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[Broan13]

Military has never gone right for me.  I have followed a few video tutorials and I think there is either something I am doing wrong, or I am underestimating the time it takes to train a military.

I go through the normal steps of appointing a captain and then making a new squad with members in my militia.  I set up a uniform for training either with leather or mail and maybe a weapon or not.  I set up a barracks and set the equip, sleep, train stuff and I then activate the dwarves I selected to go train.  They all become their military roles and run to the barracks and apparently train, but they never seem to level up their skills.

Any common mistakes I am missing?  Are they really training in the barracks the way I am thinking they are?  Is there a quick process to follow to ensure things are working right?

Thanks

[Argembarger]

Might just be underestimation. Perhaps a Danger Room would be to your advantage?

[Broan13]

Perhaps.  I honestly would hope that the dwarves would at least train up to some remedial levels in wrestling.  I think my dwarves have short obsidian swords at the moment.  They just never become swordsdwarves or seem to change at all in their training.

[Mantonio]

Okay, few things I need to check. Yes I know you've probably already done them, but it never hurts to ask

1) Have you actually made a barracks? Query (q) an armour stand or weapon rack and make one. Then set the squads you want to train with t.

2) On the squads menu, select the entire squad and see if their schedule is set to active / training. If it isn't activate it with t.

Also, Obsidian swords might not be best for training. They'll probably end up killing each other.

[darkflagrance]

Okay, few things I need to check. Yes I know you've probably already done them, but it never hurts to ask

1) Have you actually made a barracks? Query (q) an armour stand or weapon rack and make one. Then set the squads you want to train with t.

2) On the squads menu, select the entire squad and see if their schedule is set to active / training. If it isn't activate it with t.

Also, Obsidian swords might not be best for training. They'll probably end up killing each other.

Obsidian swords won't make your training any more dangerous. In fact, you're likely to run into the problem later that Obsidian swords aren't very effective against goblin armor.

[Broan13]

Definitely set up the barracks, and definitely pressed active/training.  I have used them to run around and kill racoons quite often, but when I have them stop doing that and have them go back to the barracks to train (all 4 of the letters are active on the barracks), they just stand around a lot...

[Namfuak]

Definitely set up the barracks, and definitely pressed active/training.  I have used them to run around and kill racoons quite often, but when I have them stop doing that and have them go back to the barracks to train (all 4 of the letters are active on the barracks), they just stand around a lot...

If you don't have 10 dwarves in the squad, you'll need to specify that a minimum of the number of dwarves in the squad train.  Otherwise, they just ignore it.

[jackrabbitslim]

im having the same problem. it says my guys are in combat drills and all that, but they never get better, and some of them are starting to get rusty in different skills. in 5 years on this map my guys have sparred 7 times. is that normal?

[Zaik]

The only ways I have ever seen to train military without a danger room is a massive cage trap field and then taking prisoner's weapons away and throwing them in a pit one by one, and picking three dwarves with absolutely no military skills at all before being drafted, they will do a few individual combat drills, then just spar. If any of them have *any* military skills they will do these horrible inefficient "demonstrations" (that are a big waste of time unless that dwarf has legendary teaching skill or something) until everyone in the squad knows everything they know.

[Shoku]

A large squad will want to do many demonstrations and this basically means everyone runs over and sits around until everyone is there. With the double whammy of the presenter not actually having much skill in what he is presenting this amounts to nearly a complete waste of time.

To actually get them sparring much it's best to have few dwarves in the squad and set the minimum required to the number that would be sparring at any given time anyway: 2.

If you can get some dwarves that are actually good at what they do training proceeds much faster but I don't run into migrants with more than a couple of levels in these skills very often. After a couple of years of active sparring they really just go nowhere. I think that unless you want to leave invasions turned off for a few decades they really need some training by fire to ever start going. I can't usually get that done quick enough to deal with goblins but my computers tend to have trouble running the game at 40 dwarves anyway.

[Shoku]

I decided to gather some actual data about the rate at which training grants military skill ups.
I modded dwarves with no eat, no drink, and no sleep so I could just set them into permatraining. I had them dig out a small space to get enough stone to make an armor stand and wall themselves in and the wagon came with enough copper equipment for six dwarves. I checked their skill growth in Dwarf Therapist a few times per season and tried to record increases to skills at an even interval but scrapped that idea in favor of just saying whenever something interesting happened.


