Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dreadmullet]

I would just like to add some more evidence regarding the Teacher skill:

In my current fort, my battle-hardened militia captain had a teacher skill of 9. I put him in a new squad with 9 completely unskilled recruits. After two seasons, they all have about Fighter 4, Dodger 3, and Axedwarf 1-2, along with some other skills.

[darkflagrance]

Just fire tested this. I went from one master swordsdwarf at embark with level 3 teacher to an entire squad of elite axe and blade soldiers over the course of three years while simultaneously fending off sieges from the Fortress Defense Mod. However, dwarves had also been modded to have level 3 student.

[SauliusTheBlack]

seems a subject that I can do !!SCIENCE!! on.
being the minimalist that I have become since my last embark, I'll embark with the common stated teacher/weapon distributions
(teacher to all but one, specific weapon skill to the same) and one dwarf to be woodburner/metalworker/weapon/armorsmith/miner/carpenter/farmer(of which the first 4 only until all the dwarves have their respective weapons). As such I can save points for additional food/booze.
probably going for an aquifer-embark to add to the difficulty.
It'll have to wait until tomorrow or maybe even next week.
I'll keep you posted though.

Greetings,

Me

PS: comments on basic scenario always welcomed.

[simonthedwarf]

Hopefully this isn't too much of a necro, but I was conducting related research. I decided to try to see if I could accelerate the training process via modding, but changing as little as possible about the gameplay.

So far what I've done is mod in a starting skill level of teacher and student at 1, and increased the skill learn on both of those to 13x normal.

Every dwarf drafted into the military thus far has had no weapon, shield, or armor skill. They are set up in 5 squads of 3 each, with minimum 2 for training, full-year round training schedule.

For the first year, there was very little sparring, almost all dwarves were constantly engaged in dodging/striking/combat demonstrations.

'Teacher' skill seemed to balloon quickly on a few key dwarves. These dwarves also had the highest ranks of skills commonly being taught. Important to note that none of these combat skills are above 3 or 4 at the highest. Comparing and contrasting with what I've read about other training methods, this would seem to prove with a high degree of certainty that demonstration efficacy depends very strongly on the dwarf leading the demonstration having a numerically high combat skill, as opposed to just a relatively high one. The over-all usefulness of a high teaching skill seems to still be quite questionable. It would seem that even with rank 8-10 of Teacher, it still took almost a full year to train my dwarves just three ranks of dodge/striker. My theory is that the modifier granted to the learn rate of skills in a demonstration by the teacher/student skills is capped by the teachers rank of the relevant combat skill.

Unfortunately, the validity of most of my observations past the point of about a year starts to crumble, since goblins have started invading and whatnot, and my dwarves have gained skill fairly rapidly by virtue of actual combat. Additionally, it would seem that now that my dwarves are more uniform in skill distribution, they are sparring quite a bit more often, which is behavior that seems to match other peoples observations about demonstrations vs. sparring.

The only other thing I've noticed is that despite the learn rate modifier of 1300%, none of the dwarves are above rank 5 in student. This would seem to prove that the amount of student skill granted by being a part of a demonstration is ridiculously low. Given the relatively small amount of socializing that my military dwarves have been doing, and the relatively skill gap compared with the civilian population, I feel safe in saying that some student exp is definitely being granted, but very little.

Modifying the learn rate of student/teacher has had very little impact so far on the rate of military skill gain. Next, I will wait until my dwarves have reached 'adequate' in their combat skills, and see how much of an effect this change will have in the presence of more skilled instructors.

Basically the game is saying "The teacher has to be skilled at what he is teaching and skilled at the action of teaching itself."

Seems SOUND to me. So obvious urist noob duh.

[Loud Whispers]

Apparently Dwarves can be taught marksdwarfship without ever firing a crossbow once. The things you don't know, until they hit you in the eyes.

[simonthedwarf]

You have a limestone elephant as a military captain?

[Loud Whispers]

Nick names based on the kills they arrived with/acquire. Limestone denotes that he's killed Elves, and the second part of their nickname is the biggest creature they've killed. In Etur's case, 5 elephants, and he arrived with a masterwork bronze crossbow. 'Might check his legends later ^_^
Seems fitting he's the one teaching the rest how to take down elephants with sticks.

[riznar]

What are your setups? I can't get my dwarves to train biting at all. They prefer striker and dodging.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Apparently Dwarves can be taught marksdwarfship without ever firing a crossbow once. The things you don't know, until they hit you in the eyes.

I've seen "Archery" (as in the equivalent skill to "fighter") training, so all you need to train marksdwarves is a reasonably skilled (in crossbow and archery) teacher.

[Girlinhat]

If one were to perform definitive science on this, what methods should be tested?

It seems there are three main variables: Applicable Skill, Teacher, and Student.  If we follow rationally, this allows for a "is skilled" or "no skill" on all three.  This means you need 4 teachers, with and without a teachable skill, and with and without the teaching skill, as well as two students, with and without the student skill.

This should occupy 16 dwarves total.

• Skilled Axedwarf, Skilled Teacher, Skilled Student
• Skilled Axedwarf, No Teacher, Skilled Student
• Skilled Axedwarf, Skilled Teacher, No Student
• Skilled Axedwarf, No Teacher, No Student
• No Axedwarf, Skilled Teacher, Skilled Student
• No Axedwarf, No Teacher, Skilled Student
• No Axedwarf, Skilled Teacher, No Student
• No Axedwarf, No Teacher, No Student

That is, (Axe+Teacher) and (Student) in two separate dwarves.

Proposed method is to embark with 6 dwarves and one laborer.  The 6 will take some combination of the above skills, allowing 3 instances to be tested at one embark.  Very quickly wall off, set barracks, and constant training for 1 year (perhaps from Summer to Summer to ensure that it's a solid year each) and compare the findings.  Perform this for each of the 8 instances and compare data.  Assuming the fortress isn't suddenly interrupted for some reason, this should allow for some fairly reliable results and solid evidence as to what matters where.

[Daenyth]

Posting to watch.

[Scruffy]

I tried something like that a while back. I ended up with soldiers that had pretty low weapon skills (competent/skilled hammerdwarves mostly) but all of them were skilled in biting, wrestling and dodging. Some of them preferred to attack goblins by biting and punching instead of using their copper hammers. Needless to say, the combat logs were really interesting. I presume it was because they were more skilled in mexican showwrestling than hammering.

[chevil]

this thread inspired me to try unarmed combat dwarves. i embarked with 6 military dwarves + 1 civilian for food.
each dwarf had a unarmed and teacher skill. during year one i had some unicorns wander to my map and i sent my dwarves on a training mission. my dwarves surrounded the unicorn and suddenly there were unicorn teeth everywhere.
after that they just stood and beat the unconcious unicorn for days while my biter decided to try and take one down by himself. his battle was short and bloody but he got a bad case of horn in face before the unicorn died of bloodloss.

[slothen]

I'm mostly interested in this to see if I can train my marksdwarves in non-archery, defensive skills.  Right now I have two squads of archers, with relatively high skills in marksdwarf/archer.  I have the squads led by two talented teachers who have legendary +5 in every combat skill, from hammerdwarf to misc object user.    Each squad is about 6 dwarfs.    So far everything has been striking and dodging demonstrations.  It is frustrating because half the time dabbling/novice dwarves will lead demonstrations, and when markdwarves do individual combat drills, they're basically idling.

[Loud Whispers]

Perhaps remove all of their assigned ammunition, to encourage them to spar?