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[Thadeus Rains]

I usually have a squad marksdwarves, and two or three squads of melee dwarves. How do you all do it? I'm thinking of making a squad of wrestlers into marksdwarves, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not.  I just know that I need to re-think my military because as of now, things aren't working out very well.

[Lord Dullard]

I do a squad of each different type of weapon. The melee squads are typically 5-6 dwarves, and the crossbow squad tends to be about double that size, sometimes a little more (you can never have enough ranged backup).

By the time I hit the 200-dwarf pop cap I usually have a 50-60 dwarf military, not counting fortress/royal guards.

[Thadeus Rains]

I do a squad of each different type of weapon. The melee squads are typically 5-6 dwarves, and the crossbow squad tends to be about double that size, sometimes a little more (you can never have enough ranged backup).

By the time I hit the 200-dwarf pop cap I usually have a 50-60 dwarf military, not counting fortress/royal guards.

I'm down to two marksdwarves. Well, one's only a recruit, because I just drafted him. Those pesky gobbo marksmen mowed through my other ones.

[Rysith]

The Lanternwebs Grand Army, the last time I checked, was 67 dwarves strong (in a 117 dwarf fortress). Four or five of those are marksdwarves, the rest of them are split approximately half and half between swordsdwarves and Axedwarves. All weaponry and armor is steel, and I've started to trade up the low-quality weapons. Training happens in batches of around 10, where they wrestle until they become wrestlers rather than recruits and are then given their weapons. I've found that there is a high enough density of skilled dwarves that I don't need to mess around with practice weapons. Over the history of the fort I've only lost two dwarves to sparring accidents.

In combat, I'll form them into squads of 6 to 8, except for the marksdwarves, who are in single-dwarf squads.

I've never really liked having large numbers of marksdwarves because I dislike their tendency to run forward and get themselves killed, as well as the logistics associated with keeping them supplied with bolts. I've found that melee dwarves do fine as long as the first squad you send in is full of skilled shield-users.

I also find wrestlers vastly overrated. A squad of wrestlers will kill off anything that they outnumber, but they take so long per enemy that if they don't outnumber the enemy they tend to get surrounded, exhausted, and hacked to bits. They also don't work well if you're trying to rescue a woodcutter or something and want to kill your enemies quickly.

I'm also fighting Orcs without sealing myself or using traps, so you may not have to do anything this extreme. If you are fighting goblins, a squad of half a dozen well-armed, armored, and trained dwarves should be able to break any siege you come across. For goblins, I'd consider adding hammerdwarves (fewer sparring injuries), since you don't need the limb-removal that you do with orcs.

[Slappy Moose]

I try a different setup every game.

I've recently been experimenting with very dedicated and specific squads of dwarves; each crossbow squad has a specific tower or area to shoot from, and then I have one reaction squad for adapting to anything I hadn't planned for and supporting melee dwarves.
Then I have one or two massive squads of axe dwarves (only axes, I like the mess they make) to deal with breakthroughs of the perimeter walls, insane dwarves, etc.

I also love using 30+ plate armoured marksdwarves as executioners for trapped goblins and stuff, even though it takes a shitload of iron and steel to supply them with ammo (I cheat for it)

[TettyNullus]

Most of my military set-ups involves a few squads with each holding 2 to 4 dwarves ( to reduce the chance that leader will yank the squad to breaks ) almost always marksdwarves since I uses fortificatons a lot.

I rarely uses large squads since the squad leaders like to drag the men around wherever they goes, plus sometimes I rotates the squads between assignments. I rarely uses anything other than marksdwarves since I don't often gets the needed metal to forge proper weapons other than bone and wood crossbows, and I don't always find obsidian or even have enough woods to make the stone sword ( in vanilla games anyway, bone's always so plentiful  ).

[Lord Dullard]

I try a different setup every game.

I've recently been experimenting with very dedicated and specific squads of dwarves; each crossbow squad has a specific tower or area to shoot from, and then I have one reaction squad for adapting to anything I hadn't planned for and supporting melee dwarves.
Then I have one or two massive squads of axe dwarves (only axes, I like the mess they make) to deal with breakthroughs of the perimeter walls, insane dwarves, etc.

I also love using 30+ plate armoured marksdwarves as executioners for trapped goblins and stuff, even though it takes a shitload of iron and steel to supply them with ammo (I cheat for it)

Cheat? Why in the world would you have to do that?

Melting down all of the iron equipment from goblins usually gives me such a steady supply that I never run out.

