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[Iceflame]

I use a similar setup for my recent fortress, with two slight differences.
First of all, only useless migrants are drafted for military duty after the first 80. Secondly, they don't receive armor and only wepons of poor metals my visitors left or with crossbows. Everyone who survives his first year without completely losing his ability to be useful is allowed to stay. Of course, most of them will stay soldiers, but receive armor and better weapons.

Therewith I have a standing army of about 40  of those throughout the whole year, scheduled to either training or patroling around the area.

These are backed by at least one squad of highly trained and equipped crossbowers and another one of mixed melee dwarfes, which are also on duty the whole time.

In fact, this method of building an army is much more efficient than I expected. Either I get a handful of trained veterans, which are a good addition to my military, or a whole group of migrants get perforated by a group of goblin archers and doesn't need to be kept alive. Both ways I win.

[Pirate Bob]

So you are evolving a breed of super-soldiers by killing off the weak ones.  Very dwarfy.  I like it.

Do you take any precautions to prevent the new recruits from making friends with anyone important before you send them off to "prove themselves"?  I had considered trying something like this, but was thinking I would create a sort of "ghetto" for the new arrivals, with dining and sleeping areas completely separated from my main fort, and only allowing the proven veterans into the main fort.

[StagnantSoul]

Not too sure if I'd ever go with your setup. In my runs, every dwarf has to live, mostly to constantly haul every single stone around the map. Cheap labor is good labor, and, in huge emergencies, like a Titan got in, they do work as added protection between the first people and the king.

[Urist McShire]

Huh... Maybe not have these guys engage the clowns. I have a huge access to steel and iron, 500+ bars of iron, an entire layer made of limestone, and lots of fuel. I have five legendary all skill warriors, each decked out in steel. I was thinking of, since I had four carpenters constantly making featherwood training spears since the first migrant wave, of putting all the barracks in a room full of spear traps hooked up to a lever, five in each trap, so when they're training in the barracks, they're actually double training and raising attributes. Obviously this would be behind many animal locked doors, with even the artifact hatch to my fortress being animal locked. Question: If I get sieged, can't close the gate fast enough, and lock that artifact hatch, can the goblins claim it like doors? Or is my fortress impenetrable with it?

You're talking about a mass danger room? They really aren't needed all that much anymore in the new version ever since training speed increased. They can still be useful in getting the dodge and armour skill up, but if you just set a squad to train for 9 months of the year with one month off in every three by the time they become weapons masters they'll already become skilled or professional armour users as well. In two years you can have Legendary weapons dwarves with Great armour use skill just through training now.

[Tirion]

Huh... Maybe not have these guys engage the clowns. I have a huge access to steel and iron, 500+ bars of iron, an entire layer made of limestone, and lots of fuel. I have five legendary all skill warriors, each decked out in steel. I was thinking of, since I had four carpenters constantly making featherwood training spears since the first migrant wave, of putting all the barracks in a room full of spear traps hooked up to a lever, five in each trap, so when they're training in the barracks, they're actually double training and raising attributes. Obviously this would be behind many animal locked doors, with even the artifact hatch to my fortress being animal locked. Question: If I get sieged, can't close the gate fast enough, and lock that artifact hatch, can the goblins claim it like doors? Or is my fortress impenetrable with it?

You're talking about a mass danger room? They really aren't needed all that much anymore in the new version ever since training speed increased. They can still be useful in getting the dodge and armour skill up, but if you just set a squad to train for 9 months of the year with one month off in every three by the time they become weapons masters they'll already become skilled or professional armour users as well. In two years you can have Legendary weapons dwarves with Great armour use skill just through training now.

I heard danger rooms also build "Doesn't really care about anything anymore", so they might be still useful.

[Skullsploder]

I have a citizen's militia in every fort I make, now that I've got it figured out. It's super-worthwhile, since having your dwarves stand and spray bolts at enemies is waaaaay better than having them run around in circles, especially since goblin soldiers almost always have higher agility, plus steel helms and mail shirts reduce fatalities around the fort by a good bit.

Basically, everyone in the fort except the career military guys is in a squad based on profession, e.g. haulers, doctors, smiths, so that I know who to throw into the dwarven wave attacks first. It helps to tell at-a-glance how many dwarves of whatever type you have, it gives you more control over your dwarves in an emergency, and it means you never have to worry about piles of discarded clothing clogging your FPS.

They all get a military-grade mail shirt, helm, gauntlets, and copper crossbow, and silver hammers as a secondary if I can spare it (they will use the crossbow most of the time in melee, but occasionally make a game-changing hit with the hammer). I make a bunch of leather legwear and boots which they replace with goblinite over time, and leather chestpieces to go over the mail because I think it looks cooler.

