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[Zeebie]

Hey folks,

I'm running my first fortress without a danger room, and I thought I'd share my experiences so far.  Given that the rate of skill increase from drill and demonstration is so slow, the only option I could see was to get my soldiers practice by fighting captured animals and enemies.  My dueling arrangement is pretty simple: put cages in a room, connect to a lever, lock the militia in.  This plan has a number of consequences:

* You need lots of cage traps.  I allow myself three traps at my entrance, and then a few scattered around the map in strategic locations. The goal is to get lots of victims without making sieges too easy.

* To maximize experience, dueling soldiers use training weapons.  This leads to a bias towards swords, spears, and axes because there are training weapons available.  Managing training weapons vs real weapons (to prevent attachment) becomes a mini-game unto itself.  Some animals provide almost too much practice - it takes hundreds of pages of combat logs to kill a giant badger (I'm not sure exactly how many, the early reports start expiring - you don't want to know how long the giant moose took).  Soldiers getting hungry and thirsty during a session becomes a real problem.

* I've found that soldiers start sparring at level 4 fighter.  Does that match with other folks' experience? I have found that small squads seem to work better, but I'm not sure why. I suspect it is natural selection - the lower skilled dwarfs die off, and the remaining ones are high enough level to spar.  Once sparring starts, skill levels ramp up fairly quickly. I have two soldiers with legendary fighting after two years of training. But there will be lots of dwarf corpses before then.

* Big differences from danger room trainees is offense/defense - those who come out of a DR have very high defense, those who train through sparring and dueling have much better offense than defense (my legendary fighters still have very low dodge).

Overall it has worked out better than I anticipated.  There is now a really big difference between veterans and newb soldiers, which I like. However, there is a long ramp-up period of rapidly dying soldiers before anyone is good enough to survive. Hope for good migrants!  How does all this compare to your experiences? 

[Tevish Szat]

Overall, I think I'll take the more wasteful training of using combat weapons over accidentally getting training weapons hauled into combat.  After all, there's little that can't be solved by sacrificing more victims to the cause.

[King DZA]

Very interesting. You're definitely for more efficiency focused than me at training soldiers, so kudos to you.

My dwarves pretty much gain all their experience from training in the barracks and live combat with attacking forces. I've never taken the time to monitor their experience gain very closely.

[Loud Whispers]

Very interesting. You're definitely for more efficiency focused than me at training soldiers, so kudos to you.

My dwarves pretty much gain all their experience from training in the barracks and live combat with attacking forces. I've never taken the time to monitor their experience gain very closely.

Really? Obsessing over the way a dwarf dies is one of the greater pleasures of Dwarf Fortress.

[King DZA]

Very interesting. You're definitely for more efficiency focused than me at training soldiers, so kudos to you.

My dwarves pretty much gain all their experience from training in the barracks and live combat with attacking forces. I've never taken the time to monitor their experience gain very closely.

Really? Obsessing over the way a dwarf dies is one of the greater pleasures of Dwarf Fortress.

Oh, I definitely love combat reports and such, and watching a dwarf slowly make their way from novice wrestler to legendary harbinger of death adds an amazing amount of depth to the game.

What I meant was that I don't take the time to be very efficient with training my dwarves. I have no idea how much EXP a dwarf gets while sparring compared to watching demonstrations, nor do I put very much effort into maximizing training efficiency at all. It's pretty much, "here's a weapon and some armor, go play in the barracks til something tries to kill us".

[Diamond]

I just train my soldier with real weapons in barracks and send them out to fight sieges, nothing more than that. DF mod sends you weak and numerous enemies at the beginning, so unless you miss your chance you will have easy experience. Also, I can confirm (though it is said in wiki, but common knowledge is otherwise) that real weapons are not dangerous for training at all. Not a single sparring-related injury for 15 years, so there is no point in using training weapons in training, other than beating up enemies on arena with them.

I just leave mah dorfs training on 2 month training/1 month rest schedule, and trow into the training barracks any enemies (snatchers, thieves, animals) that I managed to catch in cages. Other then that, I don't pay attention to training, only to results. I check kill lists and experience levels to give my dwarves military ranks and titles after battles.

[Korva]

Practice weapons don't cause training injuries, but I think Diamond uses them to get longer battles and thus more skill increases against captured enemies.

Many smaller squads train more efficiently than a few big squads because sparring is the best practice method, and only two dwarves can spar in any given squad. If you have 2 squads of 10, you get 4 dwarves sparring. If you have 5 squads of 4, that's 10 dwarves sparring.

[Loud Whispers]

Practice weapons don't cause training injuries, but I think Diamond uses them to get longer battles and thus more skill increases against captured enemies.

Many smaller squads train more efficiently than a few big squads because sparring is the best practice method, and only two dwarves can spar in any given squad. If you have 2 squads of 10, you get 4 dwarves sparring. If you have 5 squads of 4, that's 10 dwarves sparring.

