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[KingBacon]

I agree with you again that you might achieve the efficiences you suggest by reducing the minimum, however I find that leaving the number at 10 provides for plenty of sparring and is suitable for beginning strategies.  I normally leave my minimums at 10 and have no trouble producing skilled squads in a just a few years.

Herein lies the difference, the 2x2x2 set up trains unskilled dorfs to skilled in under a year. The 10 squad has a lot a waiting. Without the dfhack training bugfixes, ten person squads don't train fast enough to replace their casualties.

[Finn]

I agree with you again that you might achieve the efficiences you suggest by reducing the minimum, however I find that leaving the number at 10 provides for plenty of sparring and is suitable for beginning strategies.  I normally leave my minimums at 10 and have no trouble producing skilled squads in a just a few years.

Herein lies the difference, the 2x2x2 set up trains unskilled dorfs to skilled in under a year. The 10 squad has a lot a waiting. Without the dfhack training bugfixes, ten person squads don't train fast enough to replace their casualties.

Very well. 

Edit: I went back to look at the saves for my last military fort and found I was using the Modest Mod which accellerates the training time for military units. 

[VerdantSF]

Danger rooms increase skill but not attributes. So instead of getting unbreakable dorfs who have increases in toughness, strength, agility, and willpower, you get skilled but weak soldiers. This will increase causalities.

Awesome!  It's nice to know that eschewing danger rooms actually comes with a benefit.

An easy army to set up uses mass conscription of civilians and crossbows. Use leather for body armor, boots and quivers only. Bone for greaves, helms and gauntlets. Wood for bolts, shields and crossbows.

I was quite impressed the first time I saw a post on your set-up!  Right now, I'm using mixed melee/ranged squads (mixed weapons for the squads, not the individuals), which has worked well.  However, I'm starting to get tired of clothing management, so the idea of civilians in uniforms sounds great.  Is there a way to manage armed civilians with burrow "red alerts"?  I tried a small civilian reserve force once, but I couldn't get them to run when I needed them to until I disbanded the squad.

[dleave]

Basically unless you are trying to do something tricky you probably just want to leave it at 10.

I beg to differ.  Conventional wisdom is that it's best to have <#of squad members> - <at least 1> as the minimum for training on an active squad.  This allows your soldiers to rotate out during training, and continue building civilian skills.

There is some debate as to whether the setup of

Train, minimum 2
Train, minimum 2
Train, minimum 2
Train, minimum 2

OR

Train, minimum 3
Train, minimum 3
Train, minimum 3

is a better setup for a 10-dwarf squad.  The former will lead to a great deal of sparring sessions; the latter, to demonstrations.

Having your squad set to

Train, minimum 10

will lead to a great deal of 'waiting for' or 'organizing' tasks, as opposed to actual training. 

A better breakdown can be found here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Scheduling.

All answers were much appreciated, thanks.  I believe I figured out alerts.  My squads were all Inactive, so they weren't doing any sparring or demonstrations, but they were still doing individual combat drills, which train things up way more slowly, correct?

I'm also slightly confused by the above quote.  Are you saying I should split my 10 dwarf squad up into multiple squads of 2 and 3, or are you saying if I create 4 different training orders like that for one 10 dwarf squad, 8 will train in pairs of 2, and 2 will do whatever they want?

[Garath]

the last. give 4 orders of 2 to train. It will make them spar a lot, which is generally good, though dodge and armor user tend to lag behind. Since you rarely have 10 dorfs actually present out of a 10 man squad, it's pretty effective in keeping everyone busy.

If there are 10 members of the squad there, 2 will do close to nothing. Individual combat drills prevent skill rust, but not much more.

[VerdantSF]

Multiple squads of 2 are more effective than a single squad with multiple sets of orders.  However, the difference isn't so big and larger squads are certainly more convenient.

[Larix]

Danger rooms increase skill but not attributes. So instead of getting unbreakable dorfs who have increases in toughness, strength, agility, and willpower, you get skilled but weak soldiers. This will increase causalities.

As has been pointed out, that's not entirely true. Any skill training improves attributes, but (if what people say is correct) the attribute gain depends on the time spent training. I do know that a vampire who was in an active danger room for over a year ended up with pretty high attributes all around, but, well, that was more than a year of around-the-clock stabbings. The standard quick-trained normal dwarf who gets stuck in a danger room for at most two weeks may fail to get visible attribute changes.
(Btw, i love the typo - lack of attributes results in causalities! Your actions will have consequences, but only if you lack strength/agility/willpower!)

the last. give 4 orders of 2 to train. It will make them spar a lot, which is generally good, though dodge and armor user tend to lag behind. Since you rarely have 10 dorfs actually present out of a 10 man squad, it's pretty effective in keeping everyone busy.

If there are 10 members of the squad there, 2 will do close to nothing. Individual combat drills prevent skill rust, but not much more.

