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[stormtemplar]

The title says it. When I draft units from the peasantry who have no skills, they don't train near fast enough to survive attacks. Using only dwarfs who have skill is also problematic, since it requires in many cases losing useful dwarfs to the militia and even then I have very few soldiers. What do I do?

[Lectorog]

You can use your miners. Mining is the same skill as combat pick-using, and picks are effective weapons.

Your soldiers would probably train up faster from mining, if that's the weapon you use, than from training. They wouldn't train anything else, though, like dodging or armor use.

[Fallen Flame]

Seal off your fort from the outside.

If you want to defend it with military I would give them an arena to fight prisoners in, if they have training weapons they can get quite a bit of experience from the enemy before they are killed.

[Darkweave]

Training squads of 3-6 from no skills at all to Axelords with legendary fighting and around level 5-9 in shields and dodging only takes about a year to a year and a half if you know how to set them up properly. Make some wooden bucklers and training axes and set a few dwarfs loose on eachother in the first couple of seasons and by the time you get your first ambush you should be well placed to deal with it. Having a bunch of trained war dogs can help. They won't be that effective themselves but make good meat-shields. If you can't make steel, iron or bronze do something interesting like creating a drowning chamber, death pit or a very long entrance with a tonne of ballista at one end. You don't have to restrict yourself to not using traps, just make five or six cage traps at your entrance and use the prisoners for training purposes.

[kyle902]

I personally use mass pitting arenas to drop loads of unarmed gobbos and trolls versus my military. It trains them up pretty fast.

[zehive]

My last fort I made good use of long hallways, fortifications, doors and ballistae.

Basically, every straight line of pith had 2 ballistae aiming down each end. Fortifications were carved into the walls for marksdorfs to fire at approaching enemies. I made it all split and twist and turn, but in a very efficient and organized way. No enemy saw the inside of the fort.

Until I forgot to realize that I had two flying forgotten beasts in my caverns, who were able to fly up to the stairs and kill everything inside.

[RenoFox]

How do you train Axelords so fast? For me it takes several years to get recruits into adequate levels, even with 2/3rds of months in training.

Pump operating is a good way to increase militia's physical stats, if you're going for maximum efficiency.

[kyle902]

1. Make barracks out of solid gold
2. Train all month every month.
3.
4. Profit.

[SenorOcho]

How are you currently trying to defend your fortress?  Is there a fortress at all?  Do you have ranged support?

[Saladman]

Are these peasants only?  They're slower figuring things out on their own.  Consider embarking with something like a teacher 4 - fighter 3 - dodger 3, turning on woodcutting or mining (probably mining) until you need him, then making him the captain when drafting the peasants.  You'll have to turn off woodcutting and mining before you draft him though, it's buggy if those are active on military dorfs.  Similarly, if you do luck into any skilled military immigrants mix those into the unskilled squads.

If I understand Darkweave's post, he's starting a small squad by the end of the second season, correct?  And presumably splitting it later to captain new squads?  Do you start with skilled dorfs, or does that timeline work even with peasants?

[franti]

If you're not danger rooming, use spears. They're much more effective in the hands of a low-skill soldier than other weapons.

[stormtemplar]

Is there anything I can do to make the guys spar more? I set them up to train with 1-2 less than the squad size, set up a barracks and have weapons, but they only do demonstrations and individual drills.

[franti]

Is there anything I can do to make the guys spar more? I set them up to train with 1-2 less than the squad size, set up a barracks and have weapons, but they only do demonstrations and individual drills.

I think personality determines how they train. I had a goblin fort once, and all they ever did was spar.
I got 4 legendary Macemen in a year.

[IT 000]

I believe they will only teach if they have a certain skill level. And they will only do individual combat drills when there is no one else to spar with. Not that that's a bad thing. Sparring provides better skill gains IIRC as dwarves use their weapons, armor, shields, and dodging abilities.

[krenshala]

From my experience, noobs with zero skill in a squad of 4 to 6 will train to level 6 (+/- 2) in their weapon in 9 months of dedicated training at a barracks (not a danger room).  This is with either a training or "real" weapon, and wooden shields.  The fighter skill is usually about twice the weapon skill for the same time frame of training.   I was able to annihilate an elven ambush (16 spear-elves) with four unarmored dwarves using copper weapons that were trained this way (1 year old fort).  I had a bit more trouble the following spring when 8 armored dwarves battled two ambush squads of elves and an couple squads of goblins at the same time ... I had a recruit killed by a random opening shot to the face and another recruit that was beat to death over an extended time while the other six dwarves killed over half the invaders (all but four elves and about half the gobos, iirc) and ran off the rest.