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[smips63]

Hello all,
I've been playing Dwarf Fortress for two week now or so and I have a lot of the basics down. I can get my food and booze production working autonomously and I'm starting to crank out iron and steel while building up decent defenses. However, the military aspect has me puzzled. I've got seven squads of Hammerdwarfs all outfitted in leather armor and steel war hammers. Most of them have been training nonstop for probably a year and a half now with all labors turned off. However, when I look at their skills in Dwarf Therapist, they're pretty pathetic. The highest level Fighter I have is 4 and all of them are level 1 Hammerdwarfs. Am I missing something, or do they need to spill some elf blood to gain real experience?

[Mechatronic]

Are they set to Active/Training?

[smips63]

Yup, they're always in the barracks and when I check what they are doing, it regularly  says they're sparring or perform/watching demonstrations. They are gaining experience, it just seems to be going much slower than I would expect.

[Quietust]

If they're all novices, then it'll take a while for them to train up. By comparison, I once had a pair of Legendary soldiers train a Recruit (by sparring) up to Legendary in a matter of months.

[RAKninja]

Yup, they're always in the barracks and when I check what they are doing, it regularly  says they're sparring or perform/watching demonstrations. They are gaining experience, it just seems to be going much slower than I would expect.

this is because you have novices teaching novices.... and no one has teaching or learning skills, most likely.

your first squad will take a while, but after they gain a bit of experience, you can break up that squad, and have them become the cadre for your new recruits.  i recently had a newly grown peasant (was a child born in the fort) make legendary swordsdwarf in a year or two.

granted, real combat experience is the best teacher.  catch some goblins in cage traps, disarm them, and beat them down at your leisure.  you can also send your army out against any wildlife you have wandering around  that will help, though, in all honesty, it may take a good three years or so before your first squad is really "ready".  even at low or no skill they can fight regular goblins.  lashers and marksgobbos should be avoided, as they have a habit of oneshotting even highly trained dwarves in iron or better armor.  also avoid fighting elite goblins that still have their weapons. 

just keep at it, they'll come around eventually.

or you can go the "near-exploit" way, and build a danger room.

[smips63]

If they're all novices, then it'll take a while for them to train up. By comparison, I once had a pair of Legendary soldiers train a Recruit (by sparring) up to Legendary in a matter of months.

I suppose that makes sense. Is there any benefit to making the best soldiers into the militia captains or will they learn from each other regardless of rank?

[Darkweave]

How I get my dwarves to X-masters with legendary fighting and 6-10 in other skills in ~2-3 years;

• Create squads of 10 dwarfs at a time with the metal armour (or whatever you use) uniform
• Set the barracks to allow training and sleep (Z & T) for the squad
• Set the dwarfs to train all year round with a minimum of 8
• Allow them to carry food and drink and make sure they all have backpacks and water-skins
• Set the squad to the Active/Training alert

By doing the above I reliably get axe-lords with legendary fighting fairly quickly from recruits with no military skills at all. Training starts off very slowly but soon picks up once they have around 6-10 levels in fighting and begin to gain some levels in observer/concentration/teacher/student etc. Fighting is the quickest to legendary, followed closely by weapon skills and then shield skills. Dodging/biting/kicking/striking etc. seem to take quite a while to train without actual combat experience, being only around level 6-8 after 2.5 years training. Military skills at these levels should be more than adequate to deal with any threats you encounter provided you can get them kitted out in at least bronze, preferably iron and ideally steel. It's not as if your military are supposed to be a ridiculously strong invincible force, you should expect casualties. If you don't want casualties seal yourself in or use traps. If you only have access to copper it may be worth finding alternative methods to kill any threats until you can find a way to acquire better materials.

Once you have a fairly decent number of good military dwarfs it would be useful to split them up in to separate squads to teach new recruits - their high teacher and organiser skills will help a fair bit. I'd also advise flooding your barracks to 5/7 water for a few months of the year and locking the door, swimming can be very useful if your militia commander with all legendary skills and full adamantite gear manages to dodge in to a pond.

Note: I haven't tried using smaller squads with comparable starting skills to see if smaller squads train more quickly, but I'm very happy with the results of my training method and I regularly see 2-4 members of each 10-man squad sparring.

