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[SpiralDimentia]

So, downloaded Lazy Newb Pack after playing vanilla for two years, wanted a graphics pack and this was the easiest way, yadda yadda..

My problem is this. This fortress is 3 years old. I've never had a seige. Well, 4 undead but my crossbowdwarves klled them so they don't count for this point. I have 7 military dwarves. My population cap is low right now cause I was messing with LNP. Anyways, I don't use danger rooms, I consider them an exploit. I don't have cage trap hallways for the same reason. Usually, if I can avoid cage traps at all, I will. This fort, however, I wanted to do something I'd never done before; capture wild animals and train them. I was going to catch an alligator snapping turtle but he wandered off, so I settled for a flock of ravens. I places cages, about 8 or 9 of them, around the plains around my fortress. Spaced very ar apart from one another. With them, I caught 5 ravens. Success!

However, I also think I've captured every goblin snatcher to enter my map. Plus revealed a few ambushes with them. This is less of a problem, i mena taking out 1 goblin from the fight isn't that big of a deal. I normally just throw the captured goblins to my military and let them kill them in a few hits. However, like i said I'm on my third year, and I have FOUR Lords. Another fortress of mine, the military is decked out just as well [master work copper, compared to the cage fort's average quality iron.] but doesn't use cage traps, and it's.. something like 8 years old and I maybe have one Lord? Is live target training really THAT much better? Cause th fact that I'm only three years in but any two of my military dwarves can break a siege is kind of ridiculous, and I'm wondering if it's the cage traps and live training, OR, if maybe something in LNP is causing my dwarves to train much faster than usual.

[smakemupagus]

>> Is live target training really THAT much better?

yes.

a lot of other things touch on military training speed which you don't mention that could easily be different between your forts (squad size, training schedules, equipment selection, dwarf personalities, teacher skill, world gen history & immigrants).  also there is a critical mass effect, where once you're above some minimum skill level sparring is way more effective. 

I can't really speak to what is or isn't in LNP, although i thought it was just vanilla DF with utilities (i.e. nothing changing game files.)  But nothing you report would have raised a red flag for me. 

[SpiralDimentia]

Well, I tend to make my military strictly military. I have 2 squads, one melee and one ranged. I don't make schedules, they train year round by the armor stand, none of that off duty nonsense. Squad size.. they usually just fill up as I either A) get dwarves with military skills Competant or above or B) Get dwarves with wicked military named, like Rigoth Tomblocks or Kogan Murderletter.

[smakemupagus]

Well, I tend to make my military strictly military. I have 2 squads, one melee and one ranged. I don't make schedules, they train year round by the armor stand, none of that off duty nonsense. Squad size.. they usually just fill up as I either A) get dwarves with military skills Competant or above or B) Get dwarves with wicked military named, like Rigoth Tomblocks or Kogan Murderletter.

Sure, that's what I would generally do too, but it's not optimal, so it's not surprising that there is some variance when by happenstance or luck things go better than normal.  Live training is really good, especially for getting over that dabbling/novice hump where "safe" training is particularly slow. 

[SpiralDimentia]

Uhhh... so that fortress died to undead, and i made another one. This time I have a full squad of axe dwarves [commander uses an artifact bronze sword.] and haven't caught anything for live practice..  yet.. Before the -second- year is even up I already have an Axe Lord. Even if he was good as a migrant, the highest I had has been a Competant Axedwarf. So in less than a year he's gone from Competant to Great in less than a year. I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally think something in LNP is making dwarves train much faster.


[Edit]: To further this, some of my other dwarves are rocking Legendary Fighter already, and these are migrants that didn't even HAVE combat skills when I conscripted them.

[Edit2]: Jesus christ they're all becoming axe lords. I have 5 now. And my Commander is an errant nose twitch away from Swordmaster.

[smakemupagus]

ask in LNP thread? 

ed.  or look at the skill learn rates in the dwarf creature raws and compare them to default.  For that matter you could diff the whole file against the vanilla file to see whether anything has changed.

