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[Drazinononda]

I've scanned over the previous posts and have little to add or detract from any of them -- there are a lot of different "right" ways to do a military, just depends on your play style, and others have covered most of them.

So all I'm going to add is this setup, which I've used successfully on a few forts:

Step 1a: Create a few small squads of professional melee soldiers -- or one large one, if you don't care about segregating weapons to maximize demonstration efficiency -- and set them to train year-round. A squad of ten scheduled for five two-man Train orders every month works well in my experience; they'll always be either sparring, eating, sleeping or doing individual combat drills, and gain skill rather quickly. This is your main strike force, which I will refer to as the "army."

Step 2a: Get your army into some kind, any kind, of armor as early as possible, and take away their shields and weapons. Make sure at least the helmet is metal of some sort. Train them this way for the first year or so, and they'll gain skill in wrestling, striking, kicking, biting and armor user... a.k.a. all the things they won't train much if they have a shield or weapon. Especially Armor User is really nice to have later on.

Step 3: You probably want to set up a dedicated doctor as your CMD at this point. With only metal helms your soldiers will be as safe as any other dwarf in the fort, which means you'll have plenty of broken bones and such for them to work on.

Step 4: Set up the rest of your fort (woodcutters, hunters and miners excluded) as a marksdwarf militia. I only give my militia a weapon and shield, though a helm never hurts and sometimes a mail shirt. Change the ammunition settings for each squad of marksdwarves to make sure they always carry a fair number of combat-only bolts -- again, metal ones if you can afford it, though against most enemies bone or wood work just as well. If you have the resources to be swimming in bolts, bone bolts from a goose farm for example, also add some training bolts and set up a firing range where the militia can get some practice in around their civilian duties.

Step 2b: Don't forget to give the weapons and shields back to your main army at some point. They do need some training with them before the first challenges show up.

Step 5 has to do with good fort design that will, generally speaking, keep your melee squad near each other and your ranged squads far from the enemy. There are better advisers for that than me, and I'll leave that for another thread.

[DarkWolfXV]

I like having 5 full squads. One "royal guard", all-candy, legendary soldiers, 5 axe, 2 sword, 2 spear, 1 whip. Second squad are elite marksdwarves. Third one are standard soldiers, full steel gear, either axemen or swordsmen. Fourth is either another marksdwarf team or another standard soldier team (This one mostly guards the entrance). Fifth are throwaway, cheap soldiers, usually iron, bronze or copper gear, untrained (throwing them at FB's, doing social experiments, etc...)

[mirrizin]

Is it just me, or does the difference between iron and steel matter significantly less than the skill of the dwarf who dons it?

[mopstar]

Is it just me, or does the difference between iron and steel matter significantly less than the skill of the dwarf who dons it?

Skill does indeed count for far more in most cases for blocking/parrying and just dodging in general and getting on target hits.Its just that a good portion of those hits will be deflected by the better armour.This can easily be seen by recruits who get drafted in to fill up the gaps running out in full armour and getting cut down like nothing they just cannot land hits on the more skilled opponent.


If you can only really afford to outfit your dorfs in iron (or copper for that matter) It would be best to use steel you get from caravans on helmets or weapons since these are the two most important pieces of the uniform.

[malimbar04]

1 ) What % of my population should be in the military?
2 ) What are some good ways to train my military en mass that doesn't feel superbly over powered?
3 ) What is a decent fatality rate?
4 ) Should I restrict my military to only male to avoid infant deaths?
5 ) Is it worth waiting for steel production, or should I just pump out some Iron/other metals in the beginning to get off my feet?

any other suggestions?
Thanks!

1 - It's not by population, it's by the dangers you face and the skill of your dwarves. I've had a 2-dwarf military fend off sieges of 50 goblins, but I've also had 40-dwarf militaries die to a single goblin ambush. And, if you are willing to use traps, you can get by with no military at all.

