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[Urist Da Vinci]

In response to a question that came up in another thread about what military skills were good to embark with, I decided to do some science on the Teacher skill. This skill is used during dwarven military training demonstrations and makes the lesson more effective. In addition to the skill being taught, the participants also gain points in the Student and Teacher skills.

I embarked with a mason/expedition leader, 6 military dwarves, some stone and a lot of food/booze. The military dwarves were all Proficient Teachers and Proficient in a different useful combat skill (Dodging, Armor User, Shield User, etc.). A weapon rack was set up as a barracks and training of the 6 commenced. By the time the first migrant wave arrived in the summer, all 6 were "Skilled" or "Proficient" in all of eachother's combat skills. All 6 were also at least "Talented" in Teaching. I didn't continue the experiment but I think that an interesting military could be created this way:

1. Embark with up to 6 military teachers and at least 1 nonmilitary dwarf. Set up a cosy hole-in-the-ground and start fighting training. Rely just on food/drink from the wagon and what the 1 dwarf can plant.
2. When migrants arrive, get them to do crafts or farming. Continue training the military.
3. Once your military dwarves are sufficiently trained and have eachother's skills, make them into squad leaders. Their strong ability to train others should accelerate your military's development.

Many dwarf military guides suggest putting dwarves into squads of 3 to maximize sparring and minimize demonstrations. Sparring is better than demonstrations when the dwarf leading the demonstration has no teacher skill (i.e. dabbling). Perhaps the benefits of demonstrations haven't been explored well enough.

Release notes for 0.31.12 (July 25, 2010):

Aside from the major bug fixes listed below, I made skill increases a little faster during training.  Part of the problem is with how classes work -- the teacher and student skills are important, and they can heavily amplify the effects, so the gains for people without those skills were small.  Now it'll be even more extreme that the base rate has increased, so we'll have to see how that plays out in forts that get good teachers.

Note that you can have demonstrations for the Archery or Marksdwarf skills, without having to set up an archery range or fire a single crossbow bolt.

[Dsarker]

Very interesting. I'll have to try this at some point.

Assuming you get a military migrant wave, containing a soldier with a useful skill (say, axe when you didn't have any with axe) would they gain teacher and the additional weapon skill faster than they would be able to teach the useful skill?

[Flaede]

So I could embark with a Thrower Teacher, a Biting Teacher, a Misc. Weapons Teacher... This has much promise for nonsense!

[Iton Ibrukrithzam]

Well, embarking with a Dwarf that has max(starting) levels in biting is mandatory.  I seems I ought to give him more than 1 level of teaching, too.

[dreadmullet]

I have embarked with a militia commander who was proficient in teaching and fighting few times. It didn't seem to do much good at all. I never thought to give every soldier teaching and split them into leaders when enough recruits came. I have to try this for my next fort.

[Moonshadow101]

I'd be curious to see how this compares to starting with a more evenly spread set of skills and simply pairing off the six into three sparring pairs.

[daggaz]

All of this talk of splitting the original team into squadrons each assigned to teach each other and any newcomers, in the goal of ultimate military dominance... Maybe I should be the first to say it?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

THE ENEMY'S GATE IS ALWAYS DOWN.

[Sutremaine]

I've been fooling around with having a bunch of military dwarves teaching each other their starting skills. I think Proficient [skill] / Proficient Teacher might be the best combination. Having a balanced Novice Organiser / Adequate Teacher / Adequate Student skillset doesn't seem to work out as well as whatever I was doing initially, which was just Teacher skill iirc.

Here are the results of that after a year and two weeks of training:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Armour and shield skill appear to be missing, but the dwarves don't have any anyway because I've been forcing them to focus on skill-sharing. This is a little disappointing; I was hoping for some synergy.

I did another test (with six dwarves) up to the first migration wave to see what would happen if I picked Proficient Organiser to go with the Proficient combat skills. Dodging levelled up to Competent / Skilled and Wrestling to Novice / Adequate, but the other four skills (Biting, Kicking, Shield / Armour User) weren't demonstrated at all. Teacher skill levelled to Novice / Adequate and Student skill to Adequate / Competent.

[Loud Whispers]

This is interesting, and the title is absolute win.

[Nan]

This is a very interesting and promising idea.

