I installed fortress defense and it was pretty darn entertaining watching the sieges of dark stranglers. First, the moment they saw incoming dwarves they bravely ran away, climbing up trees. Running was extremely wise, because whenever a dwarf punched a strangler the struck part would explode in a mess of gore.
Combat training seems to have significantly changed. I was using a squad of 3 all who embarked with proficient weapon user and proficient discipline and I did my standard small-squad sparring thing, and after a year or so weapon skills had only increased by a few levels, and one had even become a wrestler, because her wrestling and unarmed skills had surpassed her spear dwarf skill. Fighting skill had developed normally. It seems dwarves must be showing a much greater tendency to using non-weapon attacks, especially striking. I don't believe general skill gain was any slower - as mentioned one had become a talented-ish spear user, and an even higher level wrestler, so had gained plenty of skill, just not in stabbing things. Observer skill now appears in the list, and discipline skill trains quite quickly.
It appears that personality has more affect on dwarves. Early on I was surprised to find my miner taking a nice break. I checked his profile and he like totally didn't believe in working hard. His break was both longer and came earlier than other dwarves. I suppose such guys naturally belong in the military, or as haulers. It was okay because later he fell off my magma stack to his death.