[Jim Groovester]

About ten to fifteen soldiers, organized into pairs, wearing the best armor available. No marksdwarves. When they become champions, they defend the fort without problems. If one of them dies, the missing squad member is replaced by a random peasant.

I find anything more than that to be a drain on the fortress, as less and less people are available for hauling all the goblin junk that the soldiers kill.

[Awayfarer]

About four to five squads of 4 melee dwarves each. 12-16 marksdwarves in various guard towers at the entrances to the courtyard.

[Hurgal]

I use three to four melee squads, divided by weapons, with 2 to 4 members each, along with 2 to 4 individual marksdwarves.  I use the Civ Forge mod, and I lost a few champions early on to the three-shield-wielding xelics, but once I made an active effort to improve the quality of the armor they were wearing, the survival rate increased substantially.

[kefkakrazy]

...I also find wrestlers vastly overrated. A squad of wrestlers will kill off anything that they outnumber, but they take so long per enemy that if they don't outnumber the enemy they tend to get surrounded, exhausted, and hacked to bits. They also don't work well if you're trying to rescue a woodcutter or something and want to kill your enemies quickly....

Supposedly they're really good against, for example, non-bronze-colossi megabeasts, since they're good at exhausting things.

[Luraien]

I usually just train three wrestlers up to champion level, then put loads of cages outside the entrance. The invaders who don't get caught get mauled by them. Pretty boring but guaranteed winz. Not quite a military force though.

[Volfram]

How do I run my military?

In a word...

Badly.

[Stromko]

I'll usually start my dwarves off as wrestlers, sometimes as early as the first migration wave, since they don't really need gear to train with (though it's always better to spar with armor). Preferably I'll give them shields and at least leather armor so they can raise up their other defensive skills.

Wrestling is always useful because it largely determines their chances of dodging, but once I switch them to weapons (especially crossbows) I have to be vigilant for any issues with their hands being full of grappled items. The 'Dump' order works fastest for that, and also for getting obsolete equipment out of circulation, because a hauler will immediately run up and yank the item off the soldier instead of waiting for their convenience. I have to check every now and then to make sure they're gaining marksdwarf skill, and if a dwarf just plain refuses to train at an archery range I'll make them a hammerdwarf.

If I want to get fancy, I'll also swap experienced marksdwarves to using hammers and let their hammer skill get quite high, then give them high-quality crossbows made of strong metals so they can whack the s**t out of things should it come to that. But again you have to be careful when you're mixing a dwarf between using ranged and melee attacks, because they can get stuck in melee mode where they only practice melee (even if they're carrying a crossbow).

I've recently heard people say that marksdwarves should be given bucklers [edit: I just finally tried this, it seems to work, they're wielding bucklers /and/ shooting at an archery range as I type this]. If this is true, then shield skill would be very very nice for them to have (a means to block would greatly assist their survival in archery duels). Dedicated marksdwarves are never given higher than Chain armor, because without Armor skill (or high strength) the would be terribly slow in Plate. A cross-trained marksdwarf (w/ hammer, shield, armor skills) is sometimes renamed a Sentinel.

Though marksdwarves are my earliest military units because they can kill enemies in a wide area at low skill / gear levels with less chance of dying, and there's a certain lethal prestige with having a dwarf that slaughters things in both ranged and melee combat, dedicated hammer dwarves are my real engines of destruction in the late game. They're ideally outfitted in full plate with chain armor giving extra torso protection, shields, and hammers (after they achieve high competency in Wrestling). I've seen well-trained hammerdwarves weave and block through hails of fire from enemy archer squads and terminate them one by one. A hammerdwarf's tendency to chase enemies as they're flying (dead) through the air actually helps them dodge arrow fire in my experience!

Even though marksdwarves are a bit more finicky to deal with (bolts scattered about, having to supply wood/bone bolts for training, wrestling issues or issues where the run into melee combat foolishly), I'd have trouble replacing them solely with hammerdwarves. Even a champion hammerdwarf can have a lot of trouble chasing kidnappers or routed enemies, and an elite bowmen who could be taken out of action with a single lucky bolt would inflict major casualties to a charging hammerdwarf squad. A mixture between heavily armored, shield-using melee dwarves (tanks in other words) and sniping marksdwarves is probably the most potent force that can be assembled in vanilla Dwarf Fortress.

As to organization, I'll only use squads in cases where I want to ensure a dwarf isn't patrolling a point alone. The squad's tendency to follow the leader means that a dwarf with 3 subordinates will usually either have 1 or 2 helpers to back him/her up, or will be safely back in the fort getting his/her drunk on. Off-duty dwarves are always, always kept solo so they can train at will.

[Stromko]

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