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[Axetibe]

Hi guys, this is my first post on this site, I'm member of the DF French Community and one of those who tried once (and will try in the future) to make DF as known in Europe as it is in USA.
Cause I'm a young man, I never donate for Toady, but I would have done that if I were as big to do it, in order to thanks him for all his wonderful work with DF and even Liberal Crime Squad.

I actually play DF since like 2.5 years, and I think I got a pretty good level at almost everything standard in the fortress mod, even if I always learn something new everytime I play. But there's a topic that stayed for me just a subject full of shadows: that's military questions.

So sure, I know pretty much how to create a militia, squads, equip them, train them and stuff, but everytime I make my dwarves train, I always have to wait decades just to have 1 or 2 dwarves able to beat a single goblin. That's just terrible because I got nothing to defend my fortress from berserk, megabeasts, ambushes or even sieges!

I think it's quite my bad, because I may have miss something important in the training part of DF. I tried to make my dwarves go 2 by 2 in squads, and just observed that they make some sparring sessions that boosts the most their military skills, but I don't know how to optimize my schedules, my equipments and moreover, how to make them spar more often.

' Got a little question about another thing, though. I was wondering if it was possible for me to make my marksdwarves train with innanimated target (in DF2012/DF2014) or if it was bugged.

Thank you for listening to my small questions, I hope to see you all soon on the forum.

PS: I'm sorry if you missunderstand some parts, that may be cause my english is terrible, just ask it if you d'ont understand, I'll do my best to explain you in a better way.

[KingKaol]

I think it's quite my bad, because I may have miss something important in the training part of DF. I tried to make my dwarves go 2 by 2 in squads, and just observed that they make some sparring sessions that boosts the most their military skills, but I don't know how to optimize my schedules, my equipments and moreover, how to make them spar more often.

To get training going:

1. Build a barracks (a weapon rack or armor stand, or container), and select your squad to train with 'T' on the building screen
2. In the military screen, (m), alerts (a), arrow down to Active/Training and then arrow right to select your squads and press 'Enter'. You will see an 'A' appear next to them, now they will follow their training schedule.
3. Next in the military schedule screen, (s), select one of their 'Train' orders and 'e: Edit order'. Use +/- to set the 'soldiers minimum' to be equal or less than the size of your squad (I make mine equal size), then Shift+Enter when done
4. Back on the schedule screen, use 'c' and 'p' to copy and paste this order to the other months, and use 'x' to give them time off. I have my squads doing 3 months training with a 1 month break.
5. Equipment is usually chosen at the creation of a squad, and the defaults aren't bad. You should put dwarves using the same weapons together in a squad. So you might need to specify a specific weapon instead of individual choice, if you would like the dwarf to be forced to use it, make sure you have the weapon available and in the military equip screen (m-e) you can select the dwarf and assign the weapon with 'W' (and delete individual choice by selecting it and pressing Enter).

' Got a little question about another thing, though. I was wondering if it was possible for me to make my marksdwarves train with innanimated target (in DF2012/DF2014) or if it was bugged.

By inanimate do you mean like a built archery target? You can build them from the build menu (b-A) and you can assign squads to train there just like you create the barracks for a armor stand or weapon rack.

[Axetibe]

To get training going:

1. Build a barracks (a weapon rack or armor stand, or container), and select your squad to train with 'T' on the building screen
2. In the military screen, (m), alerts (a), arrow down to Active/Training and then arrow right to select your squads and press 'Enter'. You will see an 'A' appear next to them, now they will follow their training schedule.
3. Next in the military schedule screen, (s), select one of their 'Train' orders and 'e: Edit order'. Use +/- to set the 'soldiers minimum' to be equal or less than the size of your squad (I make mine equal size), then Shift+Enter when done
4. Back on the schedule screen, use 'c' and 'p' to copy and paste this order to the other months, and use 'x' to give them time off. I have my squads doing 3 months training with a 1 month break.
5. Equipment is usually chosen at the creation of a squad, and the defaults aren't bad. You should put dwarves using the same weapons together in a squad. So you might need to specify a specific weapon instead of individual choice, if you would like the dwarf to be forced to use it, make sure you have the weapon available and in the military equip screen (m-e) you can select the dwarf and assign the weapon with 'W' (and delete individual choice by selecting it and pressing Enter).

I already known all of that, but when I'm doing that, I have to wait like 2 years or even 3 years to have masters at Military Skills and when I see some guys on their fortress that have good army without a so long training, I thought I was missing something.

By inanimate do you mean like a built archery target? You can build them from the build menu (b-A) and you can assign squads to train there just like you create the barracks for a armor stand or weapon rack.

Yeah, that was what I meant. But I thought this option was bugged and no dwarves use the target.

Alright, thank you for replying.

[YAHG]

For the fastest training, there is always the danger room.

I find 0-legendary in less than a season assuming you use 10 spears a tile.

[greycat]

Military skills go up a lot faster in 0.40.x than they did in 0.34.11 (vanilla).  But many of the people running 0.34.11 are also using DFHack, which includes a tweak that speeds up military training.

