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[Furious]

I started a fort in 0.44 to test a shaolin themed commune and while difficult to get a rhythm going, as of now it's my most successful fort.  All dwarves are in the military, training either full or half squads depending on the month.  All dwarves have all labors enabled (outside of mining/woodcutting). No weapons, no crossbows, just hand to hand combat and metal armor.
I settled in a terrifying biome.  At first the only thing that happened was a constant rain of elf blood.  About year 5 the caravan was horrified and wagon deconstructed at the edge of the map.  Since then I haven't had any traders so the most terrifying thing now is running out of meat and fish.
My fort has produced three fey mood armorsmiths.  I've killed two titans and two forgotten beasts with just punches and kicks.  The latest forgotten beast is made of fire, which is proving difficult for wrestlers to deal with, but we'll find a way.  The worst losses I had were two dwarves that sparred into a well and fell to their deaths and one dwarf that tried to bite fire.

My findings on the concept:
Cons:
1. Everything takes a long time to do. Setting mining priority to 1 seems to speed that up
2. Dwarves will leave food on armor racks that will generate miasma and everyone is too busy training to dump it
3. You have to deactivate squads sometimes if you have any larger projects or need trade goods hauled to or from the depot
4. Need to disable farming on everyone except dedicated farmers.  Farmers only farm and need to be in separate squads to make sure someone is always around to gather food
5. Eggs never get pulled in time

Pros:
1. 30 legendary striker/wrestlers in full armor do very well against one enemy at a time
2. It's fun when every dwarf can do every job.  Never know what you're gonna get and nearly all dwarves are mighty and indefatigable.
3. Very little time spent in the taverns when you're training all year round.
4. Since military dwarves without tasks often do individual combat drills, you almost never see any idlers

Overall I've really like this and will try again in 0.47 and hopefully make it a fully fledged temple.
If anyone has any tips on fire monsters, let me know.

[Yoink]

Sounds pretty great. Unarmed combat can be surprisingly brutal.
I'm actually quite intrigued by the idea of having everyone do everything...   

Question, though: how do you reliably get dwarves to spar? I thought I knew the trick to it, but my current fort has no sparring happening so I must be misremembering.   

[CyberianK]

You did use miners and woodcutter though right?

When putting all your dwarfs into armor did you have any trouble with that?

My last fort when I tried to put 60 civilians into armor I had huge trouble with them not equipping stuff and had no explanation why already disabled the civuniform professions before and did not have hunters.

But I guess you don't have that issue since you don't have Civilians. Maybe I also make all Civs into active Squads you don't have to train them all the time anyway. Not going wrestling but I am in a savage tropical embark with aboveground fortress without traps and no iron.

[Furious]

My dwarves spar all the time.  With the starting 7 I set it to min 3 each month.  When I got 20 dwarves I had two full squads but alternated between 7 and 3 min.  Not sure if I did anything special, but they all spar a lot.  At my embark I had everyone up to rank 2 or 3 for wrestling and fighting.  I thought in the past you needed to get some minimum level of training to spar.

I have most of my dwarves set to mine, with three set to woodcutting because it constantly rains elf blood and I didn't want too many people outside.  I disabled hunting for everyone.  I also don't have any weapons beyond picks and three axes, so there's no issues with them dropping things to take on a new job.

Since I don't have any civilians, everyone is in armor and set to replace clothing.
Every month at shift change there's a mad dash to change equipment even though I've got it set to uniformed when off duty, and for a few minutes some freak out about not having shoes or something, but it settles down quickly.  If I have projects to work on I just set all squads as inactive.

[NordicNooob]

Interesting playthrough!

In general, I've found letting everybody do everything (with some exceptions) is quite brutally effective at getting stuff done. Quality isn't the end all be all, but getting things made quickly can be.

The same kind of thing is the case with fighting: if you just toss everybody into a squad and train the squad half the time, you'll have legendary warriors slower than normal, but for large battles, skill is pretty irrelevant and it just turns into a race against exhaustion.

The "everybody fights" method is also pretty effective in terms of labor management: if you have no projects, you can train everybody who isn't necessary to the fort's functioning, but if you need a megaproject crew (or just large scale smelting operations; happens when everybody's a soldier), you can leave a mere squad or two on duty and have a huge pile of excess workers. Also, military training = good for stress.

So a fort of monks might actually be pretty viable in spite of no weaponry, and it also just sounds cool.

[Furious]

I will say this is the first game in a long time where stress isn't a problem.  8 years in and I have happy dwarves.  I've got two with personalities that like to rage and take offense easily.  I exiled one but the other was married to a militia captain so I did the best I could to keep her happy.  No caravans makes for a lot of bad meal related thoughts.

[HisDFGF]

I've had a similar revelation in my current fort.  I put most of my dwarves into squads of wrestlers to satisfy their needs for military training (aside from my meager military squads), but it's done wonders for their happiness.  Even though I receive no migrants, no caravans, and am constantly under siege, they are pretty thrilled with things. I have the few oddballs, but dwarves get a lot of happy thoughts from learning and specifically from all the military training.

I think this is going to be a regular practice for me now.

I felt so strongly about this that I came here to make my first post on these forums. 

[CyberianK]

Every month at shift change there's a mad dash to change equipment even though I've got it set to uniformed when off duty, and for a few minutes some freak out about not having shoes or something, but it settles down quickly.  If I have projects to work on I just set all squads as inactive.

What Shift change are you talking about I thought you just had the squads set to lower min train so 7 or 3?

[Furious]

That’s exactly what I’m talking about. At the end of the month I’ve got three full squads switching to or from 7 and 3 min. So I have about 15, 20 dwarves all either switching on or off military duty every month. Take a minute or so to get everything sorted out. Even though I’ve got uniforms set to replace clothing, it hasn’t been flawless. Also I’ve got armor stands built for everyone and it looks like they store food on armor stands that go bad before they get back to them.

[anewaname]

With 95% of my fort in the military, I set military food supplies to None to avoid the miasma issue.

Do you use barrels to store the eggs? If not, using them should improve the speed of your egg collection.

I have no tips for fighting fire with fists...