Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ancalagon_TB]

Hello

So now that I have migrants (and a bunch of them fairly useless too - oh you are a novice lyemaker are you?  Here's your helmet recruit!) I have the manpower to create a five man military squad.

In the medium term, my goal is to have both kinds, but for the immediate moment, is it better to have dwarves with crossbows or dwarves with melee weapons?   I've installed an archery tower, but of course I can't be 100% sure I didn't mess it up.

[StagnantSoul]

The way I do it- (Which is pretty successful) for each professional military melee squad, 10 great or above skills, I'll include two full weak melee squads, reservists, training twice-thrice a year, and one crossbow squad.

[Duuvian]

I use a melee squad and everyone else in the fort gets a crossbow.

[Ancalagon_TB]

Thanks for the input so far.

As two of the migrants had some archery skills, I went ahead and created a marksdwarf squad.  However, the next wave of migrant was *huge* - 29 dwarves showed up!  I definitely have the manpower for both crossbow and melee specialist

But what is a good military to civilian proportion?  Should 1/3 of my dwarves be in the military?  1/5?  What?

[Madventurer]

My preferred military setting is:

Once I hit 50-70 dwarves, I set up a single melee squad, usually swords as the main professional squad.
Later on, I increase the professional squads up to 4, of which 1 is usually marksdwarves.
Then, basically every single dwarf is drafted into marksdwarf militia, armed with crossbows and helmets, sometimes breastplates too.

[wuphonsreach]

Around the point where I hit 35 dwarves, I setup five of them in a marksdwarf militia squad (leather armor, wood shields, metal crossbows).  Downside is that those five then like to stand around doing individual drills instead of work when off-duty.

Those five eventually go on to lead five civilian militia squads.

I don't setup dedicated melee military squads until I hit 100 dwarves.

(Anyone have a good link for a "civilian militia" setup wiki page or forum thread?)

[Teldin]

I use highly specialized workers; the top 10% do 90% of the work. It's definitely risky, but is extremely efficient in terms of both time and materials. This also means I always have enormous piles of unemployed loiterers. So, since I never use traps, bridges, or moats, they all go into the militia. At least 50% of my total fort pop is military, usually more like 75%, and out of the military, it's split 50-50 into crossbows and melee. There tends to be a wide variety of equipment, and they're pretty smart about handing it out -- the squad leaders grab the best stuff first, and later recruits get the poorest gear.

I tend to do it in stages, based entirely on fort pop- when the number of idle dwarves gets too high, they all get dumped in a new squad. Immigrant wave incoming? New squad time! If there's no serious supply of iron, squaddies get copper equipment, with leather armor for everyone who can't be equipped with metal. Typically I also have two crossbow squads -- one of them is outfitted with the heaviest armor I can make them, while the 2nd is equipped with light leather gear; the heavy squad is used as a protective service for the melees, while the light armored squad is the mobile defense, usually scrambling to the walls or towers in the event of an attack while the slower dwarves mobilize in the barracks.

[Tacomagic]

I use highly specialized workers; the top 10% do 90% of the work. It's definitely risky, but is extremely efficient in terms of both time and materials. This also means I always have enormous piles of unemployed loiterers. So, since I never use traps, bridges, or moats, they all go into the militia. At least 50% of my total fort pop is military, usually more like 75%, and out of the military, it's split 50-50 into crossbows and melee. There tends to be a wide variety of equipment, and they're pretty smart about handing it out -- the squad leaders grab the best stuff first, and later recruits get the poorest gear.

Pretty much this for me too.   Dwarves that idle too long get drafted.  Even if I don't have equpment for them, they can join a wrestling group and play grab-ass until I have stuff for them to wear.

[Findulidas]

I rarely use crossbows or bows because Ive had terrible experiences with them in the past due to all the bugs involved.

