kills a few things. Lordship don't activate unless they've gotten one level of experience during active service. I get it a lot, it also dislords them if they goes civilian ( doesn't affect actual experience, just the display of it ).

[Nokao]

Were-civet squad ?

How  the hell you managed to make that ?