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[Niddhoger]

I would actually prioritize shields over armor, a shield can be made from wood within a minute of embark while even leather armor takes some industry to make. Don't forget to get a hospital running before your first encounter, unless you want the extra challenge of losing half your soldiers to infections every year...

"Horse Hair Thread" is only useful for suturing wounds. When you set up your hospital make sure that it only has animal-hair thread.  Disgustingly, adamantium thread can be hijacked for hospital use... you really have to watch those bastards.  Realistically it'll be your masterfully dyed GCS thread that gets jacked.  I just periodically examine my hospital stores and dump/reclaim thread until nothing but hair thread is stocked.  Otherwise you will want some crutches/splints/yarn cloth stored.  Gypsum powder and spare buckets help too.  A (clean) water source and bars of soap are another necessity.  Murky-pool/muddy water can be used to clean wounds, but these both have an increased risk of clean water (which has an increased risk over soap).  The only way to get "clean" water is to build a reservoir over 2 stories deep (or a well over a similarly deep cavern lake... but this is not going to be safe).

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I was just going to put my training units outside the only entrance. Figured that would keep the fort safe

At the very least put a wall (not a complete one) around them to block arrow fire.  Preferably add a roof to also keep fliers at bay.  The point is you don't want goblin crossbows to start shooting your dorfs until they are already in melee range.  Thus, even a simple straight wall will do wonders for your military at the entrance.  Also make sure the choke point is indeed tight.  Even legendary observers can only spot a DABBLING ambusher 3 tiles away.  yes, yes, its stupid... however if you just station them out front there could be a big enough gap to still let theives and such slink through. 

Well the entrance is only 4 blocks wide and 10 armed and armored dwarves training along the hall should be good enough to spot most things. If anything else i don't general have extremely important items besides artifacts.



Also on hospitals- how do you get them to move thread/soap/cloth/gypsum powder to the storage areas in the hospital?

[StagnantSoul]

They do by default.

Also: pasture any dogs, bears, gorillas/mandrills, and big cats (tigers, lions, and suck , plus their giant versions) in your main hallway.

[Niddhoger]

I was just going to put my training units outside the only entrance. Figured that would keep the fort safe

At the very least put a wall (not a complete one) around them to block arrow fire.  Preferably add a roof to also keep fliers at bay.  The point is you don't want goblin crossbows to start shooting your dorfs until they are already in melee range.  Thus, even a simple straight wall will do wonders for your military at the entrance.  Also make sure the choke point is indeed tight.  Even legendary observers can only spot a DABBLING ambusher 3 tiles away.  yes, yes, its stupid... however if you just station them out front there could be a big enough gap to still let theives and such slink through. 

Well the entrance is only 4 blocks wide and 10 armed and armored dwarves training along the hall should be good enough to spot most things. If anything else i don't general have extremely important items besides artifacts.

My point is that even if the hallways is only 4 tiles wide, crossbow squads can still shoot freely on your dorfs from 20 tiles away.  Just make a wall 3 tiles in front of the entrance to block this line of site but still let merchants in.  This will force ranged attackers to get much closer to your dorfs before tehy can fire.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

There is kinda a natural wall already in place.


The entrance to my fort looks a bit like this

/xxx-
|    |-
|      |
|-     |--|
 |-        |
   |       |
X=entrance
|-= wall/hillside
The entrance is kinda half walked off just because of how it was dug into the hill.

[Splint]

I was just going to put my training units outside the only entrance. Figured that would keep the fort safe

At the very least put a wall (not a complete one) around them to block arrow fire.  Preferably add a roof to also keep fliers at bay.  The point is you don't want goblin crossbows to start shooting your dorfs until they are already in melee range.  Thus, even a simple straight wall will do wonders for your military at the entrance.  Also make sure the choke point is indeed tight.  Even legendary observers can only spot a DABBLING ambusher 3 tiles away.  yes, yes, its stupid... however if you just station them out front there could be a big enough gap to still let theives and such slink through. 

Well the entrance is only 4 blocks wide and 10 armed and armored dwarves training along the hall should be good enough to spot most things. If anything else i don't general have extremely important items besides artifacts.