I also set up an arena of sorts, where I mass-pit my captured goblins (at least, I did in 34.11, I've heard 40.x has some pitting issues), with fortifications around it, with a barracks designated around those. All dwarves are "allowed" to train in the barracks, so they do their civvy duties, but when they would normally be idling they go do individual combat drills, and if there happens to be a goblin in the arena, they take potshots at him until they get a new job.
This way, civilians get to competent in the marksdwarf skill pretty quickly, and they're always doing something useful instead of just idling.

[Pirate Bob]

...
They all get a military-grade mail shirt, helm, gauntlets, and copper crossbow, and silver hammers as a secondary if I can spare it (they will use the crossbow most of the time in melee, but occasionally make a game-changing hit with the hammer).
...

I did some arena testing in 40.xx and found that dwarves with competent skill with a sword will use that in melee most of the time rather than the crossbow they are holding in their other hand.  In other words, I think melee attacks will prefer to use the weapon with which the attacker has the most skill.  I have not had a chance to test this in fort mode yet, but plan to.  I was going to train my marksdwarves in spear, or maybe sword, and avoid having them train at all in hammer.  I may not get to test this for a while, as I'm busy, but it potentially could make marksdwarves much more useful in melee combat (I know ideally they should avoid melee, but in my experience military dwarves do not tend to do what I want them to do pretty much ever...)

[Aranador]

On occasion, I have modded in a 'combat crossbow' - adding to it an attack of about the same stats as the stabbing attack of a shortsword - and changing its weapon skill to 'spear'.  Voila, bayonet affixed crossbows.

For the most part though, I simply have crossbow users set up with 'proper' firing positions, and keep them out of melee all together.

[StagnantSoul]

Training+danger room is my setup. It's working on the two test squads. They're all huge and burly, and slowly ranking up discipline, though, to keep the civilians from being overpowered, I'll only run the spears once in a while.

[MDFification]

Huh... Maybe not have these guys engage the clowns. I have a huge access to steel and iron, 500+ bars of iron, an entire layer made of limestone, and lots of fuel. I have five legendary all skill warriors, each decked out in steel. I was thinking of, since I had four carpenters constantly making featherwood training spears since the first migrant wave, of putting all the barracks in a room full of spear traps hooked up to a lever, five in each trap, so when they're training in the barracks, they're actually double training and raising attributes. Obviously this would be behind many animal locked doors, with even the artifact hatch to my fortress being animal locked. Question: If I get sieged, can't close the gate fast enough, and lock that artifact hatch, can the goblins claim it like doors? Or is my fortress impenetrable with it?

You're talking about a mass danger room? They really aren't needed all that much anymore in the new version ever since training speed increased. They can still be useful in getting the dodge and armour skill up, but if you just set a squad to train for 9 months of the year with one month off in every three by the time they become weapons masters they'll already become skilled or professional armour users as well. In two years you can have Legendary weapons dwarves with Great armour use skill just through training now.

I heard danger rooms also build "Doesn't really care about anything anymore", so they might be still useful.

They don't.

[StagnantSoul]

They do if you have the corpse pile in there, using engraved slabs to ward off ghosts. (Insert tiny halo)

[Insanegame27]

They do if you have the corpse pile in there, using engraved slabs to ward off ghosts. (Insert tiny halo)

Insert little master chief figure obliterating the flood

[Jake]

I have a system of sorts for this. Anyone who arrives with a pre-existing melee skill gets a uniform of chainmail over leather with a metal helmet, a wooden shield and "individual choice, melee". They're set to train for the whole of winter, when I usually have the highest number of idlers.

The rest of the fortress militia eventually consists of twelve squads issued a breastplate, a helmet and a crossbow. (Or some other ranged weapon.) They spend a month each training, spread out through the years so I don't have too many dwarves taken away from their other duties. I start by drafting my hunters, but then shove anyone not very useful for anything else in to fill out the numbers.

In the event of an attack, I have an alert to send the ranged squads behind fortifications around the entrance with the melee squad waiting in the courtyard. Everyone else is in lockdown in the "bomb shelter", a big room with beds, a dining area and lots of stockpiled food and booze that's guarded with traps.

[Insanegame27]

Everyone else is in lockdown in the "bomb shelter", a big room with beds, a dining area and lots of stockpiled food and booze that's guarded with traps.

Wait a minute... Are you trying to guard the food with traps, or guard the bomb shelter with food?

[Skullsploder]

Everyone else is in lockdown in the "bomb shelter", a big room with beds, a dining area and lots of stockpiled food and booze that's guarded with traps.

Wait a minute... Are you trying to guard the food with traps, or guard the bomb shelter with food?

He's obviously trying to guard the traps with the bomb shelter.