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[LemonFrosted]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The military is working again!

It's nice being able to take the war out into the field instead of waiting for them to walk into my defences.

[Heavenfall]

Do tell us ze secrets!

[Pandarsenic]

All I see are colors and strange tiles. Where are the letters and faces? :I

[LemonFrosted]

Avoid making many changes to uniforms while they're in use, arsenal dwarf with few other jobs, make lots of whatever kind of thing you want them to use and only that thing, recruit plenty, toggle the active/inactive until they go to the barracks and train, put lots of nice, pretty things around them and ignore the "was displeased with long duty" thought (it seems to be relative to their training; my Axe Lords never get it while my recruits almost always have it).

I'll type up a better breakdown in the morning. In short it's "things function closer to intended" crossed with exploiting Goblin's love of Iron with the relative impenetrability of bronze/steel. Some of the guys in that screenshot are dressed like drunk clowns but most of them are properly in bronze/steel armor with high quality steel axes. 40 invaders, one casualty; upper arm injury. He's all cleaned with soap and sutured up so he'll be fine in a couple more months. Oh, and there's the added bonus that the siege arrived at the same time as the elves, so I was able to close the gates and let them kill the elves while I rallied the troops to the front door.

[Heavenfall]

Ah... "working".

I had some success by building different weapons for the different squads as well. One hammersquad, one macesquad, one spearsquad and so on. This prevented the squads from stacking up on 3 weapons each. However, even when armor was available some refused to pick it up. And don't even get me started on the shields.

[Daetrin]

I haven't had issues with the military for a while. I just have to remember to remake squads and free the barracks if I want to issue a new uniform.  Or if it's for a single dwarf, remove him from a squad and free the barracks. 

[Misterstone]

Have you been able to get archer dwarves to function properly? This has been my greatest headache...  They just won't carry ammo, or if they do they won't get more when it runs out.  And they like to use the crossbow as a hammer more than they like to shoot.  And... you know.

[LemonFrosted]

Ah... "working".

I had some success by building different weapons for the different squads as well. One hammersquad, one macesquad, one spearsquad and so on. This prevented the squads from stacking up on 3 weapons each. However, even when armor was available some refused to pick it up. And don't even get me started on the shields.

Aside from a couple carrying two shields in the same hand (which I would rather deal with than no shield at all) they've been pretty good about it, even mostly going and picking them up when they become available (if there weren't enough when they were recruited).

[LemonFrosted]

Ah... "working".

I had some success by building different weapons for the different squads as well. One hammersquad, one macesquad, one spearsquad and so on. This prevented the squads from stacking up on 3 weapons each. However, even when armor was available some refused to pick it up. And don't even get me started on the shields.

Aside from a couple carrying two shields in the same hand (which I would rather deal with than no shield at all) they've been pretty good about it, even mostly going and picking them up when they become available (if there weren't enough when they were recruited).

I haven't tried, but since the only threat to this fort now would be an unkillable invader I might as well experiment. I've been making bone bolts the whole time in order to keep people busy and use up the refuse stockpile.

[Il Palazzo]

Well, they still return to the barracks each time you give them the kill order.
Other than that, I agree, it sorta works.

[RabidRabbit]

The military is as buggy as it was several versions ago - nothing major has been fixed yet.  There is exactly ONE way to make it work:

1) Make all the equipment you need
2) Draft dwarves, making sure none of them have "lazy" descriptions in their status
3) Designate a barracks for 'T'raining and keep your squad inactive
4) At this point, some dwarves may have been assigned two left gauntlets or two right gauntlets.  To re-equip, disband squad, clear barracks designations, and repeat steps 2-3.

If you try to re-equip by just assigning new equipment in the military screen, they either won't pick up new equipment at all, or will end up with ridiculous stacks of equipment held in a single hand/foot/torso.

When you want to attack, use the "move" command instead.  This will be a pain against any enemy that moves around quickly, but at least it works.

My current fortress is seven years old, and has had the same three steel-clad axedwarves defending it the entire time.  My only other defense is a line of three cage traps across my entrance for catching thieves and snatchers.  I had to disband and remake the squad a few times to get lucky enough to give each dwarf one left and one right gauntlet, but I've had no trouble ever since.  Their notable kill counts are currently 23, 49, and 123 (roughly correlated with their armor user skill, which lets them get into fights quicker and run down more fleeing goblins).

[LemonFrosted]

I skipped versions .03 through .05, and .08 came out a couple days after I picked things up again so some fairly major bugs have been fixed, namely working themselves to death and not picking equipment up at all.

And, yeah, I don't need 35 soldiers to get the job done, but that's 35 dwarves not idling in the halls. Plus I'm less vulnerable to a chance injury or an exhausted/starving/dehydrated supersoldier. That's really the big thing that's been fixed: while individuals are still basically where they've been it's possible to have 35 soldiers without needing to wait until you have 35 full suits of armor to the desired quality.

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

All I see are colors and strange tiles. Where are the letters and faces? :I

This. I don't see anything I can make sense of in that picture. Why aren't there any dwarves or goblins?

[Retro]

All I see are colors and strange tiles. Where are the letters and faces? :I

This. I don't see anything I can make sense of in that picture. Why aren't there any dwarves or goblins?

Wow, more tileset jokes? Come on guys, it's getting stale.

[Pandarsenic]

In all seriousness, I never use tilesets and I have bad eyes and those tiles are tiny. I can't make sense of it at all.