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[userpay]

Ok just got a new influx of people, most of which are recruits, but now I have a quandry. For one I got two siege engineers and I don't really know what to do with them, I don't think I'm gonna be using siege weapons. Next besides the fact that I have a s*** load of recruits I still haven't made a captain of the guard and by extention the fortress guard, what criteria should I look for and is it ok to give them raw recruits?

[Deon]

Well, consider them as useless soldiers roaming your halls which do not listen to you but please nobles by their appearance in your fort.
I usually give them leather armors and any shields, they will eventually spar with other guards and become better. Give them some weapon if you want. They won't be effective unless they spot a random thief/snatcher.

[Skanky]

I usually don't make a fortress guard at all, and lock the hammerer up in his room. He gets fed by food dropped from the roof into his bedroom cell. Sure, the nobles aren't too happy that my productive dwarves aren't being killed due to a lack of glass toy anvils being made, but the nobles are easy enough to distract with shiny aluminium statues and gold cabinets.

As for the seige engineers, they are just <insert job type that you need more of here> that haven't been trained yet. That they have no skill in <stonecarving or mining or whatever> just means they work slower that a more trained dwarf for a while and produce lower quality work for some job types. This is if you need more stuff produced in your fortress. If your productivity is already at maximum then this doesn't apply.

[userpay]

So how do you get the food to drop into his cell?

[Deon]

Dump it in.

[Abyss]

A bit more of an explanation: Dig out their room, lead them in there and seal it up. Dig a hole in their ceiling, designate it as a garbage dump zone, then designate food/drink for dumping. A dwarf will happen by and dump the food into the room. You just have to unforbid it then.

[userpay]

Ok, it would probably help if I try to keep any more immigration from comming in (modifying init file). If I do that and the only people that would be nobles is the mayor and the captain of the guard if I select one would it be a good idea to have a captain of the guard? Might be worthwhile to have a suicidal group of dwarfs.

[Hyndis]

The military is generally the perfect place to put immigrants that are otherwise useless. Put set up the barracks in such a way that anyone entering your fort must first go through the barracks, and thieves won't be a problem whatsoever. Guards will spar with each other and with soldiers, and while guards cannot be ordered around, they're a good thief screen and last line of defense.

As for recruits, just give them armor and a shield, set them to unarmed, and have them go at it. It'll train up wrestling, armor user, and shield skills, making them into formidable fighters if there's actually any fighting to do in the current 39c, since everyone seems to be at peace with everyone else.

Don't worry about training up weapon skills. They'll probably all kill each other before getting any appreciable skill in weapons. A legendary wrestler/shield user can be a complete newbie in using melee weapons and still pwn face. Also, don't worry much about recruits having injured spines. If they get hurt, refuse to train up like the rest of the champions, odds are they won't live too long on the battlefield. Just recycle their equipment for the next soap maker that immigrates. 

Also, due to the tendency of dorfs to go eat/drink/sleep at the worst possible time, make many squads. I try to aim for about 3x as many soldiers as I actually need, such that even if half my army is AWOL I still have enough to take care of any hostiles. My usual setup is squads of 5, and about 5 squads total. Guards and royal guards are set at the minimum requested, as listed on the [m]ilitary screen.

And as for the Captain of the Guard, I usually also make him my broker/trader. Then I turn off all skills for him except for healthcare, and he's my general administrator, lever puller, and medic. He's the one good noble I have. The other nobles can go die in a fire for all I care, but I keep the Captain of the Guard safe and pampered. He's also always one of the original 7, so he'll be legendary at quite a few skills.

[LegacyCWAL]

As for recruits, just give them armor and a shield, set them to unarmed, and have them go at it. It'll train up wrestling, armor user, and shield skills, making them into formidable fighters if there's actually any fighting to do in the current 39c, since everyone seems to be at peace with everyone else.

You might've just gotten a weird world, because there's plenty of fighting to do in 39c.  In fact, not half an hour ago I fought off the latest in a series of sieges by rather persistant goblins.  ...goblins that are little more than target practice for my two dozen elevated, fortified marksdwarves, but persistant nonetheless.

And then there's the Elves that everybody keeps talking about...

[muwahahaha]

As for recruits, just give them armor and a shield, set them to unarmed, and have them go at it. It'll train up wrestling, armor user, and shield skills, making them into formidable fighters if there's actually any fighting to do in the current 39c, since everyone seems to be at peace with everyone else.

