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[Panopticon]

I never have an issue training my military, and I don't use danger rooms.
I generally get a couple dwarfs starting early and keep them on duty training above ground or near the caverns (whichever is more vulnerable) after 1-2 years they are skilled enough from sparring and the occasional critter or ambush that I split em up so they can train new squads with whatever recruits came with weapon or fighting skills.

They stay on duty forever and it pisses em off, but good food and bedrooms makes up for it.

[schussel]

see .. even the smallest dangerroom cuts that down by 80% + has the nice sideeffect of killing of useless tame animals and too curious children

[Max White]

I always liked the danger room using goblins instead of spears, but these days that's a little risky.

Because they buffed the goblin punch, and there are no Blue Mages among your dwarves?

Bah! Can't stand blue mages, they annoy me so. Like wanna be red mages. Then again I avoid red mages too, nothing wrong with one black mage and one white mage, just to make sure things are done right!

[celem]

just a few thoughts here.

We know that teaching skill and organising are both needed in setting up teaching demonstrations.  However they dont appear to have to be the same dwarf.  I've seen my squad of seven where a guy who embarked with axedwarf was teaching, the manager who was also in squad had the organise session labour and the remainder of the squad were watching

Ive never suspected a skill cap on teaching, however by the time your dwarves reach competant you will probably be sparring a lot more anyway so its hard to be sure without dedicated tests.

And yes, I do believe the archery range has a minimal skill cap, i've never yet got a peasant to use one without spending a season as a hunter or a week at the execution pit

It would be interesting to find out exactly which personality traits are desirable in your militia commander/squad leader to encourage differant activities.  As an example I've heard (here somewhere) that your squad leader should like taking risks to get him to like setting his dwarves to spar.

[Torgan]

I've always started my squads with a dwarf who already has military skills, then making all the squad use the same weapon, seems to work out ok.  My militia commander is usually the first migrant to have military skills, or my initial axeman/woodcutter/carpenter if I'm unlucky.  When I've just thrown together a squad where they are all unskilled then they seem to train extremely slowly.

Also try and make sure you're not making new weapons or armour that they use too often as they stop training to go replace their +bronze shield+ with *bronze shield*.  Then their squad mate replaces their -bronze shield- etc etc.

[Starver]

The dwarf didn't get to do anything - the first hit from the whip broke his arm and then there was a page or so of further bone fracturing action before the whip pushed his skull through his brain.

Not quite relevent to the topic itself, but specifically addressing the above point, I've just been reacquainting myself with Adventure Mode, with a (now quite stealthy, if otherwise raw) Crossbowman.  With limited ammo, from frequenting more campgrounds than hamlets and towns with bolt-stocked shops (am thinking of cross-training for the longbow, to use these arrows I keep coming up against), I usually end up finishing off prone victims with a rain of crossbow hammerblows.  And after seeing how easily any connected shot to the head became instadeath to any bandit, I've taken to pummelling extremities instead to level up my skills, when I can spare the time and don't need to quickly dispatch the 'client' for reasons of personal safety (their counteracts, their colleagues or having to get somewhere safe before it gets dark).

On the other hand, metal helms and other head apparel appear to make even easy to make and otherwise unoblique headshots not so much "one shot" affairs.  Maybe they will become again, once I get a bit of practice pummelling fingers, toes and the like...

[Pilsu]

This makes me think you have never actually fought the goblins in 3.12 +, because you will get pounded sending newbs out at them.

Admittedly. Couldn't be bothered dealing with the bugs. Just played with the arena mode to see how the combat works now.

What's changed, specifically? Other than whips being hilariously broken, somehow dealing blunt damage and goblins bringing in hordes of overpowered underground giants? Do goblins actually have more than Adequate skills now?

[Torgan]

You'll start to get axelords, swordmasters etc later on as your fortress expands, elite bowmen are pretty annoying as they ignore fortifications when shooting.  Not sure what you mean by underground giants though, you'll get trolls along with aboveground goblin sieges but they are actually pretty easy as they are unarmoured so weapons carve them up quickly.  It really just means you can't rely on a locked door to keep out a siege once they start spawning with sieges.

I dunno, I don't find the military really broken at all, just took a wee bit of time to get my head round how to run it.

[Pilsu]

Giants as in jabberers and their ilk. A tiny goblin mounted on a bird almost as big as an elephant.

It just seems there's no challenge whatsoever if your men are all as heavily trained as their elite AND with vastly superior equipment. Being elite means nothing when you can train up to legendary with no combat experience.

