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[Coldnar]

My goal for my latest fortress is to make as many happy dwarves as possible. At the point I'm at right now (Established, wealthy, well defended underground city) I'm having trouble keeping my warriors at a happiness level over content or even fair.

Now I know they don't NEED to be happy being well-bearded iron-hearted dwarven killing machines but I had one of my legendary sworddwarves flip out and kill a dozen civilians after his wife got caught outside by filthy goblins ambushers with his newborn son is her arms.

So whats a good way to keep your military as happy as possible?

[Splint]

Due to a small glitch regarding trianing being counted as patrol duty, it's impossible most of the time.  However, if you have many married dorfs popping out babies in the army, then it's a none issue. However, if you keep them at content and fighting through many battles in one peice, eventually thier hapiness begins to creep up as bad things affect them less and less.

[Myshaak]

Regarding happiness, I don't give my military any special treatment. Only thing I do is set their training schedule to train only every other month (to stop them complaining about long patrol duty), then twice in three months and then all year. If they spar and fight regularly, they're stay happy quite easily.

[geail]

I've never been concerned with keeping my military happy.  I'm more concerned with getting them to "doesn't really feel anything anymore" so they become neither happy nor sad.  They simply exist for the will of the fortress

[Splint]

Regarding happiness, I don't give my military any special treatment. Only thing I do is set their training schedule to train only every other month (to stop them complaining about long patrol duty), then twice in three months and then all year. If they spar and fight regularly, they're stay happy quite easily.

There's a glitch that causes training to be considered patrol duty when it isn't intended to be, so deactivating them is irrelevant unless you want them to socialize, unless you use some kind of patch to adjust this (DFHack has a plug in to patch that particular bug.) otheriwse the thought stacks until they become enraged by long patrol duty, which coupled with likely being caught in the weather often is probably what makes them remain content.

[Myshaak]

Really? But my dwarves never reached the "enraged" status, in any of my fortresses, I though it was working...

[Splint]

I've always had the problem so i just said "fuck it" and never bothered to take them off duty. Trains them faster that way anyway without danger rooming or other methods.

And I take great pride in that too.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

dfhack has a fix for that and other stuff

[Splint]

Yeah I know. I used it on my militia in an older for and their moods increased drastically (As in... y'know, the normal kind, not the "rip your face off because we had no clear glass" kind)

[thegoatgod_pan]

Gladiator combat is the most dependible way to keep them happy. The "took joy in slaughter" is a very nice thought and feeding captured, disarmed goblins to your militia wil make sure this thought never goes away.

After a few gladiator fights your dwarves will get a title, but more importantly, they will become increasingly hardened, up to the point of not caring anymore. Then nothing will trouble them again.

[Lich180]

Time off? What's that?

My military trains non-stop all year round, since I bring a few teachers on embark. They usually aren't very happy for a while, but any thoughts of long patrol duty are reduced greatly by letting them sleep in a nice, engraved room all to themselves, eat masterwork roasts and drink sunshine when they get a break.

Sure, that takes a bit to set up, but I usually don't have a problem with military members going postal (unless I'm in an evil area, then its a bit more of a concern) because they either become legendary weapon users (then no bad thoughts about patrol duty) or get used to tragedy quickly (the arena mentioned above).

Plus they have a lovely spa filled with flying coins under the barracks, helping them with stats and armor user skill. Who wouldn't love being pelted by bronze coins for a few hours?

[moki]

I usually set the training schedule to one less dwarf than there are in the squad. In a squad of 10, setting the minimum dwarves for the order to 9 makes 1 idle or do their civilian jobs. The rotate in and out of duty automatically. That usually solves the problem with long patrol duty.
When there are enough soldiers, I also try to have at least 1 squad off duty while the rest are on their guard posts. If anything really bad arrives on my site, I can still activate that last squad with a direct move or kill order.

I had some pretty bad problems with unhappy military when most of them were (very) unhappy and then one died. Naturally he was everybody's friend since they've been training together for more than a year. One of the remaining soldiers threw several tantrums and killed a few children in the meeting area whose parents (also soldiers) shortly went crazy... you can imagine the rest of this story.
If some soapmaker throws a tantrum, it's not a big problem, but if a legendary axedwarf does so, Fun ensues. That's why I try to keep the military happy all the time.

[Coldnar]

Right now I'm leaning towards keeping military families in the main fort burrow to prevent incident like I had with my sworddwarf. But I HAVE noticed the glitch Splint mentioned and just have the squads active at all times.
Most of my military are legendary or near it at this point so just taking them off the squads makes them unhappy; So military behavior really can't be changed.
Keeping them happy with a consent supply of bloody slaughter will be the next thing I try. I'v wanted to start an execution arena for awhile so its win-win!

[Tirion]

Training 24/7, binary patch to deal with the patrol thought bug, very good bedrooms, great variety of drinks and quality food, and regular slaughter of some goblin or wild animal usually keeps them at Happy, especially if I give them stuff to adore in their bedrooms.

[Sutremaine]

Once they reach Elite status they cease to care about how long they're on duty. Two-dwarf squads with waterskins equipped and food, drink, and beds near the barracks will spar often due to matched skill levels and will gain weapon skill quite quickly. Sparring also makes them happy.

If you don't want to do that for some reason (like using picks as your primary weapon), then the bad thought from long patrol duty is a small one in the grand scheme of things. Dwarves on duty won't go to the dining room to eat, so that takes that good thought off the table. They can still enjoy the food itself, and the drink too. Giving them their own nice bedrooms with a lot of furniture to admire will improve their mood greatly.

Having the barracks classed as Light will also help with cave adaptation. They'll still grumble about being caught in the weather if it hits them, but they won't get nauseated by the sun.