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[Chelicerate]

I've grown used to getting a fortress to be self sufficient, except for the whole 'military' side of things. Can make a small militia, but rarely do i get a force trained enough to fight off seiges. I've decided to force myself to learn how to do this the way i learned Dwarf Fortess: Crash course. My challenge: At least half of the fortress must be in the military. The military dwarves are not allowed to have civilian jobs. Anything that is not a dwarf must die. Use traps in moderation, and only traps that must be reloaded.

I'd like three of my initial seven to be in the military right at the start, in full steel armor/weapons, though iron and bronze will do fine too. My issue is thus: What should my four civilian dwarves have for starting skills? And what should i bring with me?

My thought is about thirty to fourty wood, some food, seeds, egg laying animals, and beer, to be able to get things up and running fast. One miner, one farmer/brewer/butcher, one woodcutter and a bookkeeper/manager/broker.

Any suggestions/tweaks?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Miner, miner, grower, weaponsmith/armorsmith. You can train the miners from scratch if you want to save points. Bring as much cassiterite, malachite (or copper nuggets, but not tetrahedrite unless it's all your civ has), and bituminous coal (at a 2:2:3 ratio) as you can afford after food, booze, a piece of charcoal, a piece of rock and an anvil.

Then have your planter set up a smelter and do this:

Make coke from bituminous coal
Make bronze bars (ore)   R
Make coke from bituminous coal   R


Make the first two bronze bars into picks, start digging, and make the rest into weapons and armor.

[EddyP]

You're going about solving the problem the wrong way. Half the fortress in the military isn't necessary - 20 carefully chosen dwarves with good equipment can beat off most anything. Only use strong, fast, tough dwarves for the military. Check each migrant as they come in and assign any promising ones to the military, regardless of their military skills, unless they have a very useful civilian skill.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Only use strong, fast, tough dwarves for the military.

They can be made strong, fast, and tough with military practice. The thing you really want is dwarves that are fast to heal, because that attribute can't be raised ever by any means except maybe Runesmith.

[Sutremaine]

They can be made strong, fast, and tough with military practice.

To a certain extent. From the creature tokens section of the wiki:

PHYS_ATT_CAP_PERC / MENT_APP_CAP_PERC: Default is 200. This means you can increase your attribute to 200% of its starting value (or the average value + your starting value if that is higher).

[Chelicerate]

Will keep all this in mind. Thank you all.

[Corneria]

They can be made strong, fast, and tough with military practice.

To a certain extent. From the creature tokens section of the wiki:

PHYS_ATT_CAP_PERC / MENT_APP_CAP_PERC: Default is 200. This means you can increase your attribute to 200% of its starting value (or the average value + your starting value if that is higher).

Soldiers trained naturally rarely if ever reach their caps. Even some of my adventures who I macro'd up to legendary in basically everything hadn't reached their caps yet.

[Mazonas]

I pick dwarves with the best military attributes - strength, agility etc for my melee grunts, and then siphon through all of them for the best healers.  Although strength etc can be improved through training, I find it effective to give them the best possible head start.  If you pick 3 of your starters for  military, give them decent teaching skills and once your fortress is large enough and they are awesome enough through training together, make each one the captain of his own squad. 

What with immigrants turning up so quickly, I tend to make 5 of my starting 7 miners with battle skills and set them as my first squad.  Expedition leader gets temporary duties as mason, farmer or whatever is needed to set up the basic fort, and the remaining dorf is my head medic.

[Daywalkah]

I pick useless dwarves and throw them into the military with little to no equipment and have them train year round. I have fended off an entire siege with 5 Swordmasters that had low quality armor (leather or copper, some bronze). Either pure luck or my dwarves are awesome. I would have used the rest of my military, but they were still picking up regular weapons as the siege conveniently spawned next to my patrolling squad.