My point is that even if the hallways is only 4 tiles wide, crossbow squads can still shoot freely on your dorfs from 20 tiles away.  Just make a wall 3 tiles in front of the entrance to block this line of site but still let merchants in.  This will force ranged attackers to get much closer to your dorfs before tehy can fire.

If his dwarves last long enough it'll be semi-moot with good dodgers/shield users. Worldgen troops (archers included) tend to average around 3 in thier combat skills (based on some estimates from legends viewer that put it generally between 2 and 5 for grunts, higher for squad leaders.) A competent (3) marksman isn't going to have much of a chance of even hitting someone who's a master (11) dodger and accomplished (10) shield user, eveing if he's got 12 friends to help him. At best they may tire them out a if they're super heavily armored.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

They will be in copper armor with probably bone/shell greaves/gauntlets, copper boots, and leather/bone/shell helmets

[Splint]

They will be in copper armor with probably bone/shell greaves/gauntlets, copper boots, and leather/bone/shell helmets

With high enough skills in fairly light armor like that they should be fine.

Of course, that depends on them surviving long enough to get those skills...

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Well I start military early by basicaly drafting anyone with military skills but few useful skills. And my others militaries that I've done seemed to be pretty good.

The last one I worked on that had no metal armor at all and only imported weapons (ok a couple bits of import armor too) was able to take down a fire breathing road Titan thing with only 3 dead, 5 wounded. There were 15~25 of them so I'm not sure how good that was and about half of them were unarmed wrestlers used for cannon fodder.

[SirQuiamus]

Also on hospitals- how do you get them to move thread/soap/cloth/gypsum powder to the storage areas in the hospital?

They do by default.

Don't we still have that nasty bug which causes overstocking of hospital stores? I've stored hospital supplies in separate stockpiles to avoid hauling nightmares. 

[Skullsploder]

Yes, for your hospital, DO NOT place any boxes or bags within the hospital zone, and you should probably set the stocks of everything in the zone options to zero for good measure. Even if that bug has gone away where you will end up with every piece of soap, cloth, thread, crutch and what-have-you sitting in the hospital, you have no control over which cloth gets taken. Simply placing appropriate stockpiles within the hospital zone gives your doctors access to their contents while still allowing you to control what types of thread and cloth get used.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I have no important cloth/thread/powder so the only sorry I have is soap and with plenty of wood and animals I won't have to worry about running out of soap

[Max™]

>.>

Really?

The whole thread of discussion on weaponry, and not one mention of my favorite?

I assume you have miners, and I assume you have... soil, giving a pick of any quality to a miner and having them clear a bunch of soil or even stone if you have longer to work with, will rapidly raise their mining skill, then disabling the mining labor and assigning them a masterwork pick--yes even copper if it is all you have, but a steel or candy pick is a helluva thing--gives you two things: living area/farming area/stones possibly, and a delimbing machine of gloriously simple effectiveness.

A legendary axe dorf can slap a goblin upside the head with the side of their axe or bash them with the handle until it finally dies of boredom, though they do love to send limbs flying, they tend to waste a lot of time and effort on the useless "flourish" options... I can't think of any situation where I would want to slap someone with the side of a battle axe, even a shield bash makes more sense.

A sword dorf with great skills and a steel or candy masterwork will also let you play "now where did that head end up landing" all day long if you want, plus sometimes they'll stab things in the heart, and sometimes they will slap something around the map with the side of their sword for a day or ten... makes more sense than the side of an axe, but still dumb, even for a dorf.

A legendary miner with a pick only knows how to do one thing: dig, and if all you've got is a pick, then labels like "goblin skull" or "forgotten beast hide" are as unimportant as "granite" and "galena" to a newly drafted miner.

Honestly the only difference is rocks don't usually scream... or bleed... or cry for help... or breathe poison.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Ya but that takes a lot of time and most of this has been on my QuickStart military

[StagnantSoul]

Digging your way to legendary takes less time than sparring or danger rooming to legendary. Miners are the fastest military. You can have legendary miners within a season.