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[Jamuro]

Hi

i am quite new to dwarf fortress and therefore had a lot of FUN  with my first forts
now me got finaly a quite nice one ... i even got a steel production running (YAIII)
BUT
my military is giving me a realy hard time
they hardly ever train & and some of them seem to completly ignore the uniform i asigned to their squard ... but thats ok

training seems to make my military dwarfs realy unhappy ... and no matther what i do it doesnt seem to get betther
here is what i ve done so far:
-> smoothed the walls (engravings will come later)
-> assigned them their own bedrooms
-> i even placed a gold statue in their barracks
-> made sure that they have at least 2-3 different sorts of booze in the fort & cooked food

what else can i do?
how long does (should) it take to train my dwarfes to an acceptable lvl with their weapons?
if it wasn't for my traps i wouldn't have stood a chance against my first goblin siege

[FrisianDude]

I don't think they really look very much at how their barracks look. Try to make the dining hall as pompous as possible, though, don't skimp on the glittery stuff. Engrave every nook and/or cranny, stick ruby-encrusted gold statues (on engraved tiles) in the corners, etc. Make the Dining Hall stupefying and they'd soon cheer up since they still take their squashed plump helmet + water buffalo tallow stew there.

[FritzPL]

12x14 dining room. Walls engraved,floor at least smoothed. And they can even withstand a death of friend.

[Marthnn]

How many squads of how many dwarves do you have? Big squads don't train well, but you can lower the Train minimum number to 3, so only 3 soldiers will be on active duty at a time. They should train well, and the others will act as civilians, hanging around legendary dining rooms and becoming happy.

I've had one recruit in a legendary squad become unhappy. He wasn't sparring and slept in his barrack room, generating bad thoughts. When he came off duty, he walked to the dining room to hang out. He noticed a beautiful statue on the way, then a fine road, and later a tastefully arranged hatch cover in my statue garden. Careful though, as he will forget these but still get upset about being relieved from duty and enraged by long patrol duty. Once he's a better fighter, he won't have them anymore. Sleeping in room at will helps too.

Uniforms. Do you have enough pieces of equipment? In the (m)ilitary (e)quipment screen, do all your dwarves have a green checkmark beside all their uniform? Also, use the "replace clothing" setting, sometimes normal clothes take the place of assigned armor. You can then add selected clothes to the uniform.

[Jamuro]

thx for the replies

it seems i dont have all the equipment for my squards yet ... but i ve enough crossbows and
built them 3 ranges with some archery targets in each
but they only use one (if ever^^)

my squards have a size of 4 and i ve set the min. training number to 2 yet ... hopefully it will help
should i disable their hauling skills or will they ignore those jobs while their squard is active?
---
@happines:
the value of the stuff in their barracks doesnt help?
i ll try to make my dining hall bigger and place some statues in it
how can i make my dwarf to use specific jewels (like ruby) to engrave for example gold statues?

oh and another more or less unreleated question ...
thx to the last siege and my cage traps i have about 10 goblins captured ... ready for torture training
i did look in the wiki and followed the instructions to strip the goblins of their stuff (mass dumping on the cages and reclaim and disabled the dump for the cage itself afterwards)

But at least to me it seems like they still have their weapons and armor
doesnt the icon change?

next time i want to try and make some meele dwarfes ...
will woodcutter improve their axe skills?

[Sarda]

You can't engrave gold statues with ruby; perhaps you meant encrust? And there;s no reliable way; encrusters just grab whatever's available. Give the dorf red ruby, he'll use red ruby.

And yes, woodcutting improves axe skills, BUT make sure to assign the woodcutter/soldier 2 axes. He refuses to use his woodcutting axe for killing.

[FrisianDude]

Make a small stockpile only for Gold Statues near your jeweller's shop. Wait for it to be filled up with gold statues and then tell someone to encrust furniture with jewels. There's a decent chance they'll grab the statue. Especially, I suppose, if you make a little burrow around that pile and the jeweller.

Uniforms. Do you have enough pieces of equipment? In the (m)ilitary (e)quipment screen, do all your dwarves have a green checkmark beside all their uniform?

Ahh, I never WAS sure what that was for. It looks like a little green weapon rack in the tileset I use. Thanks for explainin'.

