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[Quatch]

Your marksdwarves will use the hammer skill with the body of their crossbow when you run out of ammo (or they get in melee?), hence your inadvertant hammerdwarf was just an unlucky marksdwarf for long enough to get good at it.

Look up cross training military on the wiki. And yes, armor is needed or all of that training goes poof with rather a lot of blood.

[Albedo]

It was just I felt I wasn't being very productive.

By Autumn caravan, you should have steel (finding iron is a priority, for me anyway), plenty of trade goods of your choice, and both farms producing both food and drink.

You see, I took along... 240 +- meat and 240 +- beer

That's a lot of beer.  A LOT of beer.

60 is all you need to get to the 1st caravan, and if you're "getting your fortress up quickly" you're brewing more by then.  Sim w/ food, only half as much.  64 (4x16) drink + maybe 3 dozen food plus the trade from the Autumn caravan really should get you thru Winter, and if you aren't self-sufficient by then you're doing something very, very wrong.

And I only use no-skill Plant Gathering at the beginning to get seeds for my AG farm plots.  Seeds is seeds, and I never forage after that, doing 100% of my food-gathering behind safe walls in farmed plots where stacks grow high.

(I'ts possible that all that food was what delayed you - my goal is to always get my stocks underground before Summer.)

And with all that, I'm guessing no anvil?  How can you expect to fight orcs with no metal?

2 picks, 2 axes,

Picks are cheap, no reason not to bring 2.  But axes are expensive, and the ones you buy on embark are shitty quality.  I'd dump both, save the 600 and bring the following:

an anvil
1 cassiterite & 1 copper ore
several dozen extra wood
Some iron ore
Some flux
Some coal (for smelting into fuel)
Some stone for immediate smelter/forges (bauxite is a natural)

...and a weaponsmith, and make your own weapons.  The bronze is quickest, you'll get 2 bars for 1 smelting, and then 2 axes for woodcutting and something close to no-quality steel axes for combat. Take your time w/ the steel, and you'll end up with far superior weapons in the end on that front. (A home-made *bronze* weapon is x1.2 damage, vs 1.33 for no-quality steel off the shelf at embark, and you're saving about 270.  Plus you then make your own steel.)

My start looks something like this:

1 Proficient Miner digs into soil where farmplots/walled compound will be, just to get everything underground.
1 Leader designs the woodburner/smelter
1 Mason builds the woodburner/smelter
1 dwarf deconstructs wagon (1 dwarf w/ unskilled carpentry, chosen as sole carpenter at least until migration wave.)
3 dwarfs move ore & wood to entry site.

If you're lucky, you can build the forge in a permanent location by the time the bars have been smelted - but even if not, no big.

Then...

2nd miner begins training in soil
outdoors/axe dwarf cut some more wood and stack inside future walls (20x20?)
Trained miner starts on stone for walls for compound (this may require some locked doors to keep 2 miners working on soil/stone as approp.)
(Trained) Mason's shop for early furniture, doors/hatches for safety, statue for meeting zone.
UG Farmplots seeded (before end of Spring is nice)
Still to brew found AG plants (NEED to brew to get seeds fast - don't need massive beer from embark!)
AG Farmplots once have seeds
1 untrained Gather Plants
More hauling, maybe some light weapon/armor smithing

This should not take much longer than 6-8 weeks, mid Summer without bad luck.  The basic wall is around the compound by about that time, ready to be expanded as needed, and a proper 3-wide entrance is dug to your TD.  (The original entry is now the access to the AG walled compound/statuegarden/etc etc.)

Variations are endless to suit.

Take a look at the wiki, "starting builds", both the general comments and specific suggestions.

[Megaman]

In my experience I had 4 years before my first siege, and I had 23 champ wrestlers with armor and a few swordsdwarves. I repelled them fine but almost half of my millitary was mutilated.