If you're on 0.40.x now, you should see much faster skill gains from your training.  Just do all of the normal, sane things to optimize training (small squads, Active/Training in a barracks, don't weigh them down with 16 layers of armor, let them carry booze in waterskins) and leave them alone.  They should start sparring after 2-3 months, at which point you should see dozens of pages of sparring reports.

[Bumber]

For the fastest training, there is always the danger room.

I find 0-legendary in less than a season assuming you use 10 spears a tile.

You risk pulping and infections (likely resulting in death, since cartilage won't heal without modding) if you use them in 0.40.x. Might as well use the Shaft of Enlightenment if you're going to exploit.

[TacoSundae84]

I already known all of that, but when I'm doing that, I have to wait like 2 years or even 3 years to have masters at Military Skills and when I see some guys on their fortress that have good army without a so long training, I thought I was missing something.

Danger rooms are what those guys are probably using to get their military trained to legendary in less than a couple years. If you consider them an exploit, then you'll have to wait the two years for them to train up normally.

If you're using the latest version, the bugged bad thoughts about long patrol duty are gone, and you can permanently put your dwarves on training full time with no bad thoughts (except the initial upset about the draft thing if they don't have military skills). So the schedule should just be all of them training all the time. I've done this in my past two forts, and they get up to legendary in their weapon skill, shields, discipline, and fighting all within a couple years. I usually also combine this with letting them kill all the troglodytes my cage traps seem to frequently catch in the caverns, which has the added benefit of making them not care about anything anymore.

For the marksdwarves, this seems to take a lot longer if you're using archery targets. They will use the targets now, quite a lot in fact. The current fort I've been running in 40.08 has 4 targets, and they're constantly being used by my marksdwarf squad of 9 that is on duty full time. All but 1 has reached legendary, but it has taken much longer than the swordsdwarves. Now that I think about it, this may have been closer to the same rate if I set up 9 targets, one for each marksdwarf. I guess i'll test that out in the next fort.

[Axetibe]

Thank you guys for all the replies 

I think I'm gonna go for the last version with the starter pack, but I remember the last time that Toady updates the game, we had to wait more than 3 months to have a playable (or without major bugs) version.

Are there changes in RAW that I have to do to protect my fort from bugs in 0.40?

[Panando]

In .34 squad-of-2 sparring could easily get legendaries in one year, in ideal/lucky cases (training speed is highly luck dependent) even by first winter - no DFHack needed. I've not played the more recent versions of .40 enough to be able to compare, but the earlier .40 versions didn't seem much slower for squad-of-2 sparring, it was just they didn't develop much weapon skill due to the wrestling bug.

[wlmartin]

Thank you guys for all the replies 

I think I'm gonna go for the last version with the starter pack, but I remember the last time that Toady updates the game, we had to wait more than 3 months to have a playable (or without major bugs) version.

Are there changes in RAW that I have to do to protect my fort from bugs in 0.40?

Its not actually that buggy really

The only annoying issue some of us have is the screen tearing where some text fades and forces you to scroll back/forth to get it back
Aside from that, a lot of the bugs being spotted are less crash-crash bugs and more stuff-you-wont-notice-unless-a-specific-scenario-comes-up bugs

I reckon its stable enough now to play (its what i decided to do)

[Axetibe]

Nice, I'm gonna go for it so. I'm a bit scared of bugs though, since I lost a advanced fortress cause of bugs... 

[Cheedows]

You'll be fine. Just expect goblins far earlier than usual in .40x. If you want you can have a 10 dwarf squad with a schedule of 5 orders of 2 minimum train. Works like a charm, far easier to get legendaries in 1-2 years in .40x.

[Axetibe]

So Goblins will siege before I got like 80 dwarves or ~100 000 wealth? Good to know, thank you.
And for the adventure mod? Is it harder to play now than before? I heard that you can't now exactly where to go anymore but that the possiblities are much better than previously. Am I wrong?

[greycat]

Are there changes in RAW that I have to do to protect my fort from bugs in 0.40?

The last major raw-fixable bug I'm aware of was the one with fliers getting stuck and never leaving, which was fixed in 0.40.10.

Nowadays, I think the biggest remaining bugs that people will care about are plants not being fully implemented, and goblins conquering every site they attack in the background while you're playing.  But I could be forgetting (or unaware of) some others.

[Detharon]

Nobody uses live training? That's always been my preferred way of pumping my dwarves up.

Basically, I create a squad of trainees wearing full iron/steel armor, a leather cloak, and training weapon, and I let them fight captured enemies in a little underground arena. If something goes awry (it rarely does), there are always few crossbowmen nearby, who can shoot from behind the fortifications.

Newbie soldiers fight unarmed kobolds, animal people, or other weaklings. More experienced ones fight unarmed goblins. To make the fight longer, goblins are fully armored, but their weapons are taken so they shouldn't hurt my dwarves. It isn't 100% safe, because sometimes they land a lucky hit, but... such injuries are rare and almost never lethal.

Anything too strong for melee fighters also goes to the pit, so the marksdwarves can train a bit.