Or 4 squads of 3, and 2 of 4, and you get 6 possible dwarves sparring, without unhappy thoughts.

[SpiralDimentia]

I only ever have 1 squad training, year round. I've had 4 dwarves in 1 squad sparring, so I think you can have more than two per squad sparring. Nor have I ever used danger rooms, them training year round is sufficient by a long shot. As long as I give them some armor, they're fine. I've had 1 fresh recruit smack 4 swordgobs around with a crossbow, until he managed to kill two and chase the third while the forth got away. Danger rooms are just overkill.

[Sutremaine]

I've found that dwarves who start out with no weapon / shield / armour train up dodging fairly quickly. I brought a Skilled dwarf on one embark, and it took about two seasons to pass that skill onto the rest of the military. Perhaps it would be worth keeping two dwarves with no weapon or shield skill (I don't know at the moment whether armour can negate the need for dodging the way a shield does), and using them purely as teachers. Or rather, using one of them as a teacher and letting the other train their teaching on the job, since most of my squad leaders have disproportionately high Teacher and low Student skill.

I've had 4 dwarves in 1 squad sparring, so I think you can have more than two per squad sparring.

What, you're still not sure?

[thistleknot]

instead of levers/cages, try digging a channel in your barracks (1x1), and assign a pit/pond over it.  Then add a caged creature to it.  A Dorf will drop the creature into the pit from the cage.  No need for levers/mechanisms.

[Zeebie]

instead of levers/cages, try digging a channel in your barracks (1x1), and assign a pit/pond over it.  Then add a caged creature to it.  A Dorf will drop the creature into the pit from the cage.  No need for levers/mechanisms.

I've thought about doing this, but can't creatures escape in the process?  I'd rather not have a giant badger running loose through the fortress.

[Diamond]

instead of levers/cages, try digging a channel in your barracks (1x1), and assign a pit/pond over it.  Then add a caged creature to it.  A Dorf will drop the creature into the pit from the cage.  No need for levers/mechanisms.

I've thought about doing this, but can't creatures escape in the process?  I'd rather not have a giant badger running loose through the fortress.

I put up cages with captured enemies along the walls of training barracks,  stairs up somewhere inside barracks and hole in the roof and set that hole as pit to throw enemies. Basically, if somebody tries to run, they will have to run through barracks filled with training soldiers and meet their destiny anyway. But for what I noticed chance of escaping is really low, even when ordering to dump all enemies (I have about 10 cage traps, so its about 6-8 per one order) at once.

[Mickey Blue]

Sounds like a good plan and similar to what I do (I don't use danger rooms either).  Finding a balance between a few traps to capture enemies while at the same time not too many traps rendering 'easy mode' is good (I wish traps would get redone so they weren't quite so perfect).

Overall sounds like some good lessons on how to properly use the military, congrats.

Generally I break my military up into five general groups:

(in no particular order)

1) Slashing Weapons: Swords, axes, etc

2) Pericing weapons: Spears

3) Blunt Weapons: Hammers, maces, etc

4) Ranged weapons: crossbows

5) Fodder: they get to choose any melee weapon they want

The first four are cultivated to have the best dwarves for the job, checking what skills migrants come with and such.  I try to have them in multiple smaller groups (not only helps for training but helps to allow more variability in how you set them up pre-siege).  When the enemies come I place my ranged dwarves either on top of something (a wall or a building) or behind my skilled melee dwarves (the first three categories).  I place my fodder dwarves in front; they are basically just extra dwarves I have who aren't really needed.  They aren't given any special training, are generally kept in groups of ten and serve to absorb attacks and arrows and things. 

I've found this to be a pretty successful setup for surviving using only the military to defend myself (I sometimes don't build walls and I never wall myself in or use traps (aside from a small amount of cage traps just to get prisoners), nor do I use danger rooms or anything like that. 

[khearn]

instead of levers/cages, try digging a channel in your barracks (1x1), and assign a pit/pond over it.  Then add a caged creature to it.  A Dorf will drop the creature into the pit from the cage.  No need for levers/mechanisms.

Digging a 1x1 channel leaves a ramp in the bottom so the creature would climb out. Sending a miner down to remove the ramp will trap the miner. Ok, you could have the miner tunnel out in the lower level, then have a mason come back and wall up the tunnel to make a 1x1 pit, but it's not as easy as digging a 1x1 channel. So I suspect you haven't actually tried this.

Also, a dwarf will reliably pit goblin soldiers, but goblin thieves and many dangerous animals will escape, even if the cage is right next to the pit. So again, I suspect you haven't actually tried this.

I use mass pitting to drop disarmed goblin soldiers into my "live training" room for my soldiers to get practice. But for thieves and mounts I always build the cages in the raining room and link them to a lever.