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[Metalsoul212]

I know there has been long standing bugs with marksdwarfs and getting them to train. I can't for the life of me get these lazy dwarves to work in my shooting range! Each range has its own "room" assigned to it and the training g schedule is '1 min' X10 for each dwarf but they still rather hang out in the tavern with nothing to do when they are set to train! Any help is greatly appreciated and I've dove in the wiki guides and can't for the life of me figure this out... If anybody wants to take a crack at it using my actual save to see what I'm missing then give me the process I should go though to upload the fort for you.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Do you have a barracks? You need both barracks and range for some reason sometimes.

Most archery issues (besides bolts in bins) are caused by guides which try to work around no longer existing bugs.

Ensure everyone has a crossbow and bolts (set some workshops producing bolts permanently for a while, they get through a lot and your hunters will grab several) ensure they have a barracks, ensure they have a range (as you have done, is it set in the right direction?) set the squad to train. If they're in the tavern permanently, you've done something wrong.

Never seen the use of setting 1 min to train. 5 man squad set at 5 to train works just fine.

Don't overlap your barracks and range, just in case.

Oh, one more bug to work around, ensure hunting isn't enabled on any of your squad.

Also, be sure you know what to expect. They're a military squad, not bolt chugging robots. They'll train general skills in the barracks, they'll go shoot a while, they'll go back and train in the barracks.

[Codyo]

can you give some screenshots of your schedule/military screen?

Some notes on it
* Try activating your squad by putting them on the Active Alert
* In the squad's ammo screen, make sure there are at least [100] bolts assigned to (T)raining
* Do they actually have quivers and crossbows? Do they have bolts?

[Metalsoul212]

Sorry for the last reply! But I seem to have it working now, started from scratch with the squad and changed the scheduling to 5min aswell as assigned them separate areas for normal training and individual archery ranges and everything seems to be running smooth now!

[Shonai_Dweller]

Congratulations!
For the next step, try setting up an alert that, when activated during a siege, gets them to automatically go where you want them to and pepper the enemy with bolts without charging in and trying to club things to death with their crossbows or rushing off to the temple to Pray!
Then you'll really have mastered marksdwarves.

[Metalsoul212]

I have Embrasures in some strategic areas that I have points setup! Its been over two years now and no sieges yet, rather disappointed... I think I read somewhere that it takes time for armies move around and actually make it to your fort and I hope thats the case. I remember embarking near some goblin civs!

[Shonai_Dweller]

I have Embrasures in some strategic areas that I have points setup! Its been over two years now and no sieges yet, rather disappointed... I think I read somewhere that it takes time for armies move around and actually make it to your fort and I hope thats the case. I remember embarking near some goblin civs!

You won't become a target for nearby gobs until your population reaches 80.
That's editable in your current save in case you think it's too high.

[ChristianWeiseth]

I have overlapping archery targets in the barracks, and the barracks is the archer fort, they train just fine. But they still run up and use their crossbows as maces in combat even though I have all bolts available for combat.

[Metalsoul212]

I have a separate sleeping and storage barracks for each squad, a large communal training barracks they all share, and a nearby wing with archery targets in their own 3x5 rooms for each dwarf. I have a large underground staging area, the North end is the main gate for civilians, visitors and merchants. The three wide bridge can be retracted to force pathing over a 1tile snaking bridge over a 6z high chasm filled with water(not ready to play with magma yet). The West end has a sallyport leading out of the training room for quick military action the East end leads outside of the staging area. Pretty proud with how it looks can't wait to get sieged!

[Nolimit]

You won't become a target for nearby gobs until your population reaches 80.
That's editable in your current save in case you think it's too high.

I'm not sure if it's true. I haven't changed anything in my save files, didn't touch any parameters related to this in worldgen and still got 3 sieges already, with only 20 citizens. I also had 2 forgotten beasts attacks and couple of werecreatures. Worldgen parameter says that 80 pop is required only for titan attacks. Though, I'm pretty sure that siege size is calculated based on your current population, as well as fortress wealth. Previously i had the same experience while playing small forts, and got sieged as soon as second year, with less than 10 citizens (by necromancers than by goblins all in the same year, needless to say that it didn’t go well)

I have Embrasures in some strategic areas that I have points setup! Its been over two years now and no sieges yet, rather disappointed... I think I read somewhere that it takes time for armies move around and actually make it to your fort and I hope thats the case. I remember embarking near some goblin civs!

It can take more than two years sometimes. To speed up the process you can try to increase your fortress wealth by producing some expensive goods/furniture/architecture. I would also double check if invaders are set to YES in d_init.txt. Once I was wondering why I didn't get any sieges for about 5 years, and turned out that I accidentally clicked on invaders button in LNP window and turned them off.

