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[Darkweave]

I embarked with dwarfs with 2 points in armour user, shield user, axes, fighting and dodging. I added in the first five migrant dwarfs and two years later they were all around level 8 in fighting, 6-7 in axedwarf and 4 in all of the others and managed to take out several ambushes, two semi-megabeasts and a titan equipped in just iron armour. I don't think it's that unreasonable to expect it to take a fair few years for them to reach high skills, they are levelling up 6 or 7 skills rather than just the one that most other dwarfs are and even then it's only usually the miners, stonecrafters and maybe masons that reach legendary in a short space of time.

Edit: That was with training 2 months on and 1 month off.

[MrWiggles]

I suspect that the other profession will take longer to train up as well, eventually. Right now I find military dorf training to be rather real to me. The other professions right now, feel very gamish compared to how the military skills progress.

Learning from scratch should be a very long endeavor. It'll encourage putting points into the starting seven. As right now, you could get away with out having to put points into any of the dorf. (Except for the militart.) And they'll all do just fine.

[zakkeh]

build arena, capture goblins with cage traps;
live fire training seems to be much better than sparring at increasing skills.

I tried this, when trying to put the goblins in the arena they were released...How do I NOT let them out until they're in a nice, secure arena?

You can build the cages and then attach them to a lever elsewhere, pull the lever and the cage/s open.

Drat, it would've been so much fun dropping them from a 3z level height to be slaughtered by marksdwarfs =/

How many to do youhave? Build a tower/mine a pit a good few Z-Levels high and line it with fortifications, make sure you have all your men surrounding it and see if the goblin dies before it hits the ground...

It's nto so much that I want to kill them, I want to land them in an arena one by one so they can be torn into shreds =D

[Immacolata]

I honestly dont know where peoples grief comes from regarding training. with care and sensible selection you can end up with badasses. I dont use danger rooms as i consider them quite exploity, and prefer the natural selection of combat, seeing as I tend to have a surplus of cheesemakers and fish dissectors.

I am 5 years into "Windstandards". I have 2 squads - swordsdwarves and marksdwarves. The Swordsdwarves have been in existance for 4 years. An incoming inmmigrant had skills of adept in sword, shield, armor and fighter, so he was the squad leader. He was given a bunch of grunts with no military skill. 4 years later each and every single one of them is legendary in at least one skill and labelled a swordmaster. 4 years to legendary - that seems like nothing. All i did was 3 months on training, 1 off, repeat (thats hint number one, assuming you use the active traning alert, not inactive). they have seen a LOT of action in killing the millions of camels that inhabit my serene desert (hint number 2 - get them to kill anything!), and have taken joy in routing several ambushes and sieges. Only 1 died, but that was when low skilled vs goblin lashers. Most recently they all bullet timed around a legendary bowgobbo and his bowgobbo pals before turning them to paste. so, yea, hint number three - set up squads led by dorfs with skills - that will help for obvious reasons. putting urist Mcholdswrongendofsword in charge will only end with dissapointment.

The process also has had pleasing results with my 3 yr old marksdwarf squad, which was formed when a master marksdwarf immigrated. he was given 9 grunts, and despite heavy losses his troops now are on the cusp of elite marksdwarf status. the huge number of bone bolts my camelkilling has provided has helped here, as has using them as permanent vulture killers.

So lemme get this right: the actual skill level of the leader dwarf will affect the training most? It is a bonus but not essential that the dwarf has leader or teacher skills? Coz I never saw one with any of those

[MrWiggles]

I suspect that teaching skill helps with teaching. Call me crazy.

And yea, the squad leader is responsible for training the squad.

[Hyndis]

Send them into the caverns. Let them fight the horrors in the caverns, preferably of the undead variety.

Those that survive will be champions.


I prefer mixed orders for downtime where there is no obvious threat. Each squad has 3 on training, 2 on defend burrows, and 5 off duty to loaf around. Keeps everyone happy but active. The defend burrows guys patrol the fortress and caverns, and handle any hostiles below ground.

When danger is spotted everyone goes to full alert and moves to battlestations, but when there is no obvious danger not many dwarves are needed as a guard.

