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[Mungrul]

Oh, believe me, I tried that, even going so far as to decommission the squad and recommission it, and they STILL didn't move.
I've had enough for today.

[Grax]

Oh, believe me, I tried that, even going so far as to decommission the squad and recommission it, and they STILL didn't move.
I've had enough for today.

Make another squad and give it order to kill previous.

[Retro]

As a heads-up to those frustrated with the military: I've spent most of the night reformatting the wiki's military page, adding detail, explanation, and more key shortcuts. Should be easier to read than that messy guide that was posted as well. Hopefully it's easier to wrap your head around now - the military screen was a brick wall to me a few days ago, but after further investigation it's actually astoundingly versatile and goes from "omfgwtfbbq" to intuitive very quickly. You just need to grasp the basics.

Not quite done and there's still a bit missing like how the hell teaching works but I do hope that helps out in some manner.

[Thexor]

As a heads-up to those frustrated with the military: I've spent most of the night reformatting the wiki's military page, adding detail, explanation, and more key shortcuts. Should be easier to read than that messy guide that was posted as well. Hopefully it's easier to wrap your head around now - the military screen was a brick wall to me a few days ago, but after further investigation it's actually astoundingly versatile and goes from "omfgwtfbbq" to intuitive very quickly. You just need to grasp the basics.

Not quite done and there's still a bit missing like how the hell teaching works but I do hope that helps out in some manner.

If I may... *ahem*


Thank you!!!


Having a useful wiki really is a godsend in this game - I never would've figured out how to use half of the military screen without that.

My only comment: You can create a squad without manually designating a Militia Commander - the game will automatically give the job to the leader of your first squad. Which, incidentally, was the single success I had fiddling with the military screen on my own. 

[Retro]

You can create a squad without manually designating a Militia Commander - the game will automatically give the job to the leader of your first squad.

Aha! Thanks, I'll go add that. The wiki's bleeding from multiple metaphorical orifices a bit messy right now, but it's still the first release week. Hopefully this version's articles will come together over the course of the month.

[Mungrul]

Right, I think I've figured out what's going wrong here. I've save-scummed twice just before a forgotten beast spawns. Before it spawns, my military will happily follow any and all kill orders, but when a forgotten beast appears and I set my squad to attack it, they instead completely ignore the kill order.
I'm going to see if they'll at least follow a move order.

[se5a]

If you want your dwarfs to stop training and go back to doing Civ jobs, try "freeing" the barracks they train at.

[Mandaril]

I suspect the difficulties with military come from two sources:
1)Confusion from the new control system
2)Extremely strong enemies

It seems to me, that the difficulty with the stronger enemies is the difficulty to actually manage landing a hit. I just destroyed my 3rd or 4th goblin ambush in this fort. In that ambush I fought ~20 goblins with 20 of my military dwarves. If they had been normal goblins, I would have killed them without a single death from my side. The problem was the goblin swordmaster that arrived with the ambush forces.

The swordmaster held off 5 of my dwarves without getting a single injury. Note, none of my dwarves were "<weapons> lords". I had to assign 20 of my military dwarves to kill the swordmaster, and then the goblin finally got killed. The Swordmaster died when my axedwarf hit the throat with a silver battle axe.

My point here is, putting unexperienced dwarves against "Master"-level enemies is a suicide, unless you can throw an entire army against it/them. Hell, even "avarage" dwarves have trouble with "Master/megabeast"-level enemies. You need squads of legendary dwarves with full metal gear to counter the "megabeast"-class enemies, it seems.

And I like that fact, personally.

Right, I think I've figured out what's going wrong here. I've save-scummed twice just before a forgotten beast spawns. Before it spawns, my military will happily follow any and all kill orders, but when a forgotten beast appears and I set my squad to attack it, they instead completely ignore the kill order.
I'm going to see if they'll at least follow a move order.

I got that effect with Giant Eagles with my novice military recruits (was first days of my fortress), when I ordered them to kill a thief. It's almost like the dwarves have a "Holy shit holy shit that thing is HUGE holy shit it's gonna kill us" -effect when a creature much bigger/stronger comes.

