Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Garfblarn]

Question: Does a newly drafted recruit improve in skill faster if I only have him spar with champions?

(bonus: he is running -> he runs. he is sparring -> he _____. )

[smjjames]

I don't know, although the recruit is more likely to get themselves killed or wounded if they spar with a champion, unless they had steel armor maybe.

As for the bonus, spars.

[Garfblarn]

Well a suit of masterful plate is the plan, and he's legendary clerk and pump operator- so hopefully he won't get immediately torn up.

I'm just wondering if there's any particular merit to having a new captain be trained by the squad of dorfs that have repeatedly matrix'd their way through swaths of gobboes other than novelty. One of 'em choked out a dragon.

Bonus points. I thought it was spars, but it just felt weird. (coincidentally, the word weird always feels weird to me, too.)

[smjjames]

With the new training stuff that seems to be coming up in the new version (which is a while off), it might, but for now, it doesn't seem to matter whether they are special forces commandos who have matrix'd goblins and choked a dragon or some guys who reached champion while sparring and never really did any fighting.

[Lamp]

I actually think he may train slower. As the champion would have him in many holds and he wouldn't be able to attack the champion as much. Not a major slow down, but there would definitely be one.

[Huin]

When I want a new recruit, I usually start them up with another new recruit so that they can level up together. I don't know if they only spar with fellow squadmembers, but so far so good.

[Gothmog]

I would say he trains the important skills faster when sparring with a champion, shield and armor (okay, maybe not armor, but definitely shield). The reason would be because, if I'm not mistaken, the shield skill gets trained every time an attack is blocked (and armor every time the dwarf is hit...). Now, a Champion should be able to pummel the poor recruit much faster than any no-skill sparring partner because of his/her superior agility. Well unless all your recruits have several legendary civil skills like the one you mentioned, then it probably doesn't matter much.

[warlordzephyr]

More = faster. I recruited around 20 guys into my military and they where champions in a year or two, they where all on a course to win the prize of being the captain of the guard (and his guard). I set them various challenges and pit them against some tough enemies. A sort of deadly dwarven game show really.

[Martin]

Question: Does a newly drafted recruit improve in skill faster if I only have him spar with champions?

Generally no. Nor does the champion.

I have a lot of experience with this with Morul. He and another soldier would head off to spar, Morul would get one hit in and the other guy would have to break off sparring to heal. Now, if we could set up sparring to be one-sided, where the lesser skilled solider could just wail on the higher skilled guy, that'd be ideal. The whole fortress could beat on Morul all year long and he'd never get hurt, so they'd skill very steadily on weapon, but not at all on shield/armor. Morul would skill shield/armor very steadily, just not weapon. If your draftee is already Ultra-Mighty due to other skills, it might work out alright - but what you're trying to do is get the offensive skill of one to balance out the defensive skill of the other. When offense of one > defense of the other, things are inefficient.

To help balance things, put your sparrers in the best armor you can manage. The less they get hurt, the longer they spar. Give them the weakest weapons you can manage - no quality silver or wood is the best you can do. If one dwarf is much stronger than the other, that's when problems develop from what I've seen.

warlord is right that more = faster. Make sure that there's always a sparring partner and things will go faster. If your dwarf is skilling shield much faster than armor, just unequip the shield and that'll balance out.

[Hyndis]

I don't know, although the recruit is more likely to get themselves killed or wounded if they spar with a champion, unless they had steel armor maybe.

As for the bonus, spars.

NO!

This is wrong.

A recruit is far more likely to inflict a fatal wound than a legendary is. Put a bunch of recruits with masterwork steel axes and dabbling in all skills in a sparring room, and you'll have limbs and bodies everywhere.

Do the same thing with naked legendaries, and they will spar for decades with no injuries. My own fort is proof of this. Almost 30 years on, and the only sparring injuries I've ever had are maybe 4 bruised spines, out of about 30 military dwarves.

A higher weapon skill decreases the chance of landing a wounding blow during sparring. Its the recruits who are the ones swinging wildly.

Legendaries just have a better chance of surviving these wild, damaging blows because their shield and wrestling skills tend to be quite high.

[Martin]

A higher weapon skill decreases the chance of landing a wounding blow during sparring. Its the recruits who are the ones swinging wildly.

Legendaries just have a better chance of surviving these wild, damaging blows because their shield and wrestling skills tend to be quite high.

Just to clarify my post above, I wasn't talking about blows that would result in rest, but even high skill champions will wound enough to just cause sparring to end. From what I've seen if one of the guys sparring gets stunned, they call off the sparring.

[BurnedToast]

Hyndis is correct - higher skill = less chance to injure the other guy while sparring.

I'm also pretty sure that recruits train much faster while sparring with champions - Tossing new guys into champion squads always seems to spit out an new champion in a few months, much quicker then getting the first batch.

[Hyndis]

Also, its not really worth it to fuss over the military.

Just throw all the soap makers into the sparring ring and hope for the best. If one of them gets a bruised spine while a novice wrestler, well, he still goes out onto the battlefield with everyone else.

If he lives, fine, he'll improve his skills that way. If not, then fine, just recycle his gear for the next soap maker.

Recruits do have high mortality rates as they tend to land damaging hits quite often, and lack the ability to avoid these hits unlike champions. But recruits are plentiful.

[dresdor]

You also need to consider that if the recruit can't land a blow because the champion is able to dodge every attack, he will not skill up as quickly.

I find it best to have recruits spar with recruits, always with large shields equipped.  Getting wrestler up a couple levels helps general military survivability and the shield skill helps prevent the aformentioned sparring room full of limbs from happening. 

I should note that equipping two weapons will train twice as fast (two swords recruit got champion ridiculously fast) but also has a much lower survivability rate (that champion died while sparring a few minutes after becoming a champion).  Shields are generally more useful if you want a useable military.

I also recommend cross-training your marksdwarves as hammerdwarves, so they are useful if they run out of ammo.

[Garfblarn]

I have a pretty rigorous military program...

operate pumps to legendary
recruit with leather armor / shield and train wrestling to legendary
switch to weapon, train to legendary

i have the squad of people that made it that are usually high master armor user by the time wrestler / shield user / weapon skill are all at legendary. they murder things.

i also have a squad of muppets who got blinded or de-spined, and i use them for field work.

I was going to train all my dorfs as hammerdorf, with the intention of switching them to crossbowdwarves later, but i actually just like hammers.