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[Bumber]

Another way to deal with this is to make a schedule that allows them off-duty time every odd month, e.g. Squad-1 patrols in June, August and October, Squad-2 patrols the same route in July, September and November.

Or change the number of units required for the patrol order.

[Orkel]

Some sort of gradiation in miasma intensity so dwarves can tell the difference between "month old cheese rolls" and "my office is full of rotting crundles and my arms are going necrotic" would be nice.

Have you ever smelled month old rotting cheese? When I opened up a sealed box that had cheese lasagna sitting for a month, in the summer heat, I thought I was in the Battle of Verdun for a second. That stuff would scar anyone for life.

[Dragonborn]

Does anyone have any tips for setting up military squads for the purpose of fulfilling the various fighting or martial art needs?  I've tried to setup squads will alternating months of training, but the problem is that dwarves in squads that are "active" yet not training will prefer to do individual combat drills during idle time rather than socializing.  Disbanding the entire squad works, but then you have recreate and re-add people to the squads later on.  So far it seems like setting the squad as 'inactive' from the 's' menu AND freeing the barracks from the corresponding furniture(i.e. an armor stand) gives me the results I'm looking for.  Is there a better way that does not require those two manual actions?  Ideally, I'd like it to be automatic.

[Immortal-D]

Does anyone have any tips for setting up military squads for the purpose of fulfilling the various fighting or martial art needs?  I've tried to setup squads will alternating months of training, but the problem is that dwarves in squads that are "active" yet not training will prefer to do individual combat drills during idle time rather than socializing.  Disbanding the entire squad works, but then you have recreate and re-add people to the squads later on.  So far it seems like setting the squad as 'inactive' from the 's' menu AND freeing the barracks from the corresponding furniture(i.e. an armor stand) gives me the results I'm looking for.  Is there a better way that does not require those two manual actions?  Ideally, I'd like it to be automatic.

In the previous version, bar fights were sufficient, if unpredictable.  As you say, active but no orders military with enough experience will eventually prefer training over other jobs regardless.  I don't have an answer, just recommend that you note their stress shifts from the unmet need, as best you can.

[FantasticDorf]

Does anyone have any tips for setting up military squads for the purpose of fulfilling the various fighting or martial art needs?  I've tried to setup squads will alternating months of training, but the problem is that dwarves in squads that are "active" yet not training will prefer to do individual combat drills during idle time rather than socializing.  Disbanding the entire squad works, but then you have recreate and re-add people to the squads later on.  So far it seems like setting the squad as 'inactive' from the 's' menu AND freeing the barracks from the corresponding furniture(i.e. an armor stand) gives me the results I'm looking for.  Is there a better way that does not require those two manual actions?  Ideally, I'd like it to be automatic.

In the previous version, bar fights were sufficient, if unpredictable.  As you say, active but no orders military with enough experience will eventually prefer training over other jobs regardless.  I don't have an answer, just recommend that you note their stress shifts from the unmet need, as best you can.

Dwarves set to be active with no scheduled orders (which on the sounds of it seems like what you're desciribing) will resume their civilian lifestyles (which is important for rotating them around rather than disbanding and letting them visit venues) but still have access to the barracks to fufill needs close to training anyway, and often the less bothered members can fufill other needs so its much like while others obsess like you get out of dwarven temples and such with it being very strong and alluring to spend all their time there.

Now any dwarf being able to walk into a barracks and train/do activities autonomously would make a world of difference to DF in general in balancing unless off-site civilians are disallowed from it, else they'd appear with more skills and discipline on per average because of dwarven martial values. Also I have noticed and previously put out reports that vengeful driven dwarves will run out and fight existing conflicts for the sake of fighting since it helps people, and selfishly usually lets them plug a number of needs at about a brawling level of fighting, which is to say they'll knock a rhesus macaque until its floored then simply let it go if there's no addition squad designations out to kill it.

To further add on empty schedules specifically, a issue with running your squads this way is that its currently bugged when clocking the dwarf out of its no activity schedule as being the same as a auto-join. Which means you usually get 15+ personal records going into legends and unit z screen of a dwarf unit entering and leaving that squad at a time when really they've been in the same squad consistently on the scheduled rota.

