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[AngelXDv]

Ok, so what are your tips for a relatively new player (in the sense that I pretty much know how the play the whole game except for the military/defense part) about military and defenses?

Also, which are the best resources to learn about military? I know so far of the military quickstart guide, the military guides in general and these two videos

[Snaake]

That's a vague/broad question.

What do you want to know?

Which threats are you specifically worried about (hostile wildlife/goblins/megabeasts/necros/reanimating biomes)?

Do you know how to get your military dwarves equipped and training? How have you fended off sieges etc. until now?

[AngelXDv]

I want to know pretty much everything about the militia system. About fending off sieges... I had none so far. And a few traps at my entrance along with a bridge pretty much represent my only defenses right now. I know the basics of militia: how to assemble a squad, how to equip them and how to get them to kill something, but I don't really know advanced militia. I don't know about schedules and when should I train them, I don't know pretty much anything about training and barracks and how I might turn some rookies into good militia against a forgotten beast (those aren't considered spoilers, right?) and clowns.

Also, I guess that for turning rookies into good militia I need to switch off pretty much every other job, right? The thing is, I use a script in DFhack (not sure the name of the script) which automatically assigns jobs to dwarfs based on their skill and what they like and things like that, and I got pretty used to it. So I want to know if the script is actually good or if it will turn out to be more FUN than I am looking for; and if the script is good, are there workarounds for training my militia?

And I am afraid of pretty much all the threats possible...

[Rafatio]

No need to turn off their jobs at all, once a squad is toggled to "active/training", they mostly do military stuff no matter what other jobs are set. In their time off, they might still work on civil things, if you give them time off that is. So your only concern about this should be making sure you don't draft your only brewer and wonder later why everyone is thirsty.

[greycat]

Install DFHack and make it do the military fixes.

Dig an area.  Make a stone armor rack.  Build it in the middle of the area, and designate the resulting room as a barracks.

Put dwarves in a squad.  Give them a uniform.  Start making weapons, shields (wooden!) and armor.

Set the barracks as the training place for the squad.

Set the squad to active (s a t where a is the squad's letter on that list).

When you have all the armor needed for a given squad position (all green checkmarks on the m e list), set that position to "Replace clothing".

That's all you need!  You don't need fancy scheduling or customized orders or patrol routes or all of that, unless you want to.

[vidboi]

It's fairly simple to set up a basic military, but more complicated to get them to train properly. Idealled you want 2 dwarves in a squad training at a time, that way they spend less time waiting for demonstrations and more time sparring, which is much more effective at training military skills. Usually I use squads of 4 and set their schedule to train (minimum 2) for all months (the default is 10, i.e. all soldiers on duty). This trains pretty fast, but still allows your dwarves to perform some other tasks.

[MrsStick]

If I set the armor to replace clothing, am I going to have to go in and micromanage their clothes when they get worn? Alternatively, if I specify them to put JUST armor to replace clothes, will they get mad at having no socks? If I assign ALL clothes (robe, shirts, trousers, socks, mittens, etc.), will I have to go in when they get bad thoughts from old clothes and re-specify? Or will they automagically change them?

Basically, I'm asking how much work I'll have to do here. Lazy? Probably.

[Jack Smythe]

Clothes micromanaging: yeah, they tend to dump all their non specififed clothes when replace is checked off. You can either assign them socks and the like, or tell them to wear the armor over their clothing AFTER they put it on. If theyre already wearing the armor, they'll just fill in the empty slots with their old stuff, ie socks.

Overall, the only command you really need [until you start setting up marksdwarf squads] is the kill command. Once the squad is formed, make them active, and, when somehting you want dead shows up, find the order screen [its either squad or military, I lose track], hit 'k' and select who you want dead and send them off.

Notes:
Avoid fighting undead sieges in hand to hand until the necromancers are dead.
Check FBs and the like to see what dangers fighting hand to hand will have until you're sure its safe.
NEVER CHARGE INTO AND EVIL CLOUD. NEVER.
Attacking caravans from your own Civ is Fun.
Build each of your military dwarves a small 1x1 tomb. Or just shove the coffins in a small area by the barracks and designate them. Surprisingly helpful in keeping morale up. Well made food and furniture helps as well.
If you don't have the metal, wooden weapons [though regrettably elven] are surprisingly effective against kobolds and child snatchers. Not so much when the actual raiders show up.