As for archery training, I set up number of archery targets equal to squad members, all targets as it's own room (in my case they overlap, also check direction). Right next to training grounds I put ammo stockpile (I read about people having problems with bins in such stockpile, but they work fine for me. I only get a couple of job cancelation related to ammo per year). And squad is set to inactive with all of civilian jobs turned off for everyone. Workshop order to create wooden bolts as soon as their number gets lower than ~800 helps to reduce the micromanagement of marcksdwarfs' training.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Goblins specifically won't siege you until population 80. It's set in their raws. They might ambush earlier, but ambushing seems to have been broken for years. Their wealth triggers are set at 0 meaning they don't trigger on wealth at all.

They'll send the occasional child snatcher too. That's not an invasion.

Everything has it's own settings for when they can attack except zombies (and possibly werebeasts too - not sure) who attack as soon as they feel like it.

You'll also get weird "sieges" caused by some unknown bug where 1 or two goblins will appear at the edge of your map triggering the siege alert. Generally they'll then walk off leaving you confused. Don't worry about them.

[mikekchar]

The "min" in the training screen is misleading.  *Really* misleading.  It actually means "max".

So min=1 means that you have at most 1 person training.  Which means that likely nobody will train.  Usually you want to set it to 10 unless you have specific reason why you don't want to do that.

[Nolimit]

I got normal sieges in two separate forts without migrants. In first one I had only starting 7 and two kids, I got sieged by necro tower, captured every corpse and necromancer using cage traps. Shortly after I got another siege from goblins, one full squad of goblins (5-8 warriors), siege tag, announcement and overall normal siege behaviour (traps weren't reloaded, so they got in, killed few visitors, one of my guys, than few of them got killed and the rest retreated). In second fortress I have <20 citizens (starting 7, few kids and adventurer with some companions I added to the fort using dfhack). After few years I got my first attack. Siege tag, announcement and two squads of goblins (in total around 11-15 bow/crossbow goblins). At that point 4 of my people were already equipped with copper armor and iron picks, so they murdered invaders in no time. Next year I got another siege, two archer squads again, and in the next few years another siege happened. After your post I began to doubt if they were indeed goblin civilization sieges, because you can also get bandit camp sieges according to wiki. So I checked legends, and dead goblins were part of goblin civ. Also legends viewer shows that The Bejeweled Thief (Goblin Civ) waged The Conflict of Screaming against The Mountainous Wall (Dwarven Civ) in the year 258 (when first attack happened). And this conflict includes three battles: first in 258, second in 259 and third in 262. In total i counted 35 dead goblins so far. I got a fourth siege once, but game crushed, I loaded save before attack and they didn't come yet (year 263 now).

I believe, that in current version population doesn't have any effect on sieges appearance (at least for goblin sieges). And if you check Wiki:Siege, for previous versions it says about population requirement, but not for current version.

[Metalsoul212]

I have Invaders turned on, I have 92 dwarves not including the children and petitioned residents. I have over a million in wealth now and I have yet to even get a snatcher or ambush. Only goblins that invade me are bards drinking all of my booze in the tavern. Already have maybe 5 of them dead in the corpse stockpile since my residents like to beat the crap out of them when they can't handle their liquor! The most action my military sees is kangaroomen and carven nasties..

[Shonai_Dweller]

I got normal sieges in two separate forts without migrants. In first one I had only starting 7 and two kids, I got sieged by necro tower, captured every corpse and necromancer using cage traps. Shortly after I got another siege from goblins, one full squad of goblins (5-8 warriors), siege tag, announcement and overall normal siege behaviour (traps weren't reloaded, so they got in, killed few visitors, one of my guys, than few of them got killed and the rest retreated). In second fortress I have <20 citizens (starting 7, few kids and adventurer with some companions I added to the fort using dfhack). After few years I got my first attack. Siege tag, announcement and two squads of goblins (in total around 11-15 bow/crossbow goblins). At that point 4 of my people were already equipped with copper armor and iron picks, so they murdered invaders in no time. Next year I got another siege, two archer squads again, and in the next few years another siege happened. After your post I began to doubt if they were indeed goblin civilization sieges, because you can also get bandit camp sieges according to wiki. So I checked legends, and dead goblins were part of goblin civ. Also legends viewer shows that The Bejeweled Thief (Goblin Civ) waged The Conflict of Screaming against The Mountainous Wall (Dwarven Civ) in the year 258 (when first attack happened). And this conflict includes three battles: first in 258, second in 259 and third in 262. In total i counted 35 dead goblins so far. I got a fourth siege once, but game crushed, I loaded save before attack and they didn't come yet (year 263 now).

I believe, that in current version population doesn't have any effect on sieges appearance (at least for goblin sieges). And if you check Wiki:Siege, for previous versions it says about population requirement, but not for current version.

Then it needs to go up on the bug tracker. The raws include specific triggers for sieges. If they're broken, you need to upload a save which proves it so it can get fixed in the next update or nobody's mods will work properly. No point having options if they don't do anything.

(Zombies, as I said, don't have triggers. But your goblin sieges are interesting).