Print

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

[o_O[WTFace]]

I feel like my next fortress is going to be completely covered in training spears on repeat and everyone is going to walk around with a shield... That might be a good way to set up a fortress wide militia. 

[blue emu]

Has anyone tried putting ALL of your Dwarves into squads, setting them to "wear armor when off duty", and leaving them all off-duty permanently except for the few squads which form your actual Military?

... that would mean that ALL of your Dwarves were armored, including yoor Civilians.

[Mudcrab]

Embark with a good soldier (f.ex. 4 axedwarf, 2 dodger, 4 teacher).
First migrant wave: assign one or two newbies (they'd better be unskilled, more on that later) to his squad and set the squad to Active/Training.
At first, your teacher will lead demonstrations - after some (short) time the newbies have become skilled enough to spar.

Depending on who has the most experience in a particular skill, that one will lead the demonstrations. This can be a pain if you have f.ex. a talented sword dwarf in your axe squad - he will insist on teaching the others sword fighting. Thats why you should put unskilled newbies together with a good drill sergeant and the more experienced fighters in a different squad. This will speed up the training tremendously, as only the skills the sarge has (and that are the skills you want them to learn) will be trained.

And dont miss around with training weapons for their actual training. Never had any injuries during sparring.

Erm, okay I have a skilled teacher/Axedwarf and he is leading a squad which is just him and some unskilled Soapguy...

I have set the squad to Active Training yet no demonstrations are given! The recruit has a training axe and the leader has a proper one! Whats happening? Why wont he show him the ropes?

EDIT: Ah sorry lads, just was a bit bugged! I just changed the schedule to inactive and then back again, that did the trick... Sorry

[carkaton]

Embark with a good soldier (f.ex. 4 axedwarf, 2 dodger, 4 teacher).
First migrant wave: assign one or two newbies (they'd better be unskilled, more on that later) to his squad and set the squad to Active/Training.
At first, your teacher will lead demonstrations - after some (short) time the newbies have become skilled enough to spar.
Now its a piece of cake, they'll gain skill very fast. If you want: set up some upright speartraps with one wooden training spear (low quality!) each in the baracks, link them to a lever, let your legendary soaper migrant use the lever on and on => armor user skill skyrockets. But make sure you equip your guys with proper armor (bronze, steel).

As soon as more migrants arrive and you feel the need to strengthen your military, split up your initial (now experienced) military and let them be the drill sergeants on the other squads.
For starters, dont make the squads too big. Having too many different kinds of soldiers in one squad slows training down. Make squads of 3-5 and let them gain some skills.

Depending on who has the most experience in a particular skill, that one will lead the demonstrations. This can be a pain if you have f.ex. a talented sword dwarf in your axe squad - he will insist on teaching the others sword fighting. Thats why you should put unskilled newbies together with a good drill sergeant and the more experienced fighters in a different squad. This will speed up the training tremendously, as only the skills the sarge has (and that are the skills you want them to learn) will be trained.

Archers are a bit different, I reckon. While giving a marksdwarf squad a good teacher certainly helps, they gain skill better by actually killing stuff. Since they shouldnt be in the first line anyway (unless they once again forgot to bring bolts -- "Oh you need to bring these little pointy sticks along with this weirdly formed hammer? Wish you had told me earlier, chief!"), training them armor user/dodger isnt THAT important.

And dont miss around with training weapons for their actual training. Never had any injuries during sparring.

This method works great, my current fort had 3 legendary fighter/axe with plenty of skills in shield/armor/dodge by 1.5 years.  The second generation of recruits isn't going quite so fast but they are gaining steadily.  One thing I'd like to add is DO NOT send your awesome legendary drill sarge(s) out to battle.  If they are gone, so is any prospect of having a good military with pure training.  I learned that the hard way with my last fort.

[SombreNote]

I have a question as to how a should go about breaking up my squads. This is a pictures of all my dwarves and their skills.



How would I go about breaking them into smaller sections? There is not a teacher among them.

I was thinking since two of them have halberd skill, I should make two halberd sections of 3.

1st section: Training Halberds
ma solder (Squad leader)
maggot
maggot

2nd section: Training Halberds
ma tough (Squad leader)
maggot
maggot

3rd section: Training Crossbows
maggot Konushrir (Squad leader)
maggot
maggot

4th section: Training Axes
maggot (Squad Leader)
maggot
maggot
[It does not matter which]

Do you guys think this would work out? Or is my only hope to figure out how to pit fight. I turned off invasion in the beginning and then turned of back on, but I have not gotten an invasion since. I think it might be broken.

Also did anyone mention how you disarm goblins in cages? Might just be in the wiki.

[Frelock]

Also did anyone mention how you disarm goblins in cages? Might just be in the wiki.

You do it via dumping.  There are two ways.  One is to simply designate everything on the tile that the goblin cages are on for dumping.  This is through the designation menu.  The second is through individual dumping via the stocks menu.  You can designate items as forbidden, to dump, or hidden from there.  Your dwarves will dump the armor/weapons in question to the nearest garbage dump zone.

[Zaik]

Also did anyone mention how you disarm goblins in cages? Might just be in the wiki.

You do it via dumping.  There are two ways.  One is to simply designate everything on the tile that the goblin cages are on for dumping.  This is through the designation menu.  The second is through individual dumping via the stocks menu.  You can designate items as forbidden, to dump, or hidden from there.  Your dwarves will dump the armor/weapons in question to the nearest garbage dump zone.

when i use d-b-d my dwarves just move the cages, and my stocks window won't show weapons for whatever reason. >.<

[blue emu]

Also did anyone mention how you disarm goblins in cages? Might just be in the wiki.

You do it via dumping.  There are two ways.  One is to simply designate everything on the tile that the goblin cages are on for dumping.  This is through the designation menu.  The second is through individual dumping via the stocks menu.  You can designate items as forbidden, to dump, or hidden from there.  Your dwarves will dump the armor/weapons in question to the nearest garbage dump zone.

when i use d-b-d my dwarves just move the cages, and my stocks window won't show weapons for whatever reason. >.<

You need to build the cages first ('b' - 'j' - select a spot - 'x' - select a goblin cage - Enter), then Bulk-Reclaim the built cages ( 'd' - 'b' - 'c' ) since all enemy-owned objects such as weapons automatically start off as Forbidden, then Bulk-Dump the built cages ( 'd' - 'b' - 'd' ).

Your stocks menu probably doesn't show details because you have no Bookkeeper or have his precision set too low. Go to the Nobles screen ( 'n' ), appoint some rock-head as a Bookkeeper ( 'r' - select a Dwarf - Enter ), and set his precision to "Highest" ( 's' - arrow keys - Enter ).