[Rafatio]

If you give them armor they are already covered in all slots that matter for nakedness thoughts and armor doesn't get old. I think they replace clothing that has been specified as part of their gear on their own, everyone here is constantly replacing something. Maybe not if you assigned "that specific pair of red socks with green images of elves" but why would you want that if simply "socks" will do. Besides, high boots cover everything a sock does, my military never gets DF's most famous piece of clothing. Setting up an armor set the way you want it takes a few boring minutes, but after that its mostly assigning that to a new squad "use for whole squad" and hope they get around to actually putting on the things before next year. Its not as micromanagy as you expect, jump in.

The one command you really need seems to be a matter of taste, I'd say move, not kill. Using either of those also jump starts the scramble for gear, so use one of them after finishing the uniforms.

[Snaake]

It's fairly simple to set up a basic military, but more complicated to get them to train properly. Idealled you want 2 dwarves in a squad training at a time, that way they spend less time waiting for demonstrations and more time sparring, which is much more effective at training military skills. Usually I use squads of 4 and set their schedule to train (minimum 2) for all months (the default is 10, i.e. all soldiers on duty). This trains pretty fast, but still allows your dwarves to perform some other tasks.

Apparently this just needs.to be repeated ovrer and over... Yes, dwarves train the quickest if they spar, which they only do in pairs or groups of 3. However, one squad with mutiple orders of train 2 or train 3 have been shown to work just as well as multiple squads of 2-3 dwarves each with train 10, and 1 squad means less work setting up their equipment, schedules, alerts and in giving them orders to move/kill.

[Snaake]

Also, demonstrations can in fact be more effective than sparring, but it requires that the dwarf holding the demonstration has decent teacher skill and is also at least somewhat skilled in the military skill the demonstration is about.

I usually embark with 2 dwarves with teacher 5 and 1 point in a weapon skill, e.g. spears for one and hammers for the other, and give e.g. the speardwarf armor use 4 and the hammerdwarf dodger 4. Set them to spar until they're legendary (a year or so), then set them each to teach their own squads.

Had to make a 2nd separate post because the forums don't play nice with my phone browser on posts that don't fit in the edit box without scrolling.

[TheFreshPrince]

It's fairly simple to set up a basic military, but more complicated to get them to train properly. Idealled you want 2 dwarves in a squad training at a time, that way they spend less time waiting for demonstrations and more time sparring, which is much more effective at training military skills. Usually I use squads of 4 and set their schedule to train (minimum 2) for all months (the default is 10, i.e. all soldiers on duty). This trains pretty fast, but still allows your dwarves to perform some other tasks.

Apparently this just needs.to be repeated ovrer and over... Yes, dwarves train the quickest if they spar, which they only do in pairs or groups of 3. However, one squad with mutiple orders of train 2 or train 3 have been shown to work just as well as multiple squads of 2-3 dwarves each with train 10, and 1 squad means less work setting up their equipment, schedules, alerts and in giving them orders to move/kill.

What exactly is meant by one squad with multiple orders of train 2 or train 3?

[Levi]

I've given up on military mostly.  Every time I try I get slaughtered by goblins. 

[TheFreshPrince]

So how do you get new migrants, or trade, if you're constantly cut off from the outside world by goblin sieges?

[EvilBob22]

What exactly is meant by one squad with multiple orders of train 2 or train 3?

-Go to the military schedule, select your squad and month that you want for the training
-Give a new order, a new screen opens
-Select train, it will show something like "training, minimum 10 dwarves" (I'm not at my home computer at the moment, so I don't have the exact text)
-Use +/- to change it to 2 (or 3) dwarves for the minimum
-Accept the order.  You'll go back to the main schedule with "training 2 dwarves" (or whatever it says) for that month
-Give a new order again and set the new order to 2 (or 3) dwarves the same way as before
-Now, when you get back to the schedule screen, you'll have two lines of "training 2 dwarves"
-Repeat until you have 5 lines of "training 2 dwarves" (or 3 - 4 lines of "training 3 dwarves")

You don't have to repeat the whole process for every month.  You can select the multi-training month and (c)opy it, and then (p)aste the orders into any other month/squad.