Nonstop training, 0 teacher/student

Spoiler: stats (click to show/hide)

Momuz: Lawful 85, Friendly 69, Leadership 69, Modesty 66, Artistic 38, Perserverance 38, Emotion 27, Nervousness 25, Neurosis 12.
Urvad: Stress 76, Emotion 72, Trusting 70, Friendly 66, imagination 37, compassion 30, Modesty 26, Perseverance 25, Compromising 4
Zasit: Cautiousness 87, Leadership 86, Activeness 67, Modesty 63, Compromising 39, Lawfulness 35, Thinking 31, compassion 29, trusting 28, neurosis 26, company 15
Udil: Depression 75, Optimism 74, Imagination 73, Lawfulness 70, Neurosis 64, Stress 39, Compromising 35
Edem: Imagination 75, Artistic 31, Modesty 30, Urge 30, Stress 25, Optimism 22, Friendly 10
Shorast: Rage 77, Neurosis 75, Leadership 36, Artistic 28, Perserverance 28, Lawfulness 28, Friendly 28, Compassion 25.

mid autumn
Squad A: 4 Shield 4 Dodge
Momuz and Urvad reach 6 axe skill each. Momuz made 70% progress to an increase in shield skill while Urvad gained 4 levels in it. Both have 4 levels of dodge. 8 fighter
Squad B 5 Axe, Newbie
Zasit does not make any suitable progress with axe use and only gains one level of shield and fighter.
Udil gained 2 levels of axe use and the same point in fighter and shield user.
Squad C: 5 Armor, Newbie
Edem gains half a level of armor use, 5 levels of fighter, and 3 axe levels.
Shorast gains 4 axe levels, 4 fighter
 , and 2 armor.

Mixed squads A and C. Early Winter

Momuz goes up to 2 armor, 5 shield, 9 fighter, 1 wrestler
Urvad goes up to 5 dodge, 9 fighter
Zasit goes up to 2 shield
Udil goes up to 4 axe
Edem goes up to 5 axe, 6 fighter, 4 shield
Shorast goes up to 5 axe, 1 dodge, 6 fighter, 4 armor, 3 shield, 1 wrestler

Edem and Urvad being in the same group sends their skill levels rocketing up by mid winter. It is obvious that Urvad's fighter skill is going up very quickly while his partner benefits staying about half a level behind him.
Momuz has five levels of teacher, Urvad and Zasit 4. Edem only has 3 levels of student while Shorast has 5. This does not seem to benefit him significantly over the other students.

Late Winter:
Urvad and Edim are Legendary+1 fighters and now seem axe skill is cresting into double digits. Defensive skills have remained lowish.

Early Spring: Edem suddenly has 10 shield skill. Urvad is at 8. Momuz has reached 10 levels of fighter while Shorast follows him at 8.

Mid Spring
I cycle these two into different squads. Edem with Zasit and Urvad with Udil.
Skills are currently:
Edem 13 axe, 3 dodge, 20 fighter, 6 armor, 10 shield, 3 student, 3 teacher.
Zasit 7 axe, 6 fighter, 4 shield, 1 student, 4 teacher.
Urvad 14 axe, 5 dodge, 19 fighter, 3 armor, 9 shield, 3 student, 4 teacher.
Udil 7 axe, 5 fighter, 3 shield, 4 student, 1 teacher.

Late Spring growth
Edem 14 axe, 11 shield, 4 teacher.
Zasit 8 axe, 3 dodge, 7 fighter, 1 armor, 3 student.
Urvad 17 axe, 4 armor, 10 shield
Udil 11 axe, 2 dodge, 13 fighter, 2 armor, 6 shield.

And to give the other two some attention
Shorast 8 axe, 3 dodge, 7 fighter, 3 striker, 3 wrestler, 2 armor, 5 shield, 6 student, 3 teacher
Momuz 6 axe, 5 dodge, 12 fighter, 5 striker, 3 wrestler, 4 armor user, 5 shield, 4 student, 4 teacher.
Whoops, looks like for some reason Momuz had his uniform borked when I last swapped him. He's in all leather junk. Well, let's see if he shoots up after a few seasons.

Late Summer growth
Edem 7 armor, 11 shield, 5 teacher
Zasit 9 axe, 8 fighter, 3 armor, 5 shield, 4 student
Urvad  18 axe, 20 fighter, 4 armor, 11 shield, 5 teacher
Udil 16 axe, 19 fighter, 4 armor, 9 shield, 5 student
Shorast 12 axe, 5 dodge, 17 fighter, 5 armor, 8 shield.
Momuz 10 axe, 19 fighter, 4 wrestler, 5 armor, 9 shield, 6 teacher.

So after a year and a half of ultra-constant training aside from a few equipment mix ups I would have six legendaries. Starting out with weapon skill was not particularly important because neither of the first two dwarves to legendary started with any weapon skill or learned much from others. Shields and Armor seem to Have very little growth besides what is taught until dwarves are very high in offensive skills. Dodging has shown only one level of growth beyond the initial 4 points of it I embarked with and my dwarves spread amongst each other though Momuz is 85% of the way to level 6.
One other thing to note is that with training they all seemed to grow attacked to their weapons and shields in the first few months, well before they seemed to be gaining much skill of any sort.