I use highly specialized workers; the top 10% do 90% of the work. It's definitely risky, but is extremely efficient in terms of both time and materials. This also means I always have enormous piles of unemployed loiterers. So, since I never use traps, bridges, or moats, they all go into the militia. At least 50% of my total fort pop is military, usually more like 75%, and out of the military, it's split 50-50 into crossbows and melee. There tends to be a wide variety of equipment, and they're pretty smart about handing it out -- the squad leaders grab the best stuff first, and later recruits get the poorest gear.

Pretty much this for me too.   Dwarves that idle too long get drafted.  Even if I don't have equpment for them, they can join a wrestling group and play grab-ass until I have stuff for them to wear.

To be fair if you use two or three mechanics then you get traps as well. Make fifty wood cages and those traps will easily eat up all smaller invading forces by themselves.

[Teldin]

I rarely use crossbows or bows because Ive had terrible experiences with them in the past due to all the bugs involved.

I use highly specialized workers; the top 10% do 90% of the work. It's definitely risky, but is extremely efficient in terms of both time and materials. This also means I always have enormous piles of unemployed loiterers. So, since I never use traps, bridges, or moats, they all go into the militia. At least 50% of my total fort pop is military, usually more like 75%, and out of the military, it's split 50-50 into crossbows and melee. There tends to be a wide variety of equipment, and they're pretty smart about handing it out -- the squad leaders grab the best stuff first, and later recruits get the poorest gear.

Pretty much this for me too.   Dwarves that idle too long get drafted.  Even if I don't have equpment for them, they can join a wrestling group and play grab-ass until I have stuff for them to wear.

To be fair if you use two or three mechanics then you get traps as well. Make fifty wood cages and those traps will easily eat up all smaller invading forces by themselves.

The entire point of not using traps is not to use traps, though. It's not because I can't, it's because it's not fun.

[Mushroo]

But what is a good military to civilian proportion?  Should 1/3 of my dwarves be in the military?  1/5?  What?

I personally recruit the best warrior from each migrant wave (not counting the starting 7). So for example, a 3 year old fort will have seen 8 migrant waves and therefore I will have 8 dwarves in my military (unless someone died).

For a beginner I would recommend melee squads training 24/7 at a "choke point" in your fort entrance.

I also sometimes make use of Hunters for civilian defense. They won't aggressively attack invaders, but they will defend themselves if cornered. Legendary hunters are also great for dealing with pesky wildlife (like giant cave spiders).

The best advice anyone ever gave me about military in Dwarf Fortress is, dig your exploratory mineshafts outside your fort's main entrance and defenses. Lots of rookies make the mistake of building their fort in such a way (i.e. putting stairs to the cavern near the dining hall or workshops) that they need to two separate militaries: a military to defend the surface against invaders, and a military for cavern defense.

[Sirbug]

Since training marksdwarves seems like a hussle, I enlist hunters and other migrants with skill. How many depends on luck. Every useless migrant gets enlisted into heavy armour melee squad.

[Insanegame27]

oh! hello Urist McMigrant, what job did you have in the mountainhomes? OH! Really? a novice lye maker? such an important job. Here's a helmet for... self defence and a crossbow and a quiver.

[Ancalagon_TB]

I was lucky - out of the new batch, 7 have melee skills.  Two more have some archery skill, and one useless dwarf is amazingly tough (sounds like melee material to me).

I have a problem though - the 7 dwarves with military experience, they don't have the same weapons - some are axes, a few maces and one swordsman.  Is it ok to have a squad with mixed weapons?

[Teldin]

I was lucky - out of the new batch, 7 have melee skills.  Two more have some archery skill, and one useless dwarf is amazingly tough (sounds like melee material to me).

I have a problem though - the 7 dwarves with military experience, they don't have the same weapons - some are axes, a few maces and one swordsman.  Is it ok to have a squad with mixed weapons?

That's totally fine. There's no real reason to limit them to a certain weapon; in fact it's probably a plus, considering there's some enemies that are difficult to injure with certain weapons (spears vs. hammers work very differently against armored/large/undead targets for example). Just don't make any wooden weapons, like training axes, etc, because they can get attached to them while training and tend to try using them in actual combat.