12x14 dining room. Walls engraved,floor at least smoothed. And they can even withstand a death of friend.

Mine in Erushtulon was so fancy it made someone who was unhappy at being drafted and unhappy at the death of her husband who was also unhappy at being drafted 'fine' after eating there.

[LuckyLuigi]

You can specify quality and material type for the stockpiles. Put the good only way next to the jeweler and the crap only one next to the stonecrafter.
This way only excellent quality stuff will get gems on it and all the crappy stuff can get shells and other crap as value enhancing stuff.

[Jamuro]

so much stuff to try ^^

btw the assign 2 axes to the dwarf reminds me of something else ...
i ve read that you can(and should) give your miners some waterskins

does that mean that i have to put them into a squard or how can i "give" them the flasks/waterskins?

[LuckyLuigi]

Not sure why you'd need to do that, but you can make a 'miner squad' which never trains and give the squad waterskins (under supplies).
Then assign the miners to it.
I find that to actually make them equip squad stuff I always have to order a squad order first (like move).

[Quietust]

And yes, woodcutting improves axe skills

Wood cutting does not give Axeman experience. You're thinking of mining - using a pick in combat uses the same skill as digging into stone.

Also, active soldiers don't get happy thoughts from eating in legendary dining rooms because they don't eat in dining rooms at all - if they aren't wearing backpacks, they'll just eat directly off the floor of a food stockpile (much like how all dwarves drink booze). If you want to make them happy, give them good bedrooms and make a statue garden filled with the most valuable furniture you can get, preferably artifacts; alternatively, allow them to train up to "Great" in their main skill and they will become Elite soldiers and will no longer get unhappy thoughts from long patrol duty.

i did look in the wiki and followed the instructions to strip the goblins of their stuff (mass dumping on the cages and reclaim and disabled the dump for the cage itself afterwards)

But at least to me it seems like they still have their weapons and armor
doesnt the icon change?

There are no "icons" that show a creature's weapons/armor - what you're seeing is your tileset's image for the soldier's profession which indicates nothing more than which weapon they are best at using (without a tileset, all you'd be seeing would be a different colored "g"). A goblin bowman is still a bowman even if you take away his bow.

[Disquiet]

I find if you set the minimum number of soldiers training to lower than the actual number in the squad they seem to rotate extremely frequently, and get a bad thought everytime they go from civilian around mode to training mode. Upset by the draft I think its called, and I find this can make them depressed very fast. To stop this I set all my soldiers to training full time (minimum same as the amount of soldiers in the squad) and I havn't had any problems yet. They train outside in a walled grass paddock to stop them getting cave adapted, so there is almost no fancy decoration around them but they seem to be fine. Sure they get the enraged by long patrol duty bad thought, but they get this even if you give them breaks anyway, its pointless trying to avoid it, and it doesn't seem like a massive happiness hit. Full time training dwarves are on average less happy than my civilian dwarves but almost all of them are content, and usually ecstatic when their skills get higher. All they have is an engraved 3x1 bedroom, I don't even have to try anything special like statue gardens to make them happy.

[Korva]

Sparring gives a happy thought. Only two dwarves per squad can spar at a time, though. So what I do is make squads of 4 and keep them on Active/Train with a minimum of 3 set to be on duty at all times. Once they get good enough to spar, there's almost always a match going on and my soldiers are usually at least happy and usually ecstatic unless I have them on station or patrol for a while.

[Halnoth]

I realize you are new and this may be beyond your current expertise but if you think you can handle it try making a mist generator as described http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Mist Place the generator over the barracks and while the soldiers train they will get happy thoughts from the mist.

Note though that normally you do not have to do this and in fact it is probably better to have your barracks outside so your military does not become cave adapted but if you are having serious problems with military happiness the mist generator is definately the way to go. Dwarves get a rediculous amount of happiness from mist.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Making your military happy through architecture is a pointless, pointless task--sooner or later they will see enough death to become hardened, after that you can run their children through a danger room all day long and they will be content if not ecstatic.  Best way to a happy military is to let them kill things. Strip goblins, release deer who cares

They will A. Have the "enjoyed slaughter" thought, B. witness more death, become more traumatized and less prone to unhappiness

Recruits are supposed to complain and cause trouble and pick fights with their new weapons, it's just a part of life.