I will have to embark with some dwarves that already have points in student/teacher to see how big of a difference those make.

So far though this looks like a great case for the old training weapon beat down on recently released wildlife. After you get the painful first few skill levels out of the way training starts to have visually satisfying results.

Unfortunately I forgot to check what kinds of stats they have at the start. At this point they are all in the upper ranges of agility and such.

-

I forgot to explain that before that I was going to find out how fast these guys could train new recruits.

[Broan13]

So I need to not have 10 dwarves in a squad that have no wrestlers?

I was hoping that just a bit of training would eventually get 1 person somewhat decent to train the rest.

Do people always try to train wrestling first?  Or do they go for something like swordsdwarves?

Anyone mind explaining their rational and the steps they go through when setting up their first few squads to train them up?  (I just started getting some goblins attacking me slowly so I am eager to get them trained sooner rather than later)

[Shoku]

I evidently went straight for axes. If you have a steel industry running yourself there is little reason to use anything but axes and hammers- you can get a few using the other types for fun once you've got a solid enough force to afford such luxury.

In 40d we used to train wrestling first because it gave skill ups for things like toughness and because it basically included skills like dodge and striker. Now that there is lateral skill transfer you can go ahead and skip wrestling at first and then teach your champions later.

As people have said a squad of 3 set to 2 minimum active will get you the fastest skill growth that you can get from sparring (unless you mod them to not eat n sleep.) If you can set aside a few dwarves to train in your military early go for it but do try to get a steel industry going fairly quick- it's a bit obnoxious if they grow attached to a wooden training axe or similarly useless piece of equipment.

-

Now, as for handling the goblin menace you're going to be in kind of a pickle. Training is not at all fast enough that you can start it when the enemy is already around harassing you. It needs more like half a year to get to the same skill level as the average ambusher and twice that for their upper end. Steel equipment gives a HUGE advantage fighting them so you can march out fairly inexperienced with that stuff, and even gain a pretty good chunk of experience at the same time (as real combat gives massively greater experience.)

But for you- I would recommend some cage traps at your entrance and doing your best to keep anyone from going outside. If you still needed trees you're better off opening the caverns and giving yourself another thing to worry about (probably make some walls down there if you don't want to worry too much- just having a bunch of choke points won't slow down tree chopping at all but will make it easy to wall the place off if something nasty shows up.

If you're lucky enough to catch some of the ambushers in a cage you can do the weapon dump trick then hook that puppy up in your barracks and release the goblin with a lever. Same real combat experience with basically no chance of injury. If you set your guys training with practice weapons they'll wail on the prisoner even longer (and though that stops being effective once they reach higher levels once they're up there training is just fine anyway- and they teach quick too.)

-

For the first couple of squads I set one up in hopes of getting quick growth in axe/fighter and anything else at the time is just unskilled fighters. Once I have champions I break down the squads and set each of them up as a leader with two recruits under them. If I want them to learn something like wrestling I've got to wait and train somebody unarmed for awhile before sticking them into a squad with the champion, but it only takes a few levels of wrestling before they'll go learning it on their own.

[jei]

Perhaps.  I honestly would hope that the dwarves would at least train up to some remedial levels in wrestling.  I think my dwarves have short obsidian swords at the moment.  They just never become swordsdwarves or seem to change at all in their training.

Build a danger room. I got triply-legendary dorfs quite quickly with one. Including weapon use, fighting and armor/shield.

I recommend 2x2 danger rooms with 10 training spears, with locked inside-door for armor stand and at least 3, if not more doors to keep pets out with side passages or room so they can step behind and stay there.

Or rather, don't give pets to your military until they're no longer in need of danger room training. (Meaning, they can easily block all 10 spears and you won't see them hitting the armor in any combat logs.) Also one danger room per squad, I think. Or at least one armor stand per squad, or they can't fill order if room is taken.(at least I think so?)

[jei]

Now, as for handling the goblin menace you're going to be in kind of a pickle. Training is not at all fast enough that you can start it when the enemy is already around harassing you. It needs more like half a year to get to the same skill level as the average ambusher and twice that for their upper end. Steel equipment gives a HUGE advantage fighting them so you can march out fairly inexperienced with that stuff, and even gain a pretty good chunk of experience at the same time (as real combat gives massively greater experience.)

Which is where lots of cage traps come in. I usually go for steel or iron maces for my forst squad and then move straight to adamantine axes by digging the first couple of layers out for my military's base weaponry. With adamantine axes you don't really have to worry about FBs as much, but beware of the bloody poisonous ones... Even a big fort can fall due to poison spreading with corpses and the corpse carriers, ad nihil.