I little while ago I did try a 6 military, 1 civilian, all points spent on steel-making and bronze-making supplies embark. But I made the civilian a herbalist because that seemed the best way to get enough food quickly enough (I brewed the plants and cooked the seeds). I had the military initially chop wood and forge their own gear, a possible benefit of that being it gave them some civilian skills for squad-shuffling unhappy thought negating.

But the idea of starting out with teachers does seem like it might be an improvement - it might even be optimal if all you want is 6 elite military dwarves and don't care for training squads of rookies. I guess the skills to go for would be:
Armor User, Shield User, Dodger, Biter and Observer. Other skills seem to train up okay (can student be taught?).
It might be more effective to replace Biter and Observer with say, Axe and Spear, if those are going to be the primary weapons. While it may be my imagination, it seems that dwarves spar more often and more effectively if they are better at using their weapon (that might also be something worth testing).

[Ifeno]

profiled

[Sutremaine]

Speaking of profiles, if you make one in Notepad you can get three Proficient skills on each dwarf. I set everyone to Proficient Teacher / Organiser, and then made three dodgers, two kickers, and two biters. I was able to get one decent dwarf with each skill, and I set them to train in their clothes within the first week. About halfway through the year I decided that if they hadn't started to do demonstrations in kicking and biting and were spending their time sparring or drilling instead, they could do something else with their time. So I let them into their (weaponless) uniforms. By the end of the year the two non-dodgers had about 50 skill levels each, with the dodger being a little way behind (43 or something like that). He was up to Novice Kicker and Biter where the other two hadn't picked up any more skill in those, so presumably some demonstrating got done while I wasn't watching. Kicker and Biter just seem to have really low priority when it comes to demonstrations. Kicking isn't that dissimilar to Striking (maybe I'll swap it for Wrestling some time; that gets taught much more readily and doesn't level quite enough from scratch to train itself), but a good Biter can remove body parts and shake goblins about by the arteries.

Tomorrow I'll skip the Organiser skill entirely, since forcing it via profile limits skill allocation.

[Eric Blank]

This thread is perfect for my current plans.

However, is there more benefit to splitting the six dwarves' points between proficient teacher, and 2 other skills. Say, competent in one useful skill and adequate in a weapon skill?
Like this:
Dorf1: Proficient Teacher, adequate swordsman, competent shield user.
Dorf2: Proficient Teacher, adequate hammerman, competent dodger.
Dorf3: Proficient Teacher, adequate crossbowman, competent archer. (or adequate archer and novice ambusher to get free bolts if this doesn't provide.)
Dorf4: Proficient Teacher, adequate maceman, competent fighter.
Dorf5: Proficient Teacher, adequate spearman, competent misc. object user.
Dorf6: Proficient Teacher, adequate axeman, competent Wrestler.

Dorf7: Competent grower, adequate brewer, cook, and herbalist, and novice cheese maker.

Then bring at least one copper example of each melee weapon, and 5 copper shields for the melee troops. The marksman might start with a free set of crossbow and bolts, or he might need to be an adequate archer and novice ambusher. Set them up with civilian jobs after embark (2 miners, a woodcutter, a carpenter, a mechanic, and a smith/wood burner), and construct a very basic fortress entrance to work with (get them all up to novice in a skill). Then make the squad and have them train until migrants arrive to fulfil their civilian roles and continue construction.

Sounds like a plan. Thoughts?

[OcelotTango]

I am inspired to make monk fortress. 2 non military dwarves, the remaining 5 will be max starting teaching, and one close combat skill, weapons, and metal/leather armor are forbidden.
They will train with each other until they are all legendary teachers, kicker, strikers, fighters, and wrestlers. Then they will be broken up into separate squads and give students. Hopefully, these skilled and venerable dwarves can fend off the goblin hordes with their drunken mastery.

[Urist Da Vinci]

I just tested teaching marksdwarf and archery. It works, but for some reason the dabbling dodgers think that they should be teaching the class, even though no-one had proficient dodger. The experiment was interrupted by giant capybaras. A dwarf had all of his limbs bitten off after he tried to punch the Rodent of Unusual Size in the upper body.

It's cool though that you can teach marksdwarves without wasting ammunition this way. Train one marksdwarf at an archery range to elite rank, then have him run a school where recruits point their fingers at eachother and make "twang" noises.