Agreed to the mention of not sparring.. I'll share my experience in depth, in case it helps.
I began as any other idiot to this version - simply trying to figure out how to 'activate' a dwarf. But no, that system was far too simple. So now we go into a military screen and assign dwarves to military positions. Of course, since my sprawling fortress consisted of about ten dwarves, I really only had two I wished to place into military.
At which point they did nothing. So I fiddled with the military screen a bit - actually setting the alert of the squad (yes, the squad, not the civilians) to 'active/train'. And yes, I designated my barracks for training/sleeping.
Given all this, my 'militia commander' happily trained inside the barracks by himself. Presumably spinning around in a drunken mess making 'bzzt' sounds in a rendering of Dwarven Star Wars Kid. At least that's what I imagine, but all he really did was stand in place. Woopie. Now he actually had some combat experience. The peasant I dedicated to be his punching bag seemed in complete refusal to acknowledge that he had been assigned to military. He simply ran around the fort doing normal tasks, and I imagine just gave the nearest dwarf the finger every time he was reminded he was supposed to be fighting. F$#k him.
Over time, the fortress grew. Annoyed, I assigned a full squad of 10 dwarves, just to see if any of them would do shit. Consequently.. no.. they wouldn't. However, when one of my dwarves went berserk because I could find no stone (freaking aquifer..) I managed to screw with the squad screen long enough to send my dwarves to kill him. Now, the 'kill' command outright bluntly didn't work. At all. But the move command seemed to get the job done. They even changed graphics to soldiers.. For the first time -ever-. Really, I don't want training soldiers to look like civilians, because then they just look like the rest of the jackasses and I can't tell a soldier jackass from a farmer jackass. And that sucks.
But as soon as I canceled the 'kill all shit here' order, they immediately changed back into civilian graphics and started masturbating at the town square idling instead of training. It was about that time that I remembered I set the squad minimum in schedule to 3 or 4. I pumped up to 7, and about 4-5 dwarves actually decided to go train.
Well, that's what they decided to do. They're just fucking stupid at it.
All but one sat around waiting for organized training. One guy was trying to organize training. Which never got done, presumably because they were waiting for 7 people, but only 4 dumbshits felt like showing up.
So, effectively, sparring is ludicrously broken If they've absolutely no military skills, it seems they just completely ignore their enlisted status altogether. They won't train, which means any fortress is just going to be made into the newest amusement park for goblin necrophiliacs.
Maybe their pets blood will make good lube.