2 - In vanilla, embark with 2-person military. Have them train full time, and give them armor + weapons + shield as soon as possible. In order - weapon > shield > helm > armor > everything else. Materlal is ideally good stuff, but even leather and wood is halfway ok. Then have them train squads as they become legendary. Use migrants over fort-born dwarves, as the ones born in the fort have a bug that makes them not effectively grow up 9/10 times. If you use cage traps at all, have your dwarves slaughter whatever you catch. If you put goblins on a rope btw,  you can selectively claim and dump their items one by one, and a disarmed goblin theif (no dagger or bag, they're both weapons) is good for training dwarven combat skills. Also, the mo re they witness death, the more truama they experience, the more likely they are to become battle hardened and resistent to tantrums.

3 - Depends on a lot. Good is a 0% mortality. mediocre preparations might get to 25%. If they're not battle hardened you'll be lucky to survive the tantrum spiral when even 3 die, 'cus that can kill 200 person forts. if you're  unprepared and panicking, you might get 75% mortality and hope to get uncaring dwarves and a new set of migrants.

4 - depends on training method, and whether or not they already have kids. If the kids die during training, then your dwarves will become battle hardened quicker (a good trait), so females are encouraged. But if they carry them out to battle they might not carry a shield, and then subsequently die, so females are discouraged. But if they are working full time and have no kids, it doesn't matter at all.

5 - pump out other stuff right away. Iron is good, and far better than leather for siege dwarves. Get steel when you can, but definitely don't wait for it.

[mirrizin]

Is it just me, or does the difference between iron and steel matter significantly less than the skill of the dwarf who dons it?

Skill does indeed count for far more in most cases for blocking/parrying and just dodging in general and getting on target hits.Its just that a good portion of those hits will be deflected by the better armour.This can easily be seen by recruits who get drafted in to fill up the gaps running out in full armour and getting cut down like nothing they just cannot land hits on the more skilled opponent.


If you can only really afford to outfit your dorfs in iron (or copper for that matter) It would be best to use steel you get from caravans on helmets or weapons since these are the two most important pieces of the uniform.

Totally. I'm currently swimming in flux, bituminous, and magnetite. Just noticed early on that it seemed not to make as big a difference as I'd thought it might.

[Gentlefish]

1. Give everyone crossbows
2. one month out of the year they train
3.
4. Profit

[Blue_Dwarf]

1. Give everyone crossbows
2. one month out of the year they train
3.
4. Profit

Yeah, there's absolutely no way that could go wrong 

[Gentlefish]

It's pretty cool to see your fisherdwarf shoot the kobald rather then run into the ambush that's also right next to him 

You can also leave your gate wide open if everyone's trained decently enough. Bolt-storm would shut down almost anything.

[Bihlbo]

The armor material matters a lot when it comes to a contest between weapon and armor material. Steel weapons cut through bronze armor, and bronze weapons don't cut through iron armor. That sort of thing, generally. If you don't expect to run into steel-weaponed foes, bronze is the best armor you need until it becomes easy to make things out of candy or steel.

[vanatteveldt]

Pro-advice: Your military should be larger than 6, if you're being attacked by 51 undead and you just dammed the river that was your defense.

*reclaims*

[Hague]

Candy weapons you make should always be edged. The larger the better. I cheated and made candy long swords for my dwarves using DFHack (as if a dwarven smith couldn't make ANY of those silly human weapons.) Since candy cuts so easily and is so light, the largest cutting length possible is desirable. You'll be lopping arms off left and right. It's a toss up between the longsword and the battle axe. Axe has no stabbing attacks so it's edged attack while less broad and deep, it deals large cuts consistently. Meanwhile the long sword has a larger contact area. Normally this would be bad, but since since the edge on candy is so sharp, it will not be resisted by any material and cleave easily.

Any tried using a candy scourge in testing before? The contact area is rather smaller and it's penetration pathetic. It is, however, edged and should benefit from being made of candy.

[Pinstar]

While not a long term strategy, I have an embark strategy called the MMMM squad (Miner, militia, mover, Mason)

Make your 5 strongest starting dwarves into miners and make sure you forge them decent picks. I prefer bronze. Have them mining for most of the early game while your other two work on food and other items.

