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[AllThingsLive]

Okay, in all my posts so far I've said this and I'll say it again, I'm sort of new to this game still, so if I'm missing something that only a noob and/or scrub would miss, well, that explanation answers itself. So, I've been training a squad of 10 swordsdwarves all year round for 2 years, 8 out of 10 minimum dwarves training at a time, and the best one is a competent swordsdwarf. Admittedly, I've gone through and replaced about 6 of them over the years, but the one who has the highest level is the one that's been there the whole time. So what gives? Surely they should be training faster than this, I mean, they're in there all the time! Is the squad too big? Should I have it set to 9 at a time should be training? I don't know what the problem is, but then again, there isn't much I do know about. So I guess the real question is, how can I maximize the amount of weapon skill gain my dwarves achieve in the shortest amount of time?

[TheeBaconman]

The quickest way, which should take around an ingame month is a danger room. (But your training schedule is alright, squad size doesn't really matter).

A Danger room is the quickest way. A room filled with traps, Upright Spikes, filled with training spears.
 Press b-T-S <--how to get to the Upright Spikes

Have your carpenter make loads of training spears, and have your mechanic make mechanisms. Put the training spears into the trap, 3 per trap should be fine. Then connect every one of those traps to one lever in your meeting area, or an area heavily populated with dwarves at all times.

Once the Upright spears are connected to the lever, tell someone to pull the lever and put it on repeat

And when dwarves train, they might not train their weapon skills all the time. They do armor/dodging/striking (punching)/biting/etc. demonstrations when they want to.

Non-combat is the slowest way to train, sending out your squad to beat up the local wildlife is a faster way. That is, if the creatures won't run too fast....or kill.

EDIT: When you make the danger room, mine out two tiles connecting to that room. Place a door and an armor stand. The door should seperate the armor stand, and then you forbid passage (looking at the door with 'q' will give you the option). Designate the armor stand as a barracks and set the squad(s) to train there. This guarantees that they are training on the training spears and not dodging out of them.

Finally. If you have a lot of animals or children with that squad, be prepared to lose them. Danger rooms are also the final solution to animals, and babies. To retrieve the bodies, you will have to stop pulling the lever too.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

First of all, you'll want to make sure that your dwarves actually ARE training.  You might have the schedule under the wrong alert, or you might not have a barracks designated for them to train at.  How do they show up on your units list?  What are the actual activities they're currently engaged in?

Second, a squad full of dabblers trains very slowly.  They keep trying to teach each other things, even though they're no good at fighting, no good at teaching, and no good at learning, and that leads to slow progress.  Could be that all those dabbling kicking demonstrations are doing more harm than good, by preventing good sparring.

So how do you train up your first squad?  Combat.  That could be a danger room (cheap as it may be), an arena (almost as cheap), risking their lives on the field, or sparring.

I'm not totally sure on how to get your dwarves to spar rather than go to demonstrations.  I believe that a relatively smaller barracks helps.  I also believe smaller class sizes and lots of idle time for your military helps.  Sure, the procrastinators won't spar, they'll only ever attend classes, but you'll find a few dwarves getting skilled more quickly.

Once you have a couple of really skilled dwarves in a squad, the demonstrations will be much more effective, because they'll actually have some knowledge to share-- and then they'll become better teachers, and their squadmates will become better students as they become better fighters, and will eventually even become good teachers as well.  Once it's time for your next squad, distribute the really good teachers evenly through the squads, and you'll see the second squad trains up much faster than the first ever did.  Then-- guard your teachers' lives carefully

This can go a lot faster, I've discovered, by starting out with one or more proficient teacher military dwarves.  It can also work in conjunction with other methods, if it makes it feel less cheap-- give a good teacher a wooden crossbow sans bolts and a trapped unarmed goblin to wail on, and he'll become a near legendary hammerdwarf fairly quickly, and then he'll be able to train the other members of his squad that much faster.

[thegoatgod_pan]

All of the above is great advice except I'd add a few notes on danger rooms:

I would not follow the advice above when it comes to making the training spears--emphatically do NOT have your carpenter make them. Have a peasant, a soldier anyone who basically knows nothing about carpentry--not even new, literally nothing.  The reason for this is that better quality training spears will impale your dwarves to death.  The idea for the danger room is simple--make a lethal trap non lethal to break the normal limits on having traps affect your dwarves--as a result using actual spears, upright wooden spikes or high quality training spears will lead to numerous fatalities.

