Since I notice a recurring subject of the DF Gameplay Questions forum to be the about problems players experience with the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of training up a military with the use of schedules, and alerts, I will try to describe how to set up a military, that trains at an acceptable rate, and bypasses the need to set any schedules / alerts for them. It also removes the need to have a separate military. Any civilian you want can double as a military, and only be on active duty when you want it to be, and back to civilian duty without delays.
Perhaps, if people find it useful, it could be stickied, as I have posted this before in a few threads, yet the subject keeps popping up.
First of all, I need to point out that this alternative does involve the use of danger rooms.
(
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Danger_room)
If for some reason, you dislike the use of danger rooms, I guess this method is not meant for you.
Having said that, let's kick off with a basic rule, that makes this whole thing possible:
Never, ever, designate a barracks. It is okay to build armor stands, beds, weapon racks and whatsmore, wherever you please, but do not designate any of them as a barracks. Why? Because it makes dwarves that are assinged to squads go there when they please, and do things we don't want them to do.
Okay. So you have a fortress, without a barracks. What now?Easy. Just make a squad. (For the purpose of this guide, I will assume that you are familiar with forming squads, and equipping them with armor and weapons.)
In fact, make as many squads as you like, with as little, or as many dwarves per squad as you please. This comes down to personal taste, really.
Personally, I tend to have squads of five dwarves. And my marksdwarves go in squads of one dwarf each.
To keep things easy, I would suggest that you do not assign any miners, woodcutters or hunters to any squad. Dwarves that have one or more of those civilian labors activated, will have trouble equipping themselves properly with armor and weapons, when switched to active duty. You don't want that. In combat, a dwarf without armor is a dead dwarf, usually.
Notice, that even though you have formed your dwarves into squads, they are still civilians, merrily doing their civilian jobs.
You might also notice, that once you assign armor and/or weapons to your dwarves, they will equip themselves, when they have no job with higher priority to do (when the proper items are available).
One thing to note: currently (v0.18), carrying military food supplies is bugged. So, for every squad you create, make sure to go to the supplies page, and set it to carry "no food". Drink aren't bugged though, so it's fine to set that option to 'any drink'. Make sure you have enough waterskins / flasks. update: fixed in DF 2012
Okay, so now you have a fortress, without a barracks, but with some armored-up, weapon wielding civilians. That's pretty nifty, but it won't do them much good without the skills to match now, will it?For this, we need a danger room, and if possible, goblin prisoners.
Make sure the dwarves you wish to train have full armor protection, but no shields. Even though the spears in the danger room are made of wood, they can still hurt your dwarves if they don't have armor.
Now, press (
s)quads, select the squads you wish to train, and give them a (
m)ove order to your danger room. Instantly, the dwarves in the squad will change from civilians into military dwarves, and move to the danger room, unless they're sleeping. In that case, they will change to military as soon as they wake up. Put the danger room's lever on repeat, and watch your squad become proficient armor users/fighters/dodgers/weapon users in no time. At about this proficiency level of one or more of those skills, equip your dwarves with shields as well, and send them back to the danger room. If you want, you can have legendary armor users/fighters/shield users before you know it, if you have them do the danger room for a few seasons.
Sure enough, a *whole* lot faster than having them do training sessions and spar in barracks
Weapon skills might fall behind a bit, especially once the shield user skill increases. They need to parry to gain weapon skill in the danger room, and parrying is somewhat rare. Blocking seems to take preference over dodging and parrying, which is strenghtened by having shield skill higher than weapon and dodge skills. That's why you want to equip those shields at a later stage.
Here's also where those goblin prisoners come in handy. Strip them of their weapons, but not their armor, and send a squad to fight them, preferably with wooden, and if not available, silver versions of their weapons of choice. Note that you can use wooden crossbows to train hammer skill
So, now you have a fortress, without a barracks, but with a few squads of dwarves getting a good workout down in the danger room. But you really need more haulers, to get that accursed goblin loot on the backs of those trader's mules, and off the map!If, at any time, you need your dwarves to go back to civilian duty, you only need to press (
s)quads, select the squad you wish to revert, and press cancel (
o)rder. Instantly, your dwarf will revert to civilian jobs (while keeping weapon and armor).
Note that, once a dwarf reaches high enough weapon skill, activating him as a military dwarf will clear all his civilian jobs. This is not permanent though, you can turn them back on once you have reverted him to civilian duty. I've only seen this so far with dwarves with legendary crossbow/marksdwarf and axedwarf skills. It seems legendary shield user / armor user / dodger / fighter do not cause this, only the weapon skills (and perhaps, wrestling/kicking/biting) do.
As a bonus, any marksdwarves that have reached sufficient marksmanship skill, will no longer run away from enemies, but shoot them even while in civilian mode.
Things to watch out for:
-
(your dwarves' happiness. With low combat skills, your dwarves will get unhappy thoughts for being activated into military duty. They will no longer suffer from that thought once their combat skills pass 'Great' though. After that, just watch out for unhappy thoughts caused by being on duty for too long.)This is slightly mixed up - being activated and becoming a Recruit will cause unhappiness from "the draft", and staying on duty for extended periods of time will cause unhappiness from "patrol duty". The former will go away once the dwarf has Novice skill in any weapon (and thus becomes a Swordsdwarf/Macedwarf/Wrestler/etc. instead of a Recruit), while the latter goes away upon becoming an Elite soldier (which happens upon reaching Great skill and also turns off all labors). However, when Elite soldiers are switched to civilian mode and then back to military mode, they stop being Elite and will start getting patrol duty thoughts until they gain enough experience in any skill to trigger a level-up, at which point they become Elite again. Thus, once an entire squad becomes Elite, it should be assigned to barracks and put on a 10/10 year-round training order so that it stays that way (since it won't be particularly useful for civilian duty anymore due to labors being turned off all the time).
- Military dwarves having children. Danger rooms are not healthy to children. If your military dwarves do have children, and you still want to send them to the danger room, just make sure that all dwarves with 'recover wounded' job active are wearing armor
- Pets. Don't assign pets to military dwarves. Pets don't like danger rooms. Dwarves tend not to like losing pets.
So, in summary:
- No barracks
- Need only two commands to handle everything you want your military to do, be it activation, training, stationing or combat: (s)>>(m), and (s)>>(o)
the advantages:
- training your dwarves up much faster than using barracks / schedules
- direct control. Your dwarves don't waste time doing 'individual combat drills' and whatsmore when you want them to do their civ jobs
- simplicity. Forget the schedules screen. No need for many alerts, unless you want to set many patrol routes for some reason.
Marksdwarves are somewhat of a different matter. Personally, I train marksdwarves by having them hunt a year or two, using bone bolts, before putting them into squads, after which they can join in the danger room and arena fights. But I think archery ranges work as well, as long as there are no barracks, and enough bolts. Once my archers are put into a squad, and geared up in armor, I never give them back the hunting job, for it will mess up their armor. Most of my marksdwarves are fishermen and herbalists when they're on civilian duty, which keeps them close enough to the surface to be able to incapacitate the occasional kobold / goblin thief before it gets away.
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Topic: Guide to setting up your military - the alternative way (Read 7520 times)