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[Firearrow15]

So I am pretty new to DF. I just started a couple weeks ago.
My first couple forts have ended with much !!Fun!!, like most people probably.y first fort I gave up on because of disorganization and general noobishness. After I had the basics figured out, I made a new one. It had only copper, which was bad, but I did pretty well. I had ~120 dwarves, with a military of about 15. I was trying to build an artificial river to my base from the actual river for milling, fishing and well purposes, but I dug it wrong and had water in the wrong areas. Nobody died amazingly. Out of frustration and boredom, I decided to dig a shaft to the caverns. I found a "downward passage", so I sent my military down to explore. They found an adamantine spire, so I sent my miners down to dig it out. While they were on their way down, a goblin siege showed up. The other part of my military dispatched most of it easy enough. A single conscripted dwarven marksman had killed a few of mine. I sent the rest of the military up to deal with him. It was about this time that the miners breached HFS. You can guess what happened.

My third fort went better, with a working artificial river and 50 dwarves. My military was not actually training, because I forgot to set them to active. In addition, I realized that my front gate was set to retract instead of raise. I realized big of these during my first attack from a necromancer. I was swiftly destroyed. Much Fun.

SO. The question is: what is an acceptable time to start making a military? I was never attacked in my first fort of ~100 dwarves, sieged at 120 in my second and attacked at 50 in my third. All were near multiple civilizations. When is a good time to start conscripting peasants to make a military?

[Authority2]

It depends to some extent on your playstyle and the surroundings - you can survive indefinitely with traps and mechanisms and turtling, or you can embark with a militia commander pre-trained.

If we're talking about cost/benefit, you'll want to start training a military when you get enough useless peasants that you can spare the extra, while setting up your protective drawbridge and stuff as soon as you have the mechanisms just in case. Wooden training weapons work to train weapon skill if you don't have especially good real weapons yet, either by sending your peasants out to beat on random small wildlife or leaving them to spar with each other.

[Ives]

I keep about 25% of my population on permanent training/part time goblin bashing, starting from the first migrant wave. I never find much of a reason to go below that, and the extra attribute gain is a great boon for almost every dwarf.

[utunnels]

I only recruit legendary miners and those who have combat skills.
I also rely on traps and draw bridges, so I only keep a small military(3 squads, 20 dwarves).

[SlyStalker]

I usually bring a melee 'drill sergeant' along on embark, and I partner him up around the first migrant wave. I then add more dwarves until the squad is full. I repeat the process to make more melee squads, but for ranged squads I usually make hunters or people with the marksdwarf skill captains, draft nine other expendable dwarves (in terms of labour) and set them to train only one month out of four, while the melee squads train all year (they usually need it more). It's not worth it to train up Legendary marksdwarves mainly because it's harder to kill quickly with crossbows as opposed to melee weapons and I generally use marksdwarves to give the enemy a couple of punctured lungs and guts before they engage my professional melee dwarves rather than to kill anyway, and also a large mass of bolts fired by several squads of conscripts usually do more damage than bolts from a single professional marksdwarf squad. Plus, conscripts are good in that they can do civiliam jobs too instead of training all the time.

[taptap]

Depends. Usually, I start in the first year having a full time military from 10-50% of the adult population. And often my whole or most of my population ends with military training, agility, endurance and strength is useful even for haulers.

For marksdwarves do yourself a favour and train them as hammerdwarves first, the shield, dodge, armour user skills trained that way (together with hammer skill + abilities) go a long way to make them sturdier in combat, otherwise you risk a whole squad being taken down by a single elite bowgoblin.

[SlyStalker]

For marksdwarves do yourself a favour and train them as hammerdwarves first, the shield, dodge, armour user skills trained that way (together with hammer skill + abilities) go a long way to make them sturdier in combat, otherwise you risk a whole squad being taken down by a single elite bowgoblin.

Definitely agree. Shields don't help at all if a dwarf tries to hold it backwards in combat or something. The Dodge skill helps immensely against ranged enemies.

[WDDworf]

My approach is similar to some here.

I typically embark with 1 military trained.. Most often it's just 5 points into fighting and 5 points into dodging.
If you embark with dangerous creatures, you will have a first level defense.

After that I generally start digging out stuff with 4-6 miners, which I draft into the military after mining the general fort.
(Miners used to get relatively buffed and I think they still do)

Mostly I don't really bother setting it al up, rather than 1 or 2 full squads with barracks.
If there is a siege or beast incoming, I tend to use the "Pile on the enemy!"-strategy.. pushing war animals/dogs in front to soak up the first hits.
My first Forgotten Beast got smacked out cold by a fresh recruit's punch. (the dwarves unharmed, because the dogs got targetted first.. 'you do not need wings to fly' )
That another beast kinda killed everyone within a tick.. lets ignore that

My military is just a safety buffer, although I try not to block off my entire fort (Which is possible in every fort I've had)

[Erkki]

Myself I want to avoid a lethal overdoze of Fun so I always build the capability to seal off the fort from outer world first. I start training military from the 3rd ir 4th migration wave, just 10/squad and everyone with the same weapon. Melee forces train or are active all of the time, while marksdwarves are reservists(hunters, peasants and so forth). A 300-Dwarf fort may have a 60-Dwarf melee army and another 30-40 marksdwarves for support, and a 10-Dwarf Guards police/militia peasant reserve.

Another thing to think about besides equipment, numbers and training is where do you want to engage the enemy. Many forts build a large "air lock" complete with marksdwarf firing fortificationd intended to be the killing ground where the enemy can be let in to be engaged at favorable terms.

I usually dont train my Dwarves much over skill 10, use steel or traps as Goblins usually stop being a serious threat at some point. Before you learn the game however you should use every trick in the book and see what works and what doesnt.