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[Pukako]

So I don't use Danger Rooms.  Still learning, and pressure pads are a little beyond me, and, anyway, I still don't like killing babies...

But my militia SUCK.  Two years of training, and some battles against minor pests, and the whole squad are killed by two speargoblins.  This on top of 4 dead and two maimed earlier by one macegoblin.

Aside from danger rooms, how else to you get the little maggots to learn to fight? The only time I've ever had a legendary fighter in 6 months of playing is just before they were ripped apart by a forgotten beast...

Sigh.  First marksdwarves who won't fire anything, now axe dwarves that can't slice a kitten...

[Girlinhat]

Live training.  Cage trap some goblins, or even some junk like groundhogs, and release them in front of your military, it drives up their weapon skills very fast.  Still-armed goblins will train up shield and armor skills as well.

More important, is HOW you use the military.  If you're just like "derp go kill shit" then yeah, you're gonna get your ass handed to you.  You need to always have your military together, fighting in a group, because even a top trained soldier will get his head lopped off by two troglodites.  Keep your men together, in a group, station them somewhere and let the enemy come to you, and if they run off, then put them on an inactive schedule with no orders, so that they turn into civilians and stop chasing the enemy, then turn them back onto active so they can stand guard where you want.

What does ANY of this have to do with "I still don't like killing babies..."?

[Pukako]

What does ANY of this have to do with "I still don't like killing babies..."?

Result of my first danger room setup, as the only dwarves having babies on that fort were in the militia.

Thanks for the advice - I'll work on the sacrificial training, but in my examples, the squad was attacking as a group...

[Girlinhat]

Make sure they've got good gear too.  An iron spear will shred a copper breastplate, but steel makes your men immune to everything except being overwhelmed.

[fervor]

Are they outfitted in steel and some extra layers?  I don't remember ever getting my dwarves trounced by one or two goblins before.  Having good gear makes up for a complete lack of skill.

Crossbows take some work to figure out the quirks.  I'm starting to get the hang of it now after a few frustrating games.  Best behind static defenses (fortifications), but also doable if you keep them hanging back behind your melee dwarves in the field.  Keep them far away from the enemy and they will even rush back home when they run out of bolts and get more.

Overall, though, ya, the military is pretty frustrating.

[NW_Kohaku]

Honestly, "cage traps" are the solution to a great deal of your military problems to begin with, and more elaborate engineering is the solution to most of the rest, provided you are willing to put in the effort on it.  (It's certainly not that much more effort than training a military.)

However, training your military goes much, much faster if you have at least one decent instructor who can lead the training, and when they get up to decent levels, they can start sparring, which massively boosts training speed above the stupid calisthenics exercises they do with no instructor or sparring.

Either you need to have one of your starting 7 dwarves be trained to give instruction, or you need to rely on traps early on to pick up some cannon fodder to train up some recruits by doing.

This setup on the wiki is a good way to get some random animals in your traps.  As is going along the hills and taking out many of the ramps so that there are only a few narrow passageways that anyone trying to traverse the map must cross in order to move up or down z-levels, so that you can throw cage traps all over those narrow paths.  In sufficiently hilly country, I can set up enough of a labyrinth off of just removing ramps from the side of the mountain, forcing enemies to snake back and forth 20 tiles each z-level of elevation, that I can generally take out entire sieges with my crossbowmen well before they even get halfway to my bridge-a-pult that flings them into the cave croc pond.

[Marthnn]

On my current fort, after about 1 year of gameplay I started having too many haulers, and 2 or more good soldiers is always a nice safety. I'm used to danger rooms and never tried military without one, but this time I saw one migrant with "expert" in speardwarf, fighting, shield user... about 5-6 combat skills in fact.

I remembered reading on the forum that shield users of skilled and above block a LOT, and I know from experience that shield can be a life saver in most any situation. So I decided to try it.

Off the speardwarf went to be my militia commander, in a squad with 1 rookie swordsman. In less than a year, they were sparring together, the speardwarf being competent teacher, the rookie competent student. NICE.

Okay, their weapon skill couldn't be taught to each other, but the rest transfered fairly quickly through demonstrations. The squad having only 2 members surely helped.


So no need to embark with a good fighter as future instructor, most of the time a migrant can do the job.

[Jake]

As far as marksdwarves go, station them at your main entrance behind fortifications and let them practice on the odd goblin kiddie-fiddler.

[NW_Kohaku]

So no need to embark with a good fighter as future instructor, most of the time a migrant can do the job.

The problem with that is that is that you happened to get a lucky roll.  You should know how rare getting a dwarf with 6 expert skills in exactly the sort of job you are depending on getting actually is.  You can't count on getting lucky every time - it's better to spend your starting skill points on the things you know you'll need.

[Girlinhat]

It can be very useful to make a "training squad" where you keep one permanent member, who trains at all times and stays in the fort, and assign him 3-4 noob soldiers.  That leader will get awesome teacher skills and help train up replacements faster than solo training.  Then, transfer them out of that squad and into an active military squad.

[Marthnn]

So no need to embark with a good fighter as future instructor, most of the time a migrant can do the job.

The problem with that is that is that you happened to get a lucky roll.  You should know how rare getting a dwarf with 6 expert skills in exactly the sort of job you are depending on getting actually is.  You can't count on getting lucky every time - it's better to spend your starting skill points on the things you know you'll need.

Personaly, I don't agree. On embark, you can give a maximum of 10 skill points to a single dwarf. If you leave out easily leveled skills like Fighter and (maybe) weapon skills, plus those least used like unarmed skills, you have to choose between Dodger, Shield user, Teacher, giving about "competent" at each skill.

Yes, I was lucky to recieve an expert speardwarf (Weapon skill, Shield user, Fighter, Dodger, Armor user, Observer [he spots VERY well]). But I don't count on it. Had I recieved a macedwarf, I'd have given him his mace. And I find it common enough, from my experience, to get migrants competent or better in a military skill set (given military migrants always have at least 4 related skills). Since it looks like that's all you need, why bother? There's plenty of non-military skills I can give at embark that I know I'll need.

[Girlinhat]

Or you could go the Dwarven way, and kill useless migrants, allowing you to "re-roll" next migrant wave in hopes of getting a legendary.

[Maynot]

I use my Incompetent sactifices new recruits to go kill Forgotten Beasts that fire death dust.  My newbie group of 6 dwarfs lost 3 to a FB that fired off some sleeping dust.  The Militia Captain is the longest surviving member of the group.

My best soldiers are usually stationed at the fortress entrances and gain wonderful training from detecting and decapitating kobold and goblin thieves.  The thief opens up the door, gets detected, and dies.

[Quietust]

Just to confirm: have your dwarves been doing group training, or have they been doing individual combat drills? Also, how large are your squads?

[krenshala]

Myself, I use squads of 4 to 8 all with the same weapon, and set the training number to 4 for very good results.  They don't train through sparring as fast as using a danger room (which I haven't used), however, a group of four dwarves with steel spears and shields can be trained up high enough to really mess up the first pair of kobold thieves if you start the first two training no later than the first winter (in my experience, anyway).

I had four (3 spear dwarves and a migrant legendary hammerdwarf) slaughter a band of 12 elven swordsment once ... and all three speardwarves were listed as "Recruit", and had only been in the militia for about six months.  The hammerdwarf got more kills, but the spears did most of the mangling (lopping off weapon hands, mostly).