[bowdown2q]

Well, i tried to train up my military. Butttt....
it turns out that if you deck UTTERLY INEPT dwarves out with full steel armor (and leather underlayers, just cause) and silver warhammers, 6 of them can kill an Ettin with no injuries. I lost one to an FB with poison, but other than that, steel armor seems to pretty much make them invincible. Just don't expect 6 hammerers to fight a swarm of gobblin xbowmen.

[schussel]

Well, i tried to train up my military. Butttt....
it turns out that if you deck UTTERLY INEPT dwarves out with full steel armor (and leather underlayers, just cause) and silver warhammers, 6 of them can kill an Ettin with no injuries. I lost one to an FB with poison, but other than that, steel armor seems to pretty much make them invincible. Just don't expect 6 hammerers to fight a swarm of gobblin xbowmen.

if you do that with a dangerroom and switch weapons upon legendary status (best legendary+5) you have 10 supermen within a year .. cause after the first legendary they really sweep through the ranks on any other weapon (assuming you take off their shield upon shield use legendary) ... current game i randomed 20 dwarfes and after training in axe, spear, warhammer and sword was finished they were supermen

[hbar_squared]

Well, i tried to train up my military. Butttt....
it turns out that if you deck UTTERLY INEPT dwarves out with full steel armor (and leather underlayers, just cause) and silver warhammers, 6 of them can kill an Ettin with no injuries. I lost one to an FB with poison, but other than that, steel armor seems to pretty much make them invincible. Just don't expect 6 hammerers to fight a swarm of gobblin xbowmen.

Yup.  I'm currently running my first fortress with plentiful iron and flux since .18 came out, and this is the first fortress I've had where I don't have more coffins than dorfs.

With steel, you don't even have to worry about weapon skills, just send them out into the siege and they'll learn something.  I just relied on goblinite weapons until I had full steel suits for everyone, only then did I start on the axes.

[squeakyReaper]

just send them out into the siege and they'll learn something.

Sadly, after some doing, I've found this to be true.  Sparring is only imaginary practice.  A farmer that was under attack, however, was immediately drafted into my dwarven military.  After killing just a couple of goblins the long and slow way, he learned novice wrestler and fighter just like that.  My armed dwarves, with superior skills, finish things off so quickly they get no experience...  I guess the future of training is having fighters go into squads with training weapons, and bash on disabled goblins.

[Shoku]

This is the thing that I hate most about danger rooms: nobody can answer questions not involving them.

No, they should not be dabbling after 3 years. 3 seasons is about the upper limit of how long any of mine remain there (so long as there are not many distractions,) but in six seasons I usually have a few legendary fighters that are about halfway through the skill with their actual weapon.

It will take more info to decide if has to do with your setup or what.

[Ganthan]

Okay, I've let my training test run until Spring in the 2nd year.  Here are the results.

This was their skills at the start:

Commander                                  Recruit

Proficient Swordsdwarf                   None
Proficient Teacher

I equipped them only with training swords and let them have at it from Early Spring to Early Spring.  Here's how they ended:

Commander                                  Recruit

Expert Swordsdwarf                       Talented Swordsdwarf
Talented Fighter                            Talented Fighter
Novice Dodger                               Novice Dodger
Novice Student                              Novice Student
Novice Concentration                     Novice Concentration
Proficient Teacher                          Novice Teacher

Certainly not a bad result after only one year, although this had several things going in its favor.  It was just one on one training, they were both equipped the same, and the commander was a good teacher to begin with.  I can't help but feel that a lot of the commander's teaching potential was wasted, because the recruit became a competent swordsdwarf in the summer and after that they never did another sword demonstration.  They would only do individual drills, sparring and the occasional Fighting demonstration when one got better than the other.  Curiously, though, the commander trained the recruit from Skilled to Proficient in Fighting during the winter.

This leads to an interesting hypothesis:  Are skill demonstrations capped at a certain level?

Right.  I'm going to run another test now to see if I can learn more and milk Teacher skill for more of its worth.  This time I'm going to go for two years in two different year long stages and I'm going to start with four dwarves training to start.

Dwarf 1                                               Dwarf 2

Proficient Swordsdwarf                           Proficient Shield User
Proficient Teacher                                 Proficient Teacher

Dwarf 3                                               Dwarf 4

Proficient Armor User                              Proficient Dodger
Proficient Teacher                                 Proficient Teacher

I'll have these four training in the same squad for the first year, then split them up into different squads and give them fresh recruits for another year.  What I'm hoping will happen is they will teach each other their respective skills first, and then they will pass all their skills on to the new recruits.

Wish me luck.