You might've just gotten a weird world, because there's plenty of fighting to do in 39c.  In fact, not half an hour ago I fought off the latest in a series of sieges by rather persistant goblins.  ...goblins that are little more than target practice for my two dozen elevated, fortified marksdwarves, but persistant nonetheless.

And then there's the Elves that everybody keeps talking about...

Hmm... Ive generated ~20 worlds of varying sizes and lengths but still I havent had any of the civs at war with anyone else, bar 1 world where humans were fighting elves. Its getting to be quite annoying when I've finished ALL of my building/fortification/training and yet I have noone to slaughter

[Ancient Whale]

I always keep the Fortress and Royal Guard at the minimum requested in the [m]ilitary screen. But Guards are usually pretty good at sparring, and so level up pretty quick, so whenever I see a Guard becoming powerful, I draft them into the standing military. Also, whenever any of my standing military becomes permanently damaged, I exchange them with someone healthy from the Guards.

Any useless immigrants are drafted into the military or Guards or are left alone, in which case they become haulers. I prefer to draft dwarves with useless skills and use peasants as haulers, though, because skilled dwarves will get unhappy thoughts if they can't put their training to use and complain to the Mayor.

[Hyndis]

As for recruits, just give them armor and a shield, set them to unarmed, and have them go at it. It'll train up wrestling, armor user, and shield skills, making them into formidable fighters if there's actually any fighting to do in the current 39c, since everyone seems to be at peace with everyone else.

You might've just gotten a weird world, because there's plenty of fighting to do in 39c.  In fact, not half an hour ago I fought off the latest in a series of sieges by rather persistant goblins.  ...goblins that are little more than target practice for my two dozen elevated, fortified marksdwarves, but persistant nonetheless.

And then there's the Elves that everybody keeps talking about...

Hmm... Ive generated ~20 worlds of varying sizes and lengths but still I havent had any of the civs at war with anyone else, bar 1 world where humans were fighting elves. Its getting to be quite annoying when I've finished ALL of my building/fortification/training and yet I have noone to slaughter

Same. Generated tons of world, and I've only ever been at war once...and that was with the elves. In the worlds I generate, goblins don't siege, they bring caravans! 

But there seems to be no quick way to test this, as it often takes a year or two in game time for goblins to show up, which can be quite a long time in real time.

[LegacyCWAL]

Hmm... Ive generated ~20 worlds of varying sizes and lengths but still I havent had any of the civs at war with anyone else, bar 1 world where humans were fighting elves. Its getting to be quite annoying when I've finished ALL of my building/fortification/training and yet I have noone to slaughter

Maybe I got the weird world then 


Edit: Odd, I just checked, and the civs screen says that I'm at peace with the Goblins...but I keep getting besieged by them.  Maybe a bug with the display?  Or maybe sieges being hardcoded in regardless of being at war?

I dunno 

[userpay]

Is there any real speed difference between chain and plate? I know that I need to melt down my current iron stuff (I made it before I had steel avalible or even a military for that matter) anyway but the screw pump thing can be used to improve strength which helps with armor right? And supposedly (off the wiki) if you set dwarfs to chain (they equip it) then you assign them to plate they will wear the plate over the chain? Can anyone comferm these for me?

[LegacyCWAL]

Is there any real speed difference between chain and plate? I know that I need to melt down my current iron stuff (I made it before I had steel avalible or even a military for that matter) anyway but the screw pump thing can be used to improve strength which helps with armor right? And supposedly (off the wiki) if you set dwarfs to chain (they equip it) then you assign them to plate they will wear the plate over the chain? Can anyone comferm these for me?

Chain vs. Plate:
Between Chain and Plate as categories, no.  If there's a chain item and an otherwise identical plate item, they'll have the same size, weight, etc.

Screw Pump:
Manning a Screw Pump can increase strength, but your guys will gain plenty of strength just by sparring.  As for helping with armor, the higher a dwarf's strength, the more he can carry - and thus the more armor he can wear - without getting slowed down.

Equip Chain then Plate:
Yup.  The way I do it is I lock the Dwarf in a room with only the stuff I want him to wear, then set him to Leather so that he grabs a Cap, then to Chain so that he grabs a Helm, Gauntlets, Boots, and Chainmail, then to Plate so that he grabs his Greaves and Platemail.