On that note--never, ever allow your dwarves into a danger room without metal boots, metal gauntlets and a shield (or better yet 3-5 shields--there are no limits to how many shields you can assign to dwarf and they will all try to block each attack--exploity but no too exploity)  Same goes for cloaks: 3-5 are always helpful.

Finally, danger rooms are cheap and make the army far too proficient--you are doing good--I wouldn't rotate troops in and out of the army, if more good soldiers show, make another squad for them, I also use 7/10 training schedules and for me they usually start sparring after about a year (make sure they aren't, if they are a little blue (s) will appear under the combat report red (c)).  Sparring levels them up very quickly. Last but not least post what they are actually doing--if it is a lot of "individual training exercize" then they are just building up skills, but if one is doing demonstrations and the others watching its probably good--dwarves do demonstrations until the skills even out across the unit--when everyone is about even that's when sparring starts.

[TantrumTime]

This is unconfirmed, but I remember reading that only 2 dwarfs in a squad can spar at once. Try making a bunch of 2 dwarf squads, set to train constantly, and see if that improves training speed.

[TheeBaconman]

This is unconfirmed, but I remember reading that only 2 dwarfs in a squad can spar at once. Try making a bunch of 2 dwarf squads, set to train constantly, and see if that improves training speed.

I checked my squads in training just now, one squad has at least 4 of its people sparring.

[AllThingsLive]

Interesting, I had heard of the infamous "Danger room" but always read about having all these pressure plates and crap hooked up to it... putting a lever in there with Pull on repeat is so much simpler!
Also, yeah, my dwarves are sparring, demonstrating, and doing individual training, but none of that seems to be leveling them up too quick. I'll give the danger room a try, and I'll have to crank out some adamantine armor real quick.
Thanks for the help all of you!

[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.

[TheeBaconman]

Interesting, I had heard of the infamous "Danger room" but always read about having all these pressure plates and crap hooked up to it... putting a lever in there with Pull on repeat is so much simpler!
Also, yeah, my dwarves are sparring, demonstrating, and doing individual training, but none of that seems to be leveling them up too quick. I'll give the danger room a try, and I'll have to crank out some adamantine armor real quick.
Thanks for the help all of you!

Also, when danger rooming. They will probably level up their shield skills first and use nothing else to block the training spears, hogging experience. When they become legendary in shield skill, unequip shields and let them level up their weapon and armor abilities.

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.

And for that matter, be careful how much you mine. And how close the stairs, to your fort, are.

[AllThingsLive]

Haha, I just noticed that I had an adamantine artifact spike, maybe I should chuck that into my danger room, lol
It has a value of 2760000☼ UristDollars by the way, I'm not sure if that impacts its effectiveness.

[Agent_Irons]

Haha, I just noticed that I had an adamantine artifact spike, maybe I should chuck that into my danger room, lol
It has a value of 2760000☼ UristDollars by the way, I'm not sure if that impacts its effectiveness.

Artifacts will train your dwarves so quickly they'll break through the boundary between this life and the next. It's really impressive.

I've used masterwork training spears in a danger room before without incident. I always got "the spinning masterwork wooden training spear hits the speardwarf in the upper right leg, but the attack is deflected by his (pig tail trousers)" and suchlike.

[Berserkenstein]

It doesn't matter the quality of the training spears, nor really the armor.  All they need are a leather robe and they are fine.  I've seen countless peasant dwarves walk in the danger room to remove impaled babies and they come out unharmed.

[Darkweave]

From a similar thread in the gameplay questions forum:

How I get my dwarves to X-masters/lords 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.

Danger rooms really aren't necessary at all if you know how to set the military up properly. They are certainly effective but they take a lot of fun out of the game.

[dwarfhoplite]

I trained my soldiers without danger rooms and they trained way too quick. my cannon fodder squad became legendary between the sieges

[Lexx]

1 month active training 5 months no scheduled order. Have a squad leader that has the teacher skill and combat skills. Set the squad training number to 2/3 of the squad total number. Pick dwarfs that have the student skill or quick to heal trait. Make sure the barracks have Z Q I T assigned to that squad. When they aren't group training to refresh lesser used skills they will do individual combat drills. This is the most productive training they can do outside of live targets to practice on. Also make them do crafts that make them more effective like hauling for strength or crafts for agility. Once properly equipped with armor and weapons they will train at a good rate and danger rooms wont be necessary. They're good though if you want a lazy option.