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[MetalRocks]

I read somewhere about a military embark so I decided to give it a try and started with the following skills:

Dwarf1: Teaching 5, Armor User 5
Dwarf2: Teaching 5, Shield User 5
Dwarf3: Teaching 5, Striker 5
Dwarf4: Teaching 5, Kicker 5
Dwarf5: Teaching 5, Dodger 5
Dwarf6: Teaching 5, Biter 5
Dwarf7: Weaponsmithing 5, Armoring 5

The idea is to create a group of 6 teachers through demostrations in squads of 2 dwarves.

I thought of the following equipment for the teachers:
Head: 1 steel helmet, 2 leather hoods
Body: 1 steel breastplate, 3 steel mail shirts, 6 leather cloaks
Hands: 1 pair of steel gauntlets, 1 pair of leather mittens
Legs: 1 steel greaves, 2 leather trousers
Feet: 1 pair of steel high boots, 1 pair of leather socks
Shield: light wood (willow maybe or something better if I can buy it)
Weapon: Steel axe or silver hammer

But I still have a couple of questions:

Q1: Is it wise to arm them with crossbows in the demostrations or are they unable to raise the marksdwarf skill in this way?
Q2: What would be the best equipment for demonstrations or it doesn't matter as long as they have a shield and a weapon?

[Garath]

marksdwarf isn't done in demonstrations, usually. Most weapon skills are unerrepresented in demonstrations except for striking, kicking, biting and wrestling, iirc

as for equipment, that depends on what they need to train. without armor, they won't improve armor user through sparring, without shield no shield user, etc. Demonstrations don't always consider that, so armor user demeonstrations will continue as usual. So for demonstrations I dont think equipment matters much

[MetalRocks]

So I guess that it would be better to equip them with melee weapons, shields and full armor in order to benefit from sparring (even though the demonstrations don't need equipment).

Thanks.

[vanatteveldt]

what I do now is start 4 dwarfs with +5 teacher and +5 in one each of {armor, shield, fighter, dodge}. I give them four different melee weapons (axe, sword, mace, hammer) and have them train asap* for the first year in 2x2 squads (no idea if 2x2 is better than 1x4). By the end of the first year, they are generally pretty awesome due to sparring + teaching. As soon as the first "real" migrant wave appears, they split up in four different squads with the new recruits from the wave so they can get the recruits up to speed quickly.

This seems to work pretty well, but I've not done any real science after my first post a while ago. I think starting weapons skills and fighter are not very useful since they learn them really quickly while sparring, but I don't know what the optimal setup is.

[I start with four picks and have the 'soldiers' be the initial miners to dig out quarters, in addition to a smith, a farmer, and a cmd/manager. I start with coal+ores and have the smith make gear from the soldiers as soon as possible. By the time initial quarters are dug (e.g. smithy, farm, food processing, dining hall, rooms, mason/carpenter/craftsdwarf, stockpiles, barracks) it is probably early summer, and the soldiers start training. The first (hardcoded) migrant waves yield new miners to replace the soldiers.]

[Naryar]

Well, I for one find sparring speed sufficient as long as you get 2-dwarf training squads, so I don't think Teacher/Student skills are that good.

Besides, teaching sessions have Armok-awful training speed. Do not want.

[vanatteveldt]

Hmm, I was under the impression that somehow my teacher squads do train more effectively, even in the skills that they were not initially profficient in. I figured there must be some spar -> learn a skill -> teach skill to partner -> spar loop going on.

I will do some !!science!! as soon as I can to determine the effect of initial skills (weapon, armor/shield/dodge/fighter, teacher) on final skill after one year of training; and also see whether it is useful to use experienced teachers to induct new recruits (either total rookies or the 'proficient' soldiers usually present in a migrant wave).

[Larix]

Demonstrations are mainly good to un-rust and improve skills that are rarely used while sparring - the variant unarmed attack types (biting, kicking, misc. object a.k.a. shield bashing), but often also dodging/armour use when shield is high enough to catch almost all attacks. They are reasonably effective at that - assuming teachers with decent teacher skill, and a decent level in the skill that's supposed to be taught. A "novice" dodger running a demonstration for another "novice" dodger is a big fat waste of time, but unfortunately, it happens very frequently.

Weapon demonstrations, however, are annoyingly inefficient, to the point that _mixed weapon squads_ are actually a good idea: weapon demonstrations will only be organised if the students actually have any experience in the weapon that's supposed to be taught, so an axedwarf teacher will never give weapon demonstrations to hammerdwarf and speardwarf recruits, but will waste weeks showing off special moves to axedwarf squaddies who learn next to nothing from the experience.

[Sutremaine]

marksdwarf isn't done in demonstrations, usually.

It is much quicker to give a dwarf some live training than it is to wait for demonstrations.

[Garath]

speed in organizing a demonstration may be helped by the organizer skill, the ones organizing the demonstrations at least get skill in it, very slowly.

