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[saintclair]

Okay, so I've played several successful forts in my recent binge, some of which made it to barony, and I had very successful, stable forts. In the most successful one, a werebeast attacked and I'm too lazy to look through all 110 combat logs to see who got bitten, so chaos ensues and then everyone is killed. This got me to thinking that if I seem to invariably design my forts like a circulatory system and I always forget to put an immune system in, why shouldn't I integrate them?
This thought has led me to the idea of putting every capable dwarf into a squad, assigning a simple uniform of a weapon and shield, and setting them to uniformed when inactive. I would think that this has the benefits of:

• All of my dwarves now have some means of defending themselves, and
• it means that the giant bats that routinely get stuck in my lower levels will not be pummeled mercilessly for a week until a rogue woodcutter stumbles along to finish the job.

The game also doesn't seem to force miners or woodcutters from adopting this, as it gets in the way of their profession's uniform requirements, so there's no conflict there.

Basically the general question I'm asking above is: Is there any reasonable merit to giving all civilians a short sword and buckler (the configuration I've chosen), or any weaponset for that matter?

Further questions to this:

• Is there any meaningful difference between shield and buckler other than weight/size? Does that have any effect?
• Is a short sword better than a regular sword because it is lighter and will thus hinder hauling and movement less, or is that a false assumption?
• Is the amount of training my civilians would receive from a quarterly month of training worth the decreased productivity? As in, will them training every four months give them enough combat wherewithal that they would survive slightly better in a forgotten beast incident, or a werebeast incident?
• Is it a reasonable idea to equip my civilians with armor of any kind, be it leather, the lighter chain, or the heavier breastplate?

Also, can we have a general discussion on Spartan-like forts? Dedicated ruling warrior class, (quasi-)slaves, gender segregation, etc.? Fun ideas.

Totally unrelated aside: Why can't I use clay jugs to store seeds! I hate the cloth industry. It makes me very irritable to devote dwarves to growing rope reeds/pig tails, threshing them, and then constructing bags. I wish we could just store the damn seeds in a ceramic jug like we do sugar, flour, and even other nuts.

[Pirate Santa]

Basically the general question I'm asking above is: Is there any reasonable merit to giving all civilians a short sword and buckler (the configuration I've chosen), or any weaponset for that matter?

The biggest benefit will be having them able to use a weapon instead of punching for several months like you said.

Is there any meaningful difference between shield and buckler other than weight/size? Does that have any effect?[/li][/list]

Shields provide greater protection than bucklers, I'm not sure if there is ever any motivation to use bucklers.

Is a short sword better than a regular sword because it is lighter and will thus hinder hauling and movement less, or is that a false assumption?

Shortswords are the only type of sword dwarves can manufacture, and there are issues in fort mode with equipping some foreign weapons, such as twohanders.

Is the amount of training my civilians would receive from a quarterly month of training worth the decreased productivity? As in, will them training every four months give them enough combat wherewithal that they would survive slightly better in a forgotten beast incident, or a werebeast incident?

Training will boost their strength, endurance and speed so you should see an increase in productivity, especially when hauling heavy objects.

Is it a reasonable idea to equip my civilians with armor of any kind, be it leather, the lighter chain, or the heavier breastplate?

Be warned heavy armor will slow your dwarves down unless they have a high armor user skill (one of the slowest to train skills). Leather armor is a reasonable thing for civvies to have, and remember that normal leather clothing can provide a degree of protection and train armor user skill if it blocks attacks.

[Loud Whispers]

1. I've always equipped under the assumption that shields had a higher block chance.
2. The weight is negligible. Armour will be more of an issue until your Dorfs get some armour skill.
3. In my eyes a Dwarf saved from military training is more productive than a skilled metalsmith whose guts are on the floor.
4. Yep, focus on helmets, mail shirts/breastplates and shields first and foremost.

