Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Agent_Irons]

I'm playing a modded version, and I'm pretty sure my dwarves have military learn rates turned way down. I have about a dozen kills on each of my military, and there's pretty high turnover. Mostly crundles, but the rare cave blob/reacher/giant olm/voracious cave crawler/forgotten beast.

They're not yet above competent, IIRC.

[Mushroo]

This works pretty well for me:

Embark with 1 trained military teacher. This dwarf is the "badger killer" for the first couple of seasons.
When the migrants start to arrive, I recruit the two best fighters into a 3-dwarf squad set to train non-stop with the teacher.
After about a year I split the squad into three, the former students now become teachers of their own squad. Recruit migrants with actual fighting skills.

Within 2-3 years I have 9 outstanding soldiers, this is usually enough. (Military is not my first line of defense, they are for slaying FB's and mopping up wounded goblins that make it through the trap hallway.)

Also I usually have 2-3 hunters patrolling the surface and caves. They are a good first line of defense and can be drafted as an emergency marksdwarf squad if necessary.

The biggest mistake new players make IMHO is recruiting flimsy, clumsy cheesemakers with no fighting skills as their military. Better to recruit one competent fighter than six non-fighters IMHO.

[RAKninja]

here is a thread created recently with good answers -

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89580.0

[thegoatgod_pan]

Man, dangerroom leave confusing disagreement in the community. Some people apparently purposefully remove shields from their danger room dwarves to train weapons (why?!! dwarves parry as much as they shield block, and in my experience all the skills hit legendary in sequence and quickly in the following order--fighter-shield--weapon--dodger). To those that say only a leather robe will do to keep civilians safe,I have a cemetery that proves otherwise--toes break and get infected, ribs break and pierce hearts, brains get torn, etc, helms gauntlets, boots, shields, low quality spears--still stand by it. Also love the suggestions of A. putting the lever in the danger room (again, why!!?) and putting an artifact admantine spike in there (that one was probably a joke). 

Besides if your dwarves are sparring, you are prob doing everything right

[TheeBaconman]

Man, dangerroom leave confusing disagreement in the community. Some people apparently purposefully remove shields from their danger room dwarves to train weapons (why?!! dwarves parry as much as they shield block, and in my experience all the skills hit legendary in sequence and quickly in the following order--fighter-shield--weapon--dodger). To those that say only a leather robe will do to keep civilians safe,I have a cemetery that proves otherwise--toes break and get infected, ribs break and pierce hearts, brains get torn, etc, helms gauntlets, boots, shields, low quality spears--still stand by it.

Experiences may vary. My adult civvies don't usually die when my carpenter makes the training spears (one recent fatality though, which also may have been from an accidental real spear). And removing the shield got my military to stop blocking with a shield 90% of the time, then armor and weapon skill shot right up.

[AllThingsLive]

Interesting, I guess I know what I've done wrong. My militia commander was the only migrant I got with some military skill, adequate fighting. Nothing else. He's the one that's trained up all my swordsdwarves so far. They have decent fighting now, but still suck with swords, and my axedwarves have not a soul to teach them... Well, I guess I know what to do with those extra embark points nextime, level up a dwarf to be a good teacher/sword or axedwarf/shield user/etc...

[Shootandrun]

You may wish to give them their adamantine armor before they go in - it doesn't take long for a dwarf to start getting attached to his or her equipment in a danger room.

If it's training spears, then Iron should do. The most important part is to completely cover them - if that's done, they'll have a few bruises at worst.

[dhawk]

You may wish to give them their adamantine armor before they go in - it doesn't take long for a dwarf to start getting attached to his or her equipment in a danger room.

If it's training spears, then Iron should do. The most important part is to completely cover them - if that's done, they'll have a few bruises at worst.

I'm sure he meant that the dwarves will grow attached to crappy weapons/armor and you will have a hard time to get them to wear steel/addy.

[Urist Imiknorris]

You may wish to give them their adamantine armor before they go in - it doesn't take long for a dwarf to start getting attached to his or her equipment in a danger room.

If it's training spears, then Iron should do. The most important part is to completely cover them - if that's done, they'll have a few bruises at worst.

I'm sure he meant that the dwarves will grow attached to crappy weapons/armor and you will have a hard time to get them to wear steel/addy.

Exactly.