Edit: Having the dwarves sleep in the barracks and keeping a food/drink stockpile nearby helps a lot but if they start getting too unhappy with the constant training it may be worth allowing them to sleep in their own rooms or placing some statues around.

Edit2: I haven't really tried using marksdwarfs so I can't comment on an effective method of training them. Melee squads usually function perfectly fine for me with no other defence, just make sure your dwarfs won't be charging down any long corridors towards ranged gobbos.

[Sutremaine]

Strip a goblin of their weapon and shield, give a nominated member of the squad a training weapon or light blunt weapon, and let the dwarf beat on the goblin. I had an axedwarf go from Competent to Talented on one goblin alone. Keep training up that one nominated member, and they'll be the one to organise demonstrations and improve their teaching skills.

I haven't really tried using marksdwarfs so I can't comment on an effective method of training them.

Marksdwarves will train themselves at a steady rate, but the setup can be tricky. You need an archery target for each squad member, and each archery target needs to be set for use with that squad. Then when they're inactive they'll go and plunk at the target. The second difficulty comes with bolt supply. The way bolts are assigned means that the squads higher up the list will reserve bolts even when not training, starving the lower squad of bolts if you don't have more bolts than can be assigned. My setup is this, repeated as necessary:

Code: [Select]

#=++X#

# = wall
= = ammo stockpile drawing from larger main stockpile
+ = floor
X = target

Training is done in bursts. I start with a ridiculous number of bolts and the targets turned to face the wall, and then turn the targets around and let the dwarves fire until there are no more unassigned bolts. This does not take long.

Marksdwarves can also be trained on live targets, but they need to be forced right up against fortifications before they'll shoot. Elite goblins are the best for this, though if you can get ogres they take a lot of punishment. I once set up a bunch of dwarves as far away from the cage as possible (on open ground), and the goblin blocked or dodged several dozen bolts before running through the barracks and blundering into a cage trap on the edge of the map.

[Lexx]

Also make sure you've enabled the Z Q I T options when assigning barracks. Your militia will train faster if the squad leader has the leader and teacher skills and some combat skills to teach. A good thing to try is setting their schedules to train 1 month on and 5 with no scheduled order. On the unscheduled months ( assuming you've set them all up right. ) then they aren't working they will do individual combat drills. This is what you want as it lets them practice their skills. With the active training months letting them get group demonstrations from the squad leader to broaden out and refresh their skills to stop them going rusty. Couple this with sending them to fight prisoners and kill wildlife and you wont ever need danger rooms.

Also try making all your militia do crafts like stone or bone crafting. Their agility will go up and help them be harder to kill.

[smips63]

Thanks for the advice everyone

I never noticed the "minimum of X" before... Does it mean they only train if there are X or more other dorfs training?

[Quietust]

The "minimum of X" means that, with a larger squad, you can allow some of the dwarves to go off duty. In practice, this is only necessary when ordering squads to defend a location - if you're ordering them to train, you should leave it at "minimum of 10" so the whole squad spends as much time as possible training.

[Lexx]

The "minimum of X" means that, with a larger squad, you can allow some of the dwarves to go off duty. In practice, this is only necessary when ordering squads to defend a location - if you're ordering them to train, you should leave it at "minimum of 10" so the whole squad spends as much time as possible training.

But then you can have months and months go by whilst waiting for the squad to assemble.

[Lancezh]

The "minimum of X" means that, with a larger squad, you can allow some of the dwarves to go off duty. In practice, this is only necessary when ordering squads to defend a location - if you're ordering them to train, you should leave it at "minimum of 10" so the whole squad spends as much time as possible training.

But then you can have months and months go by whilst waiting for the squad to assemble.

^This.

And their mood can drop rapidly if you're not perfectly set up food / drink, schedule wise.

[dagger]

Also there are TWO schedule screens (use the / to switch between them), one for Active/Training and the other for Inactive....I only set my soldiers to Active/Training during an attack (so they GO to predefined burrows). I just set up the Inactive schedule screen to Train......

[Sutremaine]

Also there are TWO schedule screens

To begin with. When you add an alert, you get another schedule to go with it.