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[Maltay]

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.

After my first two waves of immigrants, about 40 dwarves, I draft 15 recruits.  The recruits are divided into squads of 5 and spar without weapons until they are Legendary Wrestlers, Legendary Armor Users, and Legendary Shield Users.  At all times, at least one squad is on duty and patrolling.  The other two are off duty and sparring.  Later, I alternate sparring with axes and crossbow practice.  I usually have at least three nervous system injuries, so I end up with squads of 4 instead of 5.  I make the invalids Fortress Guards and Royal Guard while they continue their crossbow practice.

I stick with axes unless one of two things occurs.  One, I am fighting a megabeast or semi-megabeast with [SIZE] greater than 10.  Two, I am fighting something that shoots fire (e.g. Fire Imp, HFS).  In these cases, I use crossbows.

[RPB]

If I have ready access to magma and magnetite, I grind an armorsmith to legendary ASAP. One champion in exceptional/masterwork steel full plate + shield (iron will do in a pinch) can generally solo most sieges, titans, and hydras, even if they're a legendary wrestler/dabbling macedwarf with a (copper mace). So my army proper generally often consists of only 6-10 champions; this way even if half of them are asleep I still have enough to spread out and smash most sieges quickly, and can take down a colossus fast enough that they don't collapse from exhaustion first. Dragons are still problematic due to fire breath, so I train up a couple of marksdwarves too.

Having the military spread so thin on the ground makes thief detection tougher, so I do maintain a full fortress/royal guard. I always give them maces to cut down on sparring accidents and try to armor them in, at a minimum, iron chain.

[kotekzot]

i find that legendary wrestlers turned swordsdrarves wrapped in steel armor do very well against sieges. my previous fort had 50 of them, but it was a bit of a pain with fps. currently a population cap of 50 and 10 wrestlers training up combined with lots of stone-fall traps. don't know how they'll do against orcs now that i've modded them in though.

[Loki]

5 dwarves, that's it. Start them off by getting them to legendary wrestler, then legendary shield user, and then give them armor and weapons. Get them to legendary in each weapon category, one by one. Since you can keep gaining skill above the "Ultra-Mighty"(and equivalent agility and toughness) tier, they're all actually quite a few levels above what's listed for their stats. If one of them dies, it's a huge tragedy, but that rarely happens, even vs like 40 orcs at once.

Of course, to get them to that good a point, I usually have to seal my fort up for quite some time first.

[overlordFT]

I never raise militaries, they're hard to control, annoying to micromanage, and take ages to train into a "Not Die instantly" level and don't get me started on how long it takes to get a suit of armor ready for one. And even then, whenever the goblins come, half of them are too fucking busy messing around to come up to the gates and save civilian lives. I've just had a bad experiance with the Dwarven Military.

My stratergy is to have 3 subsequent walls, each one covered in catapult's and ballisticas. And, if the Goblins somehow magicly breach one of my moat locked inner circles, they'll be torn apart by traps. My cities are always 100% self sustainable, so we don't need them there done fancy elves wood.

I love making extravagant Trap areas, I'm thinking of soon, making a tunnel from outside the walls, to inside the fortress, but it will actually be a huge twisting maze filled with mega beasts and traps. And in the end, when they get to the final room, they'll find nought but a chained up kitten.

[kotekzot]

apparently 10 underarmored wrestling champions are not quite enough to deal with a few orc snipers. i'll have to seal the entrance and make some makeshift weapons for them to spar with.

[Guy Montag]

I like enabling the Hunting labor for all civilians so they carry crossbows or hammers, axes, picks wherever they go and will wear leather armor and carry a sheild. It really helps with the micromanagement, because dwarves kill squish theifs, snatchers and even hold their own against Ambushes. Armed civilians do this cool thing where they run away while shooting against enemy soldiers and it makes them very survivable. They don't get spooked by random animals either. Well they do, but they just interupt their task to go shoot or smash whatever bothered them.

Once all the local wildlife is exterminated, that is, which is pretty quickly because I always play on smaller embark sites and aggressively extingish the local fauna as soon as possible.

I keep an active military, nothing but Hammerdwarves and Axedwarves, after I give them a few levels in wrestling, armor and sheild using. I learned my mistake about Champions with crossbows since they will chew through massive stockpiles of training bolts through their carrer. Only melee soldiers for the standing military.

[Pyrophoricity]

Generally I'll only ever have 2-4 Marksdwarves, ever.