From what i found, the <minimum #> setting governs primarily how many members of the squad are drafted into active training service at the beginning of the month. I haven't witnessed any on-/off-duty rotation during a month. Members of a thoroughly mixed 10-dwarf squad will also commonly pair off into demonstration or sparring couples while one or two do individual combat drills, all under <minimum 10> orders. This might have been an effect of the weapon mixture, though - since four different weapon types are present in the squad, there's a limit to how many can waste their time trying to organise a weapon demonstration, and other demonstrations are still horrible but not quite so counter-productive.

I'll still stick to two-dwarf squads if i want some decent military dwarfs in a tolerable time frame.

[WoobMonkey]

Multiple squads of 2 are more effective than a single squad with multiple sets of orders.  However, the difference isn't so big and larger squads are certainly more convenient.

Beg to differ.  A squad of two, when training, stops all training when one of them needs to sleep, eat, or drink.  A squad of ten, with 4 sets of 'train, minimum 2' orders, will swap out members when one of the trainees needs a break.

[VerdantSF]

Beg to differ.  A squad of two, when training, stops all training when one of them needs to sleep, eat, or drink.  A squad of ten, with 4 sets of 'train, minimum 2' orders, will swap out members when one of the trainees needs a break.

That's what I thought would happen, too.  However, I tested this extensively a while back.  Here's the thread with the results:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=113918.msg3480810

Unfortunately, I didn't take screenshots with skill numbers, but the 2-man squads regularly sparred more often.

[bughunter]

What really sucks, is that I always end up relying on traps. Usually I get screwed over by petty thieves with daggers that kill my dwarves with ease. It's quite sad

[WoobMonkey]

Beg to differ.  A squad of two, when training, stops all training when one of them needs to sleep, eat, or drink.  A squad of ten, with 4 sets of 'train, minimum 2' orders, will swap out members when one of the trainees needs a break.

That's what I thought would happen, too.  However, I tested this extensively a while back.  Here's the thread with the results:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=113918.msg3480810

Unfortunately, I didn't take screenshots with skill numbers, but the 2-man squads regularly sparred more often.

Interesting post, and I applaud your effort; however, I fail to see the relevance.  In your scenario, all of the dwarfs in the squad were set to train at all times; it makes no difference if 10 are training, always, or 2.  In my scenario, there are always 1-2 dwarfs who are not set to train.

This calls for further research, perhaps.

[dleave]

the last. give 4 orders of 2 to train. It will make them spar a lot, which is generally good, though dodge and armor user tend to lag behind. Since you rarely have 10 dorfs actually present out of a 10 man squad, it's pretty effective in keeping everyone busy.

If there are 10 members of the squad there, 2 will do close to nothing. Individual combat drills prevent skill rust, but not much more.

Great, thanks.

[VerdantSF]

Interesting post, and I applaud your effort; however, I fail to see the relevance.  In your scenario, all of the dwarfs in the squad were set to train at all times; it makes no difference if 10 are training, always, or 2.  In my scenario, there are always 1-2 dwarfs who are not set to train.

Ah, yes, that does make a difference!  I missed that part due to skimming/alt-tabbing while at work .

[Sutremaine]

How long do people generally leave dwarves in a danger room for?

If two weeks is a fairly normal training period, then you can get the benefits of both danger room and regular training by sticking them in a danger room for those couple of weeks and then giving them a barracks. They might be starting out from scratch with the exception of the danger room skills they've picked up, but those skills put them in a much better starting position than the majority of fresh migrants.

[Maklak]

I never really had much success with the military, so I don't get it when people say they get nobodies to legendaries in half a year. In my experience it takes at least two years of constant training to get to 10 skill and about 4+ years to get to legendary in the main weapon skill.

I'm pretty sure I've seen some training in the wrong skills by demonstrations, but that game was buggy, for example the wood stockpiles stopped filling up, even with idlers. Oh wait, maybe they just attended demonstrations for weapon skills they had, but while having different weapons equipped.

I've also seen Dodging and Armour User demonstrations to either dabbling or 0 experience Dwarves.

Armour is very important, but you might want not to over-burden novices with it. It will slow them down by a lot and it may be better to give them partial armour and more speed.

Pump Operating is decent at raising Endurance, but nothing else. On the plus side, when off-duty, the soldiers are red and don't complain about becoming pesants.
Nothing raises the attributes like actual combat training.

For rotating soldiers, I prefer to have multiple squads and have them inactive in different months.

As for Danger Rooms, I've noticed that they don't train attributes (or not much anyway), but:
a) You can DR some teachers, then have them train the rest of the military.
b) Nothing says a DR trained Dwarf can't be in an active, training squad and raise his attributes the normal way. 
c) High skills and average attributes are still better than no skill and average attributes.
d) DRs are about the only way (other than lucking out on a migrant) to have high Dodge and Armour User.

I never got a civilian defence program to work. There was too much of everything required. Plus if it works, it causes civilians to fight instead of run.

Oh and multiple shields seem to stack.