As an aside, I sometimes bring some teachers too, but usually only for those skills that are hard to train even in sparing. Mostly dodging and armor user. As far as I get it, skills are improved when they're used, but with low dodge and armor use skill, weapon and shield skills are more likely to prevail defensively, making armor and dodge very hard to train in any situation. On the other hand, I had an elite marksdwarf squad do demonstrations for a year and they ended up with a very respectable 6 dodge. Not great, but with everyone starting at 0 very nice anyway and better than sparring would've given me.

I may be rambling a bit. Time to sleep I guess

[MetalRocks]

[I start with four picks and have the 'soldiers' be the initial miners to dig out quarters, in addition to a smith, a farmer, and a cmd/manager. I start with coal+ores and have the smith make gear from the soldiers as soon as possible. By the time initial quarters are dug (e.g. smithy, farm, food processing, dining hall, rooms, mason/carpenter/craftsdwarf, stockpiles, barracks) it is probably early summer, and the soldiers start training. The first (hardcoded) migrant waves yield new miners to replace the soldiers.]

I didnt bring any coal/ores with me but there is a volcano in the edge of the map so I hope to set up the metal industry (and if I am lucky find some flux and iron ore in the meanwhile) by the arriving of the first migration wave. Then I will put the squads to train.

Weapon demonstrations, however, are annoyingly inefficient, to the point that _mixed weapon squads_ are actually a good idea: weapon demonstrations will only be organised if the students actually have any experience in the weapon that's supposed to be taught, so an axedwarf teacher will never give weapon demonstrations to hammerdwarf and speardwarf recruits, but will waste weeks showing off special moves to axedwarf squaddies who learn next to nothing from the experience.

It is much quicker to give a dwarf some live training than it is to wait for demonstrations.

speed in organizing a demonstration may be helped by the organizer skill, the ones organizing the demonstrations at least get skill in it, very slowly.

As an aside, I sometimes bring some teachers too, but usually only for those skills that are hard to train even in sparing. Mostly dodging and armor user. As far as I get it, skills are improved when they're used, but with low dodge and armor use skill, weapon and shield skills are more likely to prevail defensively, making armor and dodge very hard to train in any situation.

I will keep that in mind.

Thanks everyone for the advice.

[Raphite1]

Besides, teaching sessions have Armok-awful training speed. Do not want.

No way. Dwarves with good teaching skill can train up others quite quickly. Sparring or live fighting is definitely better for learning weapon skill and fighter skill, but for things like dodging and shield user, training is awesome.

[Sutremaine]

Armour User can be trained moderately quickly if you have dwarves sparring with no weapon or shield, but dwarves doing that are a lot more vulnerable to attacks than a dwarf with a weapon or shield.

[vanatteveldt]

OK, I decided to do a bit more science. I decided to start a fresh embark and create 3 squads of 2 dwarfs each:

1) "teach+skill"  5 points teach plus 5 points in dodge or armour
2) "teach"  5 points teach only
3) "skill" 5 points in dodge or armour only

I used all dwarves to get a barebones fortress going. Training started 11 slate (mid-spring) with wooden shields and woorden training axes, no armour.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Starting stats:





stats for 1st day of summer:



stats for 2nd day of autumn:

stats for 18 timber (caravan arrived and paused the game)



For me these results are enough to prove some points, so I'm stopping the experiment here.

Results:
- axe, fighter, and shield user are all learned more quickly "from scratch" with teachers. There is probably a reinforcing cycle of sparring and teaching going on; or sparring is somehow more effective with a teacher (but I doubt that)
- Armour user is not learned without armour (duh)
- dodge is not aided by teacher, the squad without starting dodge is at 2/2, the unskilled dodgers in the other squads did learn some dodging but teaching had slight negative effect (5/0 -> 5/3 instead of 6/4)
- (and suprisingly: migrants that are not allowed into the fortress can get quite upset about it.)

Recommendations:
- It is quite beneficial to embark with full teacher points for military dwarfs. This will probably also help get new recruits up to speed faster.
- There is no real need to embark with fighter, weapon skills, or shield user. there are all learned on the job pretty quickly.
- If you have the points and slots to burn, embarking with dodge is a good idea as that is neither learned nor taught very quickly (training without shields+armor might help here but should be done with caution)

If I get to do another !!science!! session, I will have a look at armour training/teaching; at the effect of having good teachers to lead new squads; and at marksman / crossbowman.

Questions:
- Is there a way to start with more dwarfs and/or to make time go faster?

[Garath]

iirc, dfhack has a feature to make you start with more than the standard numer of dorfs

[vanatteveldt]

iirc, dfhack has a feature to make you start with more than the standard numer of dorfs

Thanks. I couldn't find it in the readme file on github though, searching for either embark, dwarfs, dwarves, 7 or seven. Do you happen to know the name of the script/plugin?