[PopeRichardCorey]

Personally, I find it a whole lot easier to work with.  Maybe it's just my  playstyle for games, but I understand most of what's going on.  It does need some serious, serious polish; most importantly, the ability to tell what dwarves are already in squads.  A few other functionality issues too.  But when it's fully polished, this interface is going to ROCK.

On another note: some of my dwarves refuse to train.  They have training weapons, the rest of their squad is training...  But they stand around with "no job" for game-months.  I think it's just two of them in a squad of 10 now, but still...  I'll figure out what that is after I do some homework.

[Mungrul]

I got them to attack the megabeast using the Defend Burrow alert.
Unfortunately, the beast was... well, made of vomit and seemingly indestructible.
My dwarves lopped off all its feet and its stinger, and "broke" every remaining body part, but were unable to finally kill it. It eventually bumped an entire squad of legendaries to death.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bastard.

Oh yeah, before the stinger got lopped off, it injected a couple of poor dorfs with forgotten beast extract.
Eeeew.

[Sartain]

I'm on my second fort and this military issue is pretty damn complicated. On my first fort, I somehow managed to equip my military commander and his squad with training spears, which they promptly used to slowly poke a crazed tanner to death with. Well actually, one of the recruits ended up strangling the tanner since the spears were useless.
Shortly after, swift goblin death came and eradicated my poor dwarves.
On my second fortress, I seem to be unable to equip any of my dwarves, even though I have an arsenal dwarf (who's just loafing around since I disabled all his jobs) with an office, a stockpile of training spears and bucklers and I have set a uniform for the squad.
I do believe I actually saw some of my militia training, not just waiting for training. That never succeeded in my first fort.

I believe I may have to quit my day job to have the necessary time to understand this military interface

[Raphite1]

Kill orders were working fine for me for awhile, but now I'm having trouble. I have wolves and mountain gnomes on the map, and am trying to selectively kill the mountain gnomes. However, when I give the squad an order to kill a gnome (or all the gnomes), some squad members still eventually decide to start chasing wolves.

Alternatively, I tried to get the squad to sit by my (outdoor) trade depot to protect it from the gnomes. They seem to completely ignore the order; they'll move to the spot I chose, but if they see a gnome, they'll chase it to the far corners of the map. Do I need to make an outdoor "burrow" to keep them in place?

[kurrata]

How do I make my dwarfs to use training weapons?
By default i give my squad Metal armor uniform(default) and have to manually edit it so the dwarfs would use training weapons(add training weapon to uniform) and after that remove them from uniform
But i think i read Toady saying that they should do it on their own when going training. Put down their real weapons and pick a training weapon they like.

Why aren't my dwarfs sparring?
I have never seen my dwarfs to do sparring so their profession would change and it would be easier to see who are in army in position(recruit) screen. They just seem to do individual training or listen what my commander has to say. I set minimum dwarfs to 2 for training in schedule screen

[Greenbane]

I'm still wrapping my head around the new military system. Noticed a few issues.

- Some dwarves got stuck in training after I disbanded their squad. Tried deleting the barracks/armory but it didn't work. However, maybe I should've given the dorfs some time to realize their training place was gone. The might've worked. Who knows.

- I had a metal-armored training uniform which used training weapons instead of real ones. After reading that dwarves may switch to dummy arms when training (even if their uniform uses real ones), I switched the weapon to battle axes. Now the dorfs carry both the real and dummy axe*, even during my test of the "battle" alert level, which sends all soldiers to the entrance and foregoes training. I've noticed one had the iron axe and shield in the same hand, while the wooden axe in the other. The captain of the guard was carrying around two shields.

*They also do it in the training alert level, so I can't be sure if they're using their wooden weapons for sparring, as they're supposed to, or their battle axes (which are officially part of their uniform).


PS: Slightly off-topic, but is there any way to know if there are goblins around before they launch their first siege? The humans and elves didn't appear in the civilizations screen till their first caravan made it to my fortress.