[Dragonborn]

On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't worry too much about those needs anymore.  After 8 years in this fort, the worst stress I have is zero.  I have invasions turned off, but there's been a few fights here and there with wildlife, even with a humanoid typed weasel man.  I see them have negative thoughts about seeing dead bodies, but it does not appear to be as strong as it used to be.

I was trying to come up with an easy way to fulfill military related needs because I couldn't see any other reason why some dwarves were stuck at stress level zero and never get higher than that.  On one hand, I have several dwarves stuck at stress zero with distracting thoughts about not being able to fight/practice martial arts.  On the other hand, one of my 'ecstatic' dwarves with a stress level near -99999 is distracted due to unmet needs, including several related to military and fighting.  I guess this jives with the research in the original thread about how unmet needs don't strongly correlate to high stress.

I'd call the latest changes a big success if my worst dwarf is stuck at stress level 0, 'fine'.

By the way, FantasticDorf, have you experimented lately with larger meeting areas? You did some research in earlier versions where you concluded that the best way to get dwarves to socialize was to use very small meeting areas to force them to interact with each other.  My experience in the latest version is that this is no longer necessary, although it can help.  I have a large, 15 tile wide circular tavern, and I see groups of dwarves shuffling around together to socialize, recite, etc. They appear to be more capable of seeking out each other.

[Bumber]

Highest stress for my fort is 0, too. Haven't had any large sieges yet, though, which is usually what causes the tantrum spirals for me.

Not having upset dwarves from kea-based vengefulness is nice.

[FantasticDorf]

By the way, FantasticDorf, have you experimented lately with larger meeting areas? You did some research in earlier versions where you concluded that the best way to get dwarves to socialize was to use very small meeting areas to force them to interact with each other.  My experience in the latest version is that this is no longer necessary, although it can help.  I have a large, 15 tile wide circular tavern, and I see groups of dwarves shuffling around together to socialize, recite, etc. They appear to be more capable of seeking out each other.

Certainly, i always restrict tavern floors because in the past it got good results when they were all boozed up. But dwarves should find each other anyway with the path-to behaviour that Toady put in a while back, the nessecity to share needs with intellectual chats and the sorts also probably helped too. I turn off all my locations for least one entire season of the year so with the new discussion types i shouldnt be too worried i dont think that they're leaving needs unattended.

• A 10x10 dance floor is still a 100 tiles wide and can fit 200 dwarves ontop of one another in that area alone, it feels kind of gross but you can define them however you like using paved roads as dance floor borders and to break up the floorspace using them as 'billards' if theres no other furniture you want there.

Restricting animals from communal zones helps, either being stashed away in cages for FPS, war animals and pets left out on purpose can help because their owners interact with them meaningfully when they are pathed to. I do have a bit of evidence to suggest that dwarves will still path to stray animals for their attention though, maybe perhaps just to visually see animals for a bit and fill that need up, realistically i would want them going to the zoo for that.

[HisDFGF]

I have to say that it's been nice to be able to relax a little instead of worrying about stress brought on by months of occasional rain.

Fighting to reduce stress just hasn't been a huge part of my fort this time. I've been able to just play the game instead of narrowing down the problems with my 5% most unhappy dwarfs in an attempt to avoid tantrums and/or deal with the lost causes. As much as I enjoy the challenge of designing the fort and systems to provide a happy experience to even the most traumatized dwarf, I appreciate being able to have different kinds of Fun.

Anyway, the meals are definitely a standout help in keeping them happy. Dwarfs are socializing more easily. They're still distracted, but I can deal with that more easily when I'm not constantly battling tantrums. There's still some unhappy thoughts that I'm not sure how to resolve, but it's still more manageable.

I have made squads of wrestlers in the past to meet their needs for practicing a martial art. I just set them to having a small number of them training every month. They would all get a round eventually. It was really useful when I was trying to combat stress because they would get happy thoughts when they improved their skills.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Amongst the blissfully stress free 70 members of my fortress, I can report that 1 dwarf has a bit of stress (3729 in Dfhack Manipulator). We'll see if it becomes fatal if I leave her be.