Also, my military is usually about 5 squads of 10 dwarves. Marksdwarves preferred. I don't even use fortifications. Just massed ranged firepower kills everything.

[Darkweave]

I suspect that the other profession will take longer to train up as well, eventually. Right now I find military dorf training to be rather real to me. The other professions right now, feel very gamish compared to how the military skills progress.

Learning from scratch should be a very long endeavor. It'll encourage putting points into the starting seven. As right now, you could get away with out having to put points into any of the dorf. (Except for the militart.) And they'll all do just fine.

At the moment I embark with a 5 leader/5 record-keeper, two with 2 points in 5 military skills and four peasants and don't grow any underground crops. I'll usually embark with just a few picks and axes and an anvil and that's about it. Definitely makes the game a lot more challenging and Fun. Also tends to prevent receiving "Urist McStoneCrafter has created a masterpiece" spam from the first Autumn onwards. I'm hoping the caravan arc will lead to professions like stone-crafting not making you an easy fortune and just a general balance of resource use and profession leveling to make things more challenging (especially farming). I think the current rate of military development is pretty much spot on.

[EddyP]

Pick dwarves based on how suitable they are for military service. Look at their strength, agility and toughness, and draft those with good attributes in those areas (even if they have no military skill). When you get a migrant wave screen each and every dwarf for their attributes. Those with good attributes enter the melee squads. Marksdwarf squads get the rest.

[Hoan]

only thing i would add is the swimming. fill whatever training room you are using with 4/7 water and watch the attributes skyrocket.

[ThePup]

It feels like besides danger rooms there's just nothing you can do to make dwarves train harder. I have tried having small squads of 3 dwarves and they spar a little bit more often but even after 5 years the progress is marginal

Interesting - I've got a 3 year old fort with 6 Axe Lords and 3 Mace Lords, all legendary shield users to boot.  All I did was set 'em to train in a danger room in groups of 3.  Set the schedule for 3 months training, 1 month doing nothing.  Didn,t give 'em weapons, armour or shield until they were professional in fighting, and had at least a little dodging experience.  Let them get a little weapon experience, then 6 of them decimated a forgotten beast, a giant toad and a heap of floating eye thingies.  One now in pretty poor shape in my hospital from being tossed by the toad, shattered both legs. 

[UnrealJake]

Can you build a danger room that DOESN'T train dodging? I have a moat and a lot of murky pools around the place and most of my fighting takes place near them so... dodging will get them killed...

[ThePup]

Can you build a danger room that DOESN'T train dodging? I have a moat and a lot of murky pools around the place and most of my fighting takes place near them so... dodging will get them killed...

My understanding was that the sole purpose of a danger room was to train dodging?  Turn it into a swimming training room as well, then you don't need to worry about the moat or pools.

[UnrealJake]

Can you build a danger room that DOESN'T train dodging? I have a moat and a lot of murky pools around the place and most of my fighting takes place near them so... dodging will get them killed...

My understanding was that the sole purpose of a danger room was to train dodging?  Turn it into a swimming training room as well, then you don't need to worry about the moat or pools.

So did I but I also thought it helped with armour and shield... I checked on the wiki and it does say armoud and stuff as well as dodging...

[Mcducks22]

Can you build a danger room that DOESN'T train dodging? I have a moat and a lot of murky pools around the place and most of my fighting takes place near them so... dodging will get them killed...

My understanding was that the sole purpose of a danger room was to train dodging?  Turn it into a swimming training room as well, then you don't need to worry about the moat or pools.

So did I but I also thought it helped with armour and shield... I checked on the wiki and it does say armoud and stuff as well as dodging...

In my old fort, I had a danger room. It was very small, only 4x1 squares. There was absolutely no room for them to dodge, so they didn't level up dodging at all. Also, no shields. They were forced to block the spears with the only thing they had: their weapons. This meant that they leveled up their weapon skills and I got six axe lords in four minutes :-)

[psychologicalshock]

build arena, capture goblins with cage traps;
live fire training seems to be much better than sparring at increasing skills.

Basically what i have been doing - I have a lot of good marksmen and nothing else.