When you have a moment, give them wooden shields.

Since the mining skill is treated as a combat skill your militia 'train' very quickly just by digging into the fort, and early forts normally have a LOT of digging that needs to be done.  If you give 'em bronze you can handle anything that doesn't have metal armor VERY well, many times without a scratch on your squad as halfway skilled miners armed with bronze picks hack off limbs, destroy spines and cave skulls very effectively.  Upgrade them to steel picks and full suits of armor when you get access to the material and now you have a crack squad designed to tackle mineral FBs while your military proper handles goblin invasions. 

[Gentlefish]

Actually, according to Da Vinci, iron picks get a crazy glitch boost to momentum, doing more damage than bronze, plus they're the same weapon class basically.

[SixOfSpades]

I should preface this by saying I know very little about the military . . . I think I got a couple of dwarves to spar together once. ONCE.

1 ) What % of my population should be in the military?

Depends on what else your dwarves are going to be doing. Crafting mugs? Building a megaproject? Standing around? Considering how ridiculously productive farming is, and how ludicrously expensive prepared meals are, you could theoretically get by with a single Grower/Brewer/Cook, and put everyone else in uniform. Alternatively, if you're building a Borg Cube that covers the map and have easy access to steel, you could possibly go with an Army of One.

2 ) What are some good ways to train my military en mass that doesn't feel superbly over powered?

Above, I said I don't know how to get them to spar. That's because I'm a fan of mass pitting. Just set up an insane amount of cage traps in your very long entrance hall, drop the invaders on your army, done. (Tips: Put a door outside your hallway, to keep wildlife from cluttering up your traps. Make sure to mass {forbid} the traps & cages when there are any hostiles about.) Now, cage traps are overpowered, there's no denying it; you can mitigate this by only using a couple of them, so you can pretend that goblins actually ARE smart enough to stop advancing when they realize that the entire hallway is trapped. But even if you capture only 1 or 2 per season, you can still disarm them, and toss them into a pit with a dwarf with a wooden weapon: He'll take quite a while to beat them to death with only a training sword, which means lots of experience for him.

3 ) What is a decent fatality rate?

I honestly wouldn't know, my current fort is 24ish years old and has yet to see worse than a bruise. I haven't even bothered to set up a hospital.

4 ) Should I restrict my military to only male to avoid infant deaths?

I'll be restricting married females from my melee squads, once I make them. It's not just the babies they carry, but the children that tag along behind them. Y'all can just stay behind the battlements, thank you very much.

5 ) Is it worth waiting for steel production, or should I just pump out some Iron/other metals in the beginning to get off my feet?

Again, I wouldn't know, but I would echo the others in saying Use What You Got.

----------------------------------------------------------

My own style is the Miner-first, abuse cage traps, make steel almost immediately, Army of One approach. All of my starting 7 quickly became Legendary Miners, my expedition leader got a helpful mood which leveled him up even more, and then I encrusted him with ☼steel everything☼ and tossed him at the first megabeast that came along: A jungle titan made of sand. Then I locked him in a room & dropped lots of disarmed (but armored) goblins on him. He got tired of slaughtering foes that couldn't really fight back (and named his pick "Swordamaze the Withered Zeal" to illustrate that he didn't want to fight any more battles that lacked honor), so now I only drop large groups of trolls on him--he slew 51 of them last time. He's now the duke, with over 230 notable kills, including the dragon that he dueled outside the gates, dropping it in 2 hits as the moat burned around them. Didn't even singe his beard.

Naturally, an Army of One is very risky, as the rawest bowgoblin recruit can still one-shot anyone if they roll a Critical Hit. But since I've already savescummed about 1000 times on this fort, what's a few more? My duke has been shot, hammered, gored, bled, and ripped limb from limb. If savescumming isn't your style, don't go with a single soldier--or even a single squad, as they could, for instance, all fall prey to the same FB beath/webs/syndrome and leave you helpless against whatever comes next. If you're serious about defense, have a "citadel" with its own inner defenses, and its own separate guards.