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[Rex_Nex]

Alright, I know there are discussions relating to this on a bunch of threads, but I really want a topic for this.

My problem is that I simply cannot survive seiges. On Claspedskulls, one of my recent forts, I have a siege consisting of about two pages of goblins and then another page of trolls/random sieging creatures. My military trains nonstop and consists of a two full squads of steel-clad axedwarves.

But god damn, they cannot make a dent in sieges. They kill one or two goblins before one of the dozens of opponents knock them unconscious and they get mauled to death. I know I could have a larger army, but it is already giant, consisting of nearly 30% of my fortress's population. Like I said, they are ALWAYS training.

The problem is, they dont gain XP at any rate whatsoever. If they go beyond dabbling in any combat skill through pure training, the world ends. I think the problem is that they try to train everything, and by the time they are finished training in everything, skill rust degrades all their skills back to what it was before they started training.

So, without exploiting danger rooms or something, what in the armok can I do to get my dwarves to attain skills?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Cage traps. Prisoners. Arena.

[Girlinhat]

Live combat.  Set up a line of cages, capture the entire siege, strip them bare, and let your axes go wild on the naked goblins.  I had a squad of 10 got from null to 1 after a year of sparring, and one live combat session had them all 3-4.  This can also be done with animals, particularly bears and elephants and other [PET] creatures, since these can breed without being tamed, and you can set up combat rooms that dispense grizzly bears for you to train on.  If you ask, you will get a dozen different breeding room designs that would work.  You can also edit the raws to add [PET] to whatever you want, so you could cage up groundhogs and train against them.

Sadly though, danger rooms appear to be the only realistic way to train Shield User and Armor User skills in any real amount of time.  The alternative might be to unequip your soldiers' weapons, leaving them only in armor, and release a stripped siege on them.  Outnumbered 3 to 1, goblin fists will wail on steel armor, ranking up the skills, but you may want archers on standby in case things get out of hand.

If you're not aware, you can get goblins in cages with regular old cage traps, then strip them with d > b > c to Reclaim their gear (since the gear a goblin is currently wearing is Forbidden by default) then d > b > d to Dump their equipment.  If done right, your dorfs will swarm the cages, and leave with the goblin's clothing and weapons, leaving you with too much junk and a set of naked goblins.  Then, pit them into a shallow room, because only thieves will escape when a dorf leads a goblin to a pit, regular mace/crossbow/sword/etc goblins won't break out and will be pitted like tame animals.  Then, let your trainees wail on them.

If all else fails, trap up.  No shame in doing what you need to survive.  Serrated disks will pretty much one-shot anything, including giants and certain Titan/FB, but they tend to jam when a corpse gets lodged in the disks.  Building a weapon trap with hammers can be rather lethal, and rarely jams (according to the wiki) which does make sense.  There's nothing for the body to get impaled on, after all!

[Brandstone]

You have several options. Try sending out your military on practice fights against the local wildlife, and toss out some cage and/or weapon traps to even the odds against your first siege. You can always remove the traps once your military is strong enough to stand on it's own. Some crossbow dwarves can harass the enemy and give your melee fighters a chance to turn the tables. if you embark with a military dwarf, give them the teacher skill to speed up training.

[Jake]

Try and give everyone some military training, even if it's just for one month a year. I'm aiming for twelve squads of four to six marksdwarves who spend one month at the butts and then another on sentry duty at the main entrance, and the rest formed into melee squads who train all through the winter.  Don't worry too much about the quality of their gear at first, it's more important that everyone have at least something.

[NecroRebel]

You also might try making the enemy come to you, and come into a defensive position. For instance, make it so that your main entrance can be slimmed down to a long 1-tile-wide tunnel that enters into a mid-sized courtyard where you engage the enemy. That way, you're more likely to encounter only one or two enemy squads at a time, as the rest will be coming through the long path, and your dwarves should be able to take goblins if they outnumber them.

To be honest, I've had 2 well-equipped soldiers take out whole sieges when the siege was engaged in a 1-tile-wide hall. It stops the enemy from leveraging their superior numbers as much, which allows your superior training and equipment to really shine.