I like the idea of my dwarves being at risk when they fight so I shy away from marksdwarves.

Ideally for me its squads of 5, one dwarf with each melee weapon, they can generally deal with most threats.

[foop]

In a word...

Badly.

That's my approach too.  I usually get impatient and give them hammers before they've practiced wrestling or armour use.  A short time later, I have dwarves with missing lungs and spines, and peasants complaining that they can't find enough buckets.

[Puck]

And in the end, when they get to the final room, they'll find nought but a chained up kitten.

waaaaait a second...

when a siege appears, and you order everybody inside and then lock the entrance to your fort, the goblins would just mill around at the edge of the map, because they cant path to your dwarves, right? Now... a chained up animal someplace else, someplace where your dwarves actually never have to go, that would still cause the siegers to path there, right?

That sounds like some hilariously exploitable behaviour...

[overlordFT]

And in the end, when they get to the final room, they'll find nought but a chained up kitten.

waaaaait a second...

when a siege appears, and you order everybody inside and then lock the entrance to your fort, the goblins would just mill around at the edge of the map, because they cant path to your dwarves, right? Now... a chained up animal someplace else, someplace where your dwarves actually never have to go, that would still cause the siegers to path there, right?

That sounds like some hilariously exploitable behaviour...

Surely you've heard of it? It's the infamous no-way out trap.

Mmmmmmm. Pressureplate in front of kitten which seals door to trap chamber. Poor goblins, I hope none of them are claustrophobic

[Airpi]

Early on, I start training a core squad of 3-6 (usually the useless members of the first migrant wave) dwarves. These guys get the best I can afford them, full plate, usually armed with axes and hammers. I generally train them without weapons for a while, to build up stats and avoid injury without having to rely on gimp wooden weapons or anything. These guys are my champions.

Once they migrants really start rolling in, I take four or five from each wave, give them some leather armor and a cap, push a spear into their hands, and give them a patrol order. These guys are the thankless heroes of the fort, their job is to get ambushed and stall invaders until the wrecking squad gets there.

I usually have two or three hunters using crossbows, and that's really it for marksdwarves. I used to keep an even split of marksdwarves and melee fighters, but I didn't like that the marksdwarves basically monopolized the kills.

I don't generally use siege weapons, because I usually abandon before I really need them. I get bored of forts pretty fast once they're actually functioning properly. That, and my processor starts threatening to melt.

[Skorpion]

I recruit useless male migrants, assign them weapons, and work them up to plate armour put out by my artifact-ed armoursmith, by way of layering.
Weapons and shields are generally captured from the bodies of my enemies, replaced later with high-quality steel ones if I get a skilled weaponsmith.

I usually mix weapons evenly in a squad to get a good spread of crushy, pointy, hacky, and ranged, or put the marksdorfs in one squad to provide fire support from the battlements.
I've used both in Spiralbolts. I upgraded to a squad of marksdorfs due to breaking into a magma pipe and wanting a defense against magma imps. In sieges, I cover the main approaches to the fort with a large squad each.
Currently, my organisation is a squad of marksdorfs trained up with goblin bone bolts producted to train up my second legendary bone carver (the mayor did it with totems and THEN went fey), as my most abundant bone type is goblin.
There's also 2-3 squads of champions with the odd non-hero in them for a mix, and a big squad of not-heroes-yet, who I think must be a dwarven metal band. The Apes of Glaze indeed. There's also the squad of Veteran, who is a champion with a broken spine.
I'm tempted to split the squads, in order to cut back on unreliability.
'Oh no! A siege! Let's get some food!'

[Glacies]

Five, identically equipped dwarve per squad. Typically, the leader has an artifact weapon.

Right now, my military is non-existant, but...here's what I have if a seige decides to show up right now.

1 untrained speardwarf, who will lead the squad. He's looking at an artifact copper spear in the future.
4 untrained macedwarves, who are squaddies.
3 wrestlers, who got pretty tough killing ratmen and troglodytes while collecting webs.
1 axe-dwarf, who killed a giant cave spider single-handedly, without any skills except woodcutting and carpentry.
1 untrained crossbow dwarf, who is actually my bowyer.
2 dogs. Not war dogs. Dogs.

[dornbeast]

Mmmmmmm. Pressureplate in front of kitten which seals door to trap chamber. Poor goblins, I hope none of them are claustrophobic

Why not design the room so you have to worry more about how well they breathe water?