I've always been fond of 100% military Forts and I've done a warrior-monk Fort, Spartan Fort and Darwinian Soviet Fort before. I think if you want to be truest to Spartan society, have your military class not actually do much fighting but instead be so intensely trained that when they do fight - victory is flawless. Have them do no work other than soldiery and fighting. Have your craftsdwarf class be your militia and "regular" Dwarves, the ones you count on to build/dig/mine/craft and so on. Your fisherdwarves and farmers? They are your helots, make their lives simple, make them outnumber your perioikoi craftsdwarves and your spartan soldierdwarves. Bonus points if you mod your civ to have two Kings and several mayors and elections (only amongst the Spartan class of course!). Gender segregation is tedious, but could probably be done with burrows. Dwarven childcare is probably more hardcore than Spartan childcare.

[Calidovi]

Dwarven childcare is probably more hardcore than Spartan childcare.

Dwarven life tends to be more hardcore than Spartan life, so I think that merits something.

[Psieye]

I prefer crossbows to melee weapons for my drone dwarves. Accuracy by quantity. It does require some attention so they exterminate as a group and they will spend some time off to practice at archery ranges (if provided).

[Wheeljack]

I'd put them in leather and then hey, you can have leather bags and forget that pesky cloth industry too. :3 I think the cloth industry wouldn't annoy me so much if workflow could handle all of it instead of some of it.

As for weapon of choice, def something lighter. I've heard good things about spears when it comes to peircing forgotten beast hide. Not sure of their weight or combat effectiveness in other situations though. Me personally I'd do axes for the dwarf factor, but my military always has an axe and a hammer each so I am biased. XD

[Loud Whispers]

Spears are awesome weapons. They poke holes in things and sever limbs.

[Calidovi]

Spears are awesome weapons. They poke holes in things and sever limbs.

They're just not dwarven enough.

[Splint]

Spears are awesome weapons. They poke holes in things and sever limbs.

They're just not dwarven enough.

Hammers and axes are indeed the dorfy options. But there are things to consider.

If you want something sure to hit something important most of the time, spears are your friend. The things are great for chipping bones in dwarf-sized targets and up. For sheer versatility, then swords are the best since they have a stab, slash, and pommle strike. However, if you don't care about causing deeper damage or versatility, then go for axes. Those are far more forgiving to weak dwarves than maces or hammers. They're also the more idiot friendly weapons (not requiring above-average strength to reliably pulp a head or crush bones like blunt weapons and ammo-less crossbows would,) but if one wanted to go for accuracy, spears would be one of the most common weapons available.

Crossbows are always a good option, but I personally shy away from them because of the cost of ammo, and making/issuing enough ammo for everyone would be a pain in the ass. A little modding though and adding a bayonet can at least make metal crossbows worth having so the civvies can still fight back decently until they get thier ammo if you go that route. There's also the problem of dwarves tending to stand and keep firing rather than retreat (or stopping to shoot and reload,) which leads to more dead dwarves than anything in some situations.

As to armor, for a light battle outfit that will make most non-bite-shake injuries survivable and even nonpermanent in my experience is a mail shirt, leather armor, and at least a leather helmet (without at least that helmet during seasonal or yearly training someone might be killed by accident during the odd bit of wrestling.) Supplemented with a wooden shield (it takes one log vs three bars if memory serves, and are far lighter, thus improving mobility.) Bucklers I think, don't quote me on this, are lighter and take a bar less to make from metal at the cost of protection. Additionally, some metal boots and gauntlets would go a long way, but for similar reasons to the helmet you might want at least leather gloves and combat boots.

This outfit is meant to capitalize on speed more than anything, and it's worked very well for me at least in 34.11 when combined with spears. Doesn't leave much in the way of staying power though unfortunately, but it can be produced cheaply enough to outfit a whole fortress with a season or so of production, provided you have the materials at hand.

[Chevaleresse]

Bucklers are entirely pointless as wood is the ideal shield material and it takes one log to make a wood buckler, same as a shield. (The only use for metal shields is the occasional bash, but dwarves rarely do this and even more rarely inflict serious damage with this. Otherwise, a wooden shield and candy shield are exactly alike.

[TheHossofMoss]

I think I'm going to try this style out. Wish me luck.