Alternatively (and maybe a Stupid Dwarf Trick), you could cover the entire surface of your map in a grid of 1-long drawbridges, say 10x10, which when raised would make walls that isolate enemy squads from each other and allow you to take them out piecemeal. It would take time to set up and might be a challenge to manage the individual cells, but it would surely make sieges easier.

[NewSheoth]

...you can set up combat rooms that dispense grizzly bears for you to train on.

You have to do it. For the sheer awesome of it.

[rephikul]

steelclad will still be bested with superior number, thanks to the new backstab mechanism in 0.17. As necro has said, it's better for them to come to you. You should also consider beefing up your rank with migrants you dont want, or stuff it with war animals. If the gobbos dont have ranged units, crossbowmen at advantageous locations will greatly help in softening the opponent because individual goblins tend to retreat after sustaining moderate injuries. Also dont disregard the power of civilians even if you dont want to bring them to the front. Design your fort with catapults and maybe balistas greatly help. They are inaccurate but work well in number. The game is fairly hard with no trap no drawbridges no danger room but it's not impossible. Spill more blood and fun you will have.

[Korva]

I stopped using full squads (except markdwarves) when I read that no matter the squad size, only one sparring match can occur at a time. And sparring trains skills faster than individual or group practice. So I just stick my melee dwarves into squads of 3-4, with 2-3 minimum on-duty dwarves in each squad. I prefer a squad size of 4 with 3 active dwarves, as with only 2 on-duty soldiers there are too many delays as they come and go, and consequently less sparring.

Oh, and danger rooms. I've used them since they were invented, as progress felt much, much too slow without them. But I didn't know about the small squads trick then, so I may try without a danger room, or with just basic training in there, the next time.

If you do use danger rooms, sieges can become quite boring after a while. It's fun to watch a single experienced axedwarf just paint the map with goblin blood from top to bottom, but it gets old after a while.

[Veetor]

steelclad will still be bested with superior number, thanks to the new backstab mechanism in 0.17. As necro has said, it's better for them to come to you. You should also consider beefing up your rank with migrants you dont want, or stuff it with war animals. If the gobbos dont have ranged units, crossbowmen at advantageous locations will greatly help in softening the opponent because individual goblins tend to retreat after sustaining moderate injuries. Also dont disregard the power of civilians even if you dont want to bring them to the front. Design your fort with catapults and maybe balistas greatly help. They are inaccurate but work well in number. The game is fairly hard with no trap no drawbridges no danger room but it's not impossible. Spill more blood and fun you will have.

What is this backstab mechanic?

Also, you could try making some bridges, and when they come near it you smash then with it. Or many cage traps.

[shlorf]

To get more out of training follow this checklist:
1. Squads should be 3 or 4 dwarfs big, this increases the amount of time spent sparring the 3rd dwarf will do an individual combat drill in the case of 4 dwarfs being available by chance the two non sparring dwarfs will do demonstrations, since there's only two of them their teacher skill will level up faster than with 10 dwarfs / squad
2. Draft dwarfs who already have military skills (use Dwarf Therapist). The important skills are (in order of importance): dodger, shield user, armor user, fighter, weapon skill. Teacher/student/organizer/observer are a big plus but will ultimately be raised to reasonable levels in a few years. Bringing a dedicated militia commander on embark with a combination of mentioned skills appears to be a very viable strategy.
3. Make the best possible equipment and make at least a full set of armor, weapon and shield for every soldier early. A dwarf without a shield cannot gain shield user skill while sparring, same applies to weapons.
4. Equip the dwarfs via uniforms and make sure they all have flasks/waterskins and backpacks (disable woodcutting,mining,hunting for soldiers or you will run into a nasty bug). This will reduce the time they spend eating and drinking to very brief trips to fill their containers.
5. Using individual choice melee weapon for a weapon in your uniform is fine if the dwarf only has one weapon skill and you have enough weapons of that type so he will take one. If he has multiple weapon skills or no weapon skills assign the type of weapon you want him to train, else he might change his no quality sword for a superior quality axe training up multiple weapon skills and wasting his time.
6. Consider putting dwarfs without a weapon skill in an inactive squad but assign them a barracks for training and disable all their civilian labors. Do this with any useless migrant preferring the ones with good physical attributes who you don't need for hauling (assign at least a weapon preferably a shield too). They will do individual combat drills slowly raising their weapon skill (amongst others) without wasting your non recruits time by taking forever to organize a demonstration (which wouldn't do much anyway as the recruit doesn't have many skills).
Once UristMcRecruit becomes an axedwarf, put him in an actively training squad.
7. Deal with losses in a smart way: If a whole squad is killed don't replace them all with novice soldiers. Instead rearrange your squads into groups of 2 experienced and 2 new soldiers.
Same in the event of no losses. Add 2 novice soldiers to your first squad of 4 after a few years, combat training will now actually do something.