In other words, I don't think outfitting your army with full steel and having the strongest dwarves in the military is really necessary. I ignore the stats of the dwarves and just put them in the military. They build their strength and skill so they don't really need the best armor. So a squad of swordsmen, spearmen, axemen, and 2 marksmen squads, all with 5 dwarves, is more than you really need. That's my usual setup anyway.

EDIT:

I embark with:
2 Miners/Masons/Engravers
1 All around Doctor
1 Noble (Leader so he has a high chance at Expedition Leader, Record Keeper, Manager)
1 Militia Commander (Teacher, Swordsdwarf, and other military skills)
1 Carpenter/Wood Cutter
1 Proficient Grower/ Brewer

My forts have never fallen to anything militaristic. Except when a really good soldier goes berserk...*shudders

[Mushroo]

You're doing it wrong. Instead of recruiting a huge number of useless dwarves as your military, be selective! A small force (10% of your population is a good guideline) of Legendary soldiers is plenty. Choose migrants that already have military experience and/or desirable attributes and use small squads training constantly. Plus OF COURSE embark with a highly-trained military dwarf with the teacher skill.

To answer your specific question "what should I train my non-military starting 7 in?" I would argue that mechanic, butcher, armorsmithing, and weaponsmithing are all very important to a military-themed fort. Miner can be trained "on the job." Personally I like cooking because it is the easiest way to get high value, which means trading with the caravan for armor/weapons/etc. A specialized cook and abundant food source should allow you to buy the entire first caravan.

Honorable mention to ambushers. They get a free crossbow/quiver/bolts and will make good marksdwarves eventually.

[franti]

I use a two-tier system.

1st Tier military dwarves train year-round and are heavily armoured. They make up less than 5% of my fort. They're either Macedwarves armed with Morningstars or Axedwarves armed with Halberds. I like these two because of the wide range of wounds they can inflict.
Helm, Face Mask, Mail Shirt, Breastplate, Gauntlets, Mail Leggings, Low Boots (current world only), Buckler, Weapon, Leather Vest, Leather Cloak, Leather Hood. I use bucklers because they're lighter and, I think, more effective as a weapon. These dwarves can dodge/block most attacks, regardless of the shield size.

2nd Tier military dwarves are, basically, dwarves put in a military squad so they can carry weapons around for self-defense. They normally have a Mail Shirt, Helm, Shield, and Spear. I ALWAYS give them spears because that's the most effective weapon in the hands of a poorly-trained dwarf due to the high penetration. Dwarves that already carry weapons (Miners, Woodcutters, Hunters) aren't placed in a squad.

I put a lot more effort into equipting the 1st Tier dwarves: I'll dig down 40z-levels for marble and level the entire cavern for wood to make charcoal and Steel, but 2nd Tier dwarves get Iron at best, and Bronze Shields if it's avaliable (Bronze is arguably the best blunt material due to the good density and the toughness. Silver is too weak, although it is heavy).

I always embark with 2 Miners, 2 Masons, a Doctor, a Mechanic, and a Stonecrafter. The stonecrafter makes goods year-round to buy out the carvans.

Also, I'm currently playing a Goblin Fortress, and the best combination of weapons/armour seems to be massive shock-squads of lashers that disable the enemy while the well-trained, well-armoured Scimitar squads finish them off. All supported by War Trolls, of course. I added Brass as a weapon material, and it isn't too bad. It's 8th out of all metals in regards to cutting power, and makes better armour than bronze (arena testing).

Finally, when playing as a dwarf, I always try to capture Naked Mole Dogs and train them for war. They're superior to Dogs in a fight.