[Boltgun]

You probably have dfhack running fixes to your military training. There is one script that remove bad thoughts from cumulating during sparring and another that fix some miscalculations during training.
In addition perhaps you have the mod that boost demonstration, you can see dwarves being really good at observation, student and leadership if that's the case.

This boost your ability to train soldiers, considering that cheating is debatable as it may be what was really intended.
Besides we have these moments when the game suddenly look easy because we figured out routines.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

You probably have dfhack running fixes to your military training. There is one script that remove bad thoughts from cumulating during sparring and another that fix some miscalculations during training.
In addition perhaps you have the mod that boost demonstration, you can see dwarves being really good at observation, student and leadership if that's the case.

This boost your ability to train soldiers, considering that cheating is debatable as it may be what was really intended.
Besides we have these moments when the game suddenly look easy because we figured out routines.

this. you're not cheating, you're playing the game as it was meant to be, with no bugs creating artificial difficulty. my advice if you miss the difficulty is to do what i do, and add  [SKILL_RATES:10:80:160:160] to dwarves. it makes skill gain and skill rust 10 times slower, it'll make you cherish every profficient worker\soldier you have. you can also remove steel or give it to goblins too

[SpiralDimentia]

Hmm.. that sounds appealing actually. I think one of the reasons I was drawn to DF was the absurd learning curve and difficulty. I've always been a fan of doing things the hard way, and playing games on their hardest setting. I mean, where's the bragging rights in killing a Legendary Dragon in Skyrim, unless you're on the Legendary difficulty? From the begining? Before you even know which way Whiterun is?  Infact, I recently took every dead thing I've ever killed to death and threw it in a room with a necromancer, and waited until he raised everything he could before unleashing it on my fortress. Just to see if I could win.

So this is definitely something I'll look into. Once the novelty of the texture pack wears off, anyways. It's neat, not starting at ASCII. I just wish I could use one of the other 6. x.x

[Askot Bokbondeler]

if you want to tweak the tweaks dfhack makes to tone down on the bugfixing look for dfhack.init on the df folder. you can open and edit it with a text editor like wordpad, but i think it's more fun to mess around with the raws. here's what i usually do:

make plants take longer to grow, yield less food, and must all be planted in spring. make only one type of booze plant farm-able, so you must trade or gather for varied alcohol
make organ meat inedible and reduce the clutch size of egg layers
make steel available for other races, make steel production more difficult and lower the yield of ores
as previously mentioned, lower the learning rates for dwarves and lower creativity to tone down on rampant dabbler masterworks

[Graknorke]

must all be planted in spring.
make organ meat inedible

These two I would have to disagree with because there is no way for me to justify it as being reasonable. There's a whole bunch of underground plants, so I don't see why they would only grow in spring, and I can't see why people would for some reason not be able to eat organ meat. Sure, it adds difficulty, but it kind of makes it feel more game-y when there's unreasonable rules in place.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

underground plants need magical spring energy to grow, and organ meat is edible, yes, but dwarves think it's absolutely disgusting. ok, here's a compromise, make a reaction to process them into sausages or offal specialities

reasonable and gamey are relative terms. it doesn't feel gamey for me, and if it does for you then don't do it, there are a lot of other places where you can add difficulty. you can also change the name of organ meats to something you'd be comfortable throwing away, like viscera or something.

[Mr S]

Mmmm... offal sausage specialities.  My mouth is already watering.

Can we add things like "beavers and seals must be burried whole for 3 months before butchering to putrify the meat"?  It's a delicacy in some cultures.  Not gamey, but rather difficult.

[Graknorke]

Mmmm... offal sausage specialities.  My mouth is already watering.

Can we add things like "beavers and seals must be burried whole for 3 months before butchering to putrify the meat"?  It's a delicacy in some cultures.  Not gamey, but rather difficult.

It's a delicacy, but not necessary to eat it. I would probably drop the value of food items though. Exporting massively valuable food is just too viable. Gamebreakingly so, like buying out whole caravans with a couple of meals.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

on the other hand, using my tweaks you'll be buying food more often than selling it