She's just escaped an ambush of elite dark elves (mod) which saw most of her ranger/hunter buddies struck down around her as they tried to escape indoors. She survived with dented legs. On top of the trauma of injuries "She becomes completely helpless in stressful situations, a strengthening after being caught in the rain in 165".

Gotta love the rain...
Although she seems to have gotten over her fear of the wet stuff eventually as "she doesn't mind being outdoors, at least for a while" and also "doesn't really care about anything any more".

I think she'll be alright after hanging out at the tavern. She often feels lustful so presumably will make new pals easily enough.

[Immortal-D]

I have made squads of wrestlers in the past to meet their needs for practicing a martial art. I just set them to having a small number of them training every month. They would all get a round eventually. It was really useful when I was trying to combat stress because they would get happy thoughts when they improved their skills.

Do you remove them from the squad afterwards?  Even with Wrestlers, when the combat skill is high enough, they prefer to use their free time for more training instead of any other job.

[HisDFGF]

I’ll be honest, it was a couple years ago at this point. I don’t remember having huge issues, but they didn’t train enough to get to a high level anyway, so if that’s the issue then I just isn’t experience it. I currently have a military and they seem to be doing their jobs just fine when they aren’t on the training schedule.

[Bumber]

Got my first stressed dwarf. It's a necromancer (arrived that way as a migrant) that keeps dwelling on the time they saw a blind cave ogre corpse. Being a necromancer, they don't eat good meals or sleep. Also didn't help that I had them in a squad, where they kept individual training instead of praying to gods.

They haven't tantrumed yet, fortunately. That honor goes to the tavern keeper, who started punching people due to inebriation. That started a loyalty cascade that I had to save-scum to avoid. Tavern keeper is now in jail, admiring his bed and restraint.

I'll see if I can cheer up the necromancer. Hopefully they'll go and worship for good thoughts now that I've unassigned their barracks.

[Nilsolm]

I have an ~8 years old fort here. So far I've seen five stressed dwarves:

• One jeweler and former mayor. He is frequently depressed after having seen a poet die 7 years ago.
• One mason who became stressed after being locked up for trying to nick an artefact. Understandable; since she "hates vows, obligations, promises and other elements that could restrict her life". She was stressed for about a year and a half, then suddenly recovered for unclear reasons.
• One clothier who is rarely happy and in a constant state of internal rage after seeing the decayed corpse of her spouse.
• One soldier who got locked up for a month for trying to steal something. She doesn't feel strongly about the law, so I suppose it makes sense.
• One goblin scholar who spent some time in jail for the same reason. She became quite stressed despite the fact that she respects the law.

No one has been throwing tantrums so far, but apart from that one mason, no one seems to be recovering either. Admittedly, I haven't been doing much to help them. Also, it seems the justice system is the major source of stress in the current version along with personality changes which, at least in this case, were understandable. Last I played, I had someone else chained in a cell and his stress was going up constantly as well. He'll likely be on the list by the time he is out.

[Dragonborn]

My fort is going strong at 15 years.  No one has stress worse than zero.  I have invasions turned off, but I still see frequent combat action. 

• I've order my military to attack any goblin visitors on sight (they seem to be the ones influencing my citizens to steal artifacts).  As I result I have dwarves with thoughts like "horrified after seeing goblin poets dead body" and such.  No one gets stressed over it, however. 
• I have a handful of dwarves that are badly distracted due to not being about to fight or practice a martial art, and yet they are still "ecstatic" otherwise and have very low stress levels.
• I have one particular legendary clothier who gets bad thoughts about masterpiece defacement every time I use 'cleanowned' in DFHack to dump old clothes into my volcano.  I do this about once a year.  His stress levels are seemingly not affected.
• One dwarf loves to steal artifacts.  She's been beaten multiple times by the sheriff and has been in the hospital multiple times as a result.  She keeps stealing artifacts anyway, and doesn't appear to be stressed by any of the events either.
  

Whatever was done to address cave adaptation is going great!  Not a single dwarf has a problem with that.  In previous versions, it was common to see puking dwarves after a year or two, but now none of them have that issue.  I had an outdoor statue garden connected to a tavern, but otherwise I have not gone to great lengths to keep them in the sun.