Some more bits not related to training
Know your enemies: Lashers are the death of every soldier without some defensive skills, so train up a squad of marksdwarfs (bone bolts, wood bolts or even metal if you have magma for the archery range) and rain death on them from behind fortifications.
Ranged attackers will also do well against anyone without high dodging and/or shield using skills, so use zig zag walls or tunnels.
Axes aren't "the best" weapon. While axe lords are pretty awesome, on low skill levels spears give a better chance of hitting a vital organ early on resulting in a quick death or insta-kill, and hammers will be better if an armored body part is hit.

fakeedit: not gonna read all replies before posting this if anything has been mentioned before - sorry 

[Rex_Nex]

I forgot to mention that my army is accompanied by a page of war dogs. They all die within minutes, however. Also, I funnel my enemies into 10-15 long, 3 tile wide hallway that is full of weapon traps, each with a few steel axes attached. I like axes, as you may have noticed. However, that doesnt help much, and after a bit, my dwarves tend to fight farther and farther from where I originally wanted them to fight at.

Also, fighting on weapon traps is risky, as I noticed. Had my militia commander fall down while fighting a master lasher and had his head ripped off by a axe trap. Poor dwarf.

Really like the replies though. Going to try and make smaller squads, and try different weapons out. Serrated Disks, too.

As for crossbow dwarves, I cant get them to train at all. They may shoot a few bolts into a target, but then they go back to "individual training" for a year or so, making them quite useless. Is there a fix?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Serrated discs are very deadly, as they hit three times each.

[Mickey Blue]

Some general ideas split into three categories; Hard Mode (strategies that will work without resording to 'easy mode'), Easy Mode (strategies that make it easier, perhaps too easy), Exploit Mode (strategies that are essentially exploiting how the coding works as of now to make things much, much easier):

"Hard Mode":

-As others said, more smaller squads of soldiers (not only are they allegedly better for conventional training, but also gives you more control).
-Create a chokepoint so the enemy comes to you and will have a harder time surrounding you, even better if there is access to the ground above the chokepoint so your marksdwarves can attack from above (such as creating a wall, having your melee at the doorway with archers above.
-Floodgate system to hold off non-building destroyers until you are ready for them.
-Siege weaponry as a 'hello' to the enemy, you can build a ballista or two at the gate, fire them as the enemy first comes through, odds are you'll kill a few and possibly many (in fact I even once caused them to turn and run off immedietely), you'll only get one shot most likely of course, but it can make all the difference.
-Kill wildlife and animals you raise to get your skill up between fights.

"Easy Mode":

-Traps (cage/stone fall/weapon/you name it), they work great to either capture your enemy to train yourself later and of course hack people up.
-"Walled in", you can completely wall yourself in (with the use of drawbridges) to make it so they cannot possibly get to you, allowing you to plink them to death with crossbows or just wait them out.
-Create a thin bridge leading to your fort then fire on the enemy as they come across it, odds are they'll fall in.


"Exploit Mode":

-"Danger Rooms", they allow you to train dwarves up at unrealistic speeds, creating a powerful army in no time.
-"Trap corridors", create an overly long thin trap layered route for enemies to get to you, they'll be dead long before they make it.
-Atom Smasher, smash them with a draw bridge as they sit outside of your base.


Also, the Fortress Defense II mod helps a ton with practicing, it allows you to face far more sieges of differing strength enemies which helps you try out different strategies.  Soapbox time, but I personally feel that using exploits as listed above to be somewhat lame and makes things far easier then they should be that its akin to using cheats, to me trying to minimize things that make it too easy (exploits, traps, etc) makes it more fun, that said to each their own and whatever works best for you.

-MB

[Girlinhat]

Would a danger room of iron spears be less exploity?