[warwizard]

ok the rest have talked about skills and equipment, I'll talk about items:

  Booze costs 2 per unit, plump helmets cost 4 per unit but makes 5 booze, worth 10, and come in stacks of 5 for 20 embark points. Build a still, and a craftwarf workshop, make rock pots on repeat and brew the plump helmets, putting 25 booze per pot (if you are embarking somewhere you do not expect stone to be available, bring common stone at 3 each) 200 booze made this way costs all of 160 (184 with rocks/wood) embark points instead of 400, and you do not need to bring any plump helmet spawn, you'll have 80 or more of them from the booze operation.
Bring no meat, no other plants, but do bring milk, each unit of milk costs 1 and can be made into cheese, halving your food costs, these come in stacks of 10, with a barrell.
As a previous poster pointed out, no need to bring picks or axes, just an anvil and some copper ore/tetrahedrite ore and 2 fuel for 12 to 15 embark points per pick or axe., be sure to bring a fire safe rock or 3... (smelter, ashery, metalsmithy). bring extra ores for ammunition
Bring egg layers and 1 bag of sand and 1 fuel per egg layer to make some green glass nest boxes, and shortly you will have a lot of eggs, make egg and cheese and plump helmet spawn roasts (forbid enough spawn for planting season), and you will have all the food you need for a good long while. the previous should free up enough embark points (about 350-400) for some decent items, unless you want to bring some steel ingots and make your own, if one of the iron ores is available on embark, as well as flux then you can make your own steel at 75 points for two steel bars instead of 150 per bar. (remember a breastplate takes 3 bars). Make sure you forbid your flux when making the pots for the brewing operation, or you will get marble pots instead of steel.

[franti]

^ good advice
Also, get rid of the Pig Tail Fiber Thread/Cloth/Rope and use Cave Spider Slik: it's half as expensive.

[Urist Imiknorris]

^ good advice
Also, get rid of the Pig Tail Fiber Thread/Cloth/Rope and use Cave Spider Slik: it's half as expensive.

You can get or make all the medical supplies pretty easily. Armor and killsticks are more important and limited by what metals you have on your map.

ok the rest have talked about skills and equipment, I'll talk about items:

  Booze costs 2 per unit, plump helmets cost 4 per unit but makes 5 booze, worth 10, and come in stacks of 5 for 20 embark points. Build a still, and a craftwarf workshop, make rock pots on repeat and brew the plump helmets, putting 25 booze per pot (if you are embarking somewhere you do not expect stone to be available, bring common stone at 3 each) 200 booze made this way costs all of 160 (184 with rocks/wood) embark points instead of 400, and you do not need to bring any plump helmet spawn, you'll have 80 or more of them from the booze operation.
Bring no meat, no other plants, but do bring milk, each unit of milk costs 1 and can be made into cheese, halving your food costs, these come in stacks of 10, with a barrell.
As a previous poster pointed out, no need to bring picks or axes, just an anvil and some copper ore/tetrahedrite ore and 2 fuel for 12 to 15 embark points per pick or axe., be sure to bring a fire safe rock or 3... (smelter, ashery, metalsmithy). bring extra ores for ammunition
Bring egg layers and 1 bag of sand and 1 fuel per egg layer to make some green glass nest boxes, and shortly you will have a lot of eggs, make egg and cheese and plump helmet spawn roasts (forbid enough spawn for planting season), and you will have all the food you need for a good long while. the previous should free up enough embark points (about 350-400) for some decent items, unless you want to bring some steel ingots and make your own, if one of the iron ores is available on embark, as well as flux then you can make your own steel at 75 points for two steel bars instead of 150 per bar. (remember a breastplate takes 3 bars). Make sure you forbid your flux when making the pots for the brewing operation, or you will get marble pots instead of steel.

a) Bringing a copper ore and cassiterite will save you fuel (if you make the bronze from ore) and get you a slightly better material for making gear out of. Bringing a lot of it saves you most of the cost of starting armor for the soldiers.

b) Make a carpenter's workshop out of wood from the wagon and make a wooden training axe. Then cut trees and make wooden nest boxes.

c) You only need 1 fire-safe building material - you can make it into a wood furnace and burn trees into ash, which is a fire-safe building mat.

d) All metal items take 1 bar to make.

[thegoatgod_pan]

My best bit of cheap build advice--wooden shields are every bit as good as other shields at all tasks except bashing.  Make dozens of them and give each dwarf 4-5.  You might not even need armor.