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[Daenyth]

This is a masterful Dwarven !!Science!! experiment. It menaces with spikes of knowledge. It is encircled with bands of information.

[Tryble]

I'm watching my dwarves train away right now.

I embarked with this set of dwarves:

• A 5 Axe/5 Teacher dwarf paired with 5 Student/5 Concentration.
• 5 Dodge/5 Teacher dwarf paired with 5 Student/5 Concentration.
• A pair of 5 Axe/5 Dodge dwarves.

Each pair got their own squad with their own barracks.  They were all activated simultaneously on the 11th of Granite.
I'm letting them train right now, but one thing I've noticed immediately is that the Axe Teacher and Student pair is training absurdly fast.

Paused on the 4th of Felsite (less than two months of training), and as of now their skills are:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Axe Teaching Squad

• The Axe Teacher has 6 Axe (5585xp, 98.6%), 4 Fighter (3052xp, 50.2%), 5 Teacher (4,400xp, 90%).
• The Student he's been paired with has 5 Axe (3549xp, 4.9%), 4 Fighter, (3263xp, 73.7%), 5 Student/Concentrate (4,400xp, 90%).

 
Dodge Teaching Squad

• The Dodge Teacher has 1 Axe (1,068xp, 94.7%), 5 Dodging (3673xp, 17.3%), 1 Fighter (1023xp, 87.2%), 5 Teacher (4,220xp, 72%).
• His Student is at 2 Axe (1,127xp, 3.9%), 2 Fighter (1,121xp, 3%), 2 Dodging, (1,177xp, 11%), Student/Concentration 5 (4,220xp, 72%).

As for the two Axe/Dodge dwarves, they have each gained one level in fighter but have not gotten much of anything in any other skills at all; they have done one sparring session and are now teaching each other Striking and Wrestling and such.  One of the dwarves hasn't even collected any Axe experience at all.

In any case, the Axe Teacher has imparted his knowledge to the Axe Student extremely fast; the student hit Lv1 Axe in four days.  The student is at 5 Axe in less than two months of training!  Now that's the kind of training I like to see.  They've stopped demonstrations now and are sparring mostly nonstop.

The Dodging pair is moving much slower.  The student has managed to pack away 2 levels of dodging, much less than the 5 levels the axe pair got.  They two pairs have very similar gains in teaching/student so presumably Dodging is just slower to teach than a weapon skill is.  However, both dwarves in this pair have also gained a handful of levels in other skills so they are growing to be fairly well rounded.


I'm going to let this go on until  next 11th of Limestone to get a half-year's worth of data, then see how it looks.  However, as of the end of Felsite they've mostly stopped doing demonstrations so that data might not be fully relevant.

[Tryble]

I hope nobody minds the double post.

Okay, after 6 months exactly, this is what the final stats looks like:



Squad 1 had 47 pages of sparring, Squad 2 had 9, and Squad 3 had 22.  So the disproportionate amount of sparring no doubt threw some things out of whack.  There were a lot of crappy striking demonstrations going on in squad 3 in particular.

Most of the gain from teaching and demonstrations were finished early on.  The Axe Student caught up with his teacher by about 2 months and the Dodger did so in about 3.
The Axe Teaching squad ended with Lv6 Teacher/Student/Concentrate (they all raise at the same rates for each participant regardless of whether they're the teacher or trainee) at 5,000xp (45.5%).
The Dodging squad ended at Lv7 Teach/Student/Concentrate 5,680xp (6.7%).

Some interesting things to note:
As a lot of people probably already know, a squad of 2 that does constant sparring becomes very powerful very fast.  It's been only a half-year and both dwarves in the Squad 1 are at Legendary levels of both their Weapon skill and Fighting.  They've got squat for their defensive skills, though.  So this sort of squad setup makes fragile but deadly soldiers.

The squad set up for learning Dodging, at the end of the test, were nearly identical in overall levels to the regular squad that started off with 5 in Weapon/Dodge, despite doing less overall sparring.  They're way less powerful than the Axe squad was, but they're nice and well rounded.



I will try off another test here in a moment, with a teacher each in Axe, Dodge, and Shield, in a big 6 man squad with a trio of students.  Hopefully the teachers will be able to use demonstrations to get the entire squad to effective levels quickly.

[SAFry]

I've been trying this for a while now as I play with the Masterwork mod where danger rooms are usually fatal. I usually start with one guy with axe and teaching 10 and one guy fighter and teaching 10, then I get them to be my lumberjacks while I get going. Once I get my military started I usually force any unskilled recruits to take an axe too.

Unfortunately with my current fort my axe instructor got hit thigh lopped off by an ice wyrm early on, he survived and is still my captain of the guard. The fighting instructor got in a fight with a sneak, deftly dodged an attack and promptly threw himself off the drawbridge into the volcano.

Two of the recruits picked up obsidian swords before I had enough axes to go around and managed to get up to level 3 sword from just fighting random animals.

So as far as I can tell you gain more skill from just picking up a weapon and fighting stuff then you do from any instruction, I still give it a go anyway.

 

[Tryble]

Here's a new test with results.

Starting Dwarves:

• 5 Axe/5 Teacher
• 5 Shield/5 Teacher
• 5 Dodge/5 Teacher
• 5 Student/5 Concentration
• 5 Student/5 Concentration
• 5 Student/5 Concentration

The entire squad had training axes and copper shields, and were all activated on the 5th of Granite.





Final Results:






The entire squad hit Lv1 Dodging within 6 days of activation as they went through Dodging demonstrations, and hit Lv2 very soon after.  Then it started to get messy.
Sometimes there were several demonstrations at once, some dwarves would spar, leaving students to lead demonstrations they were no good at.  One or two dwarves did individual drills.  They were very fond of doing Striking/Biting/Wrestling demonstrations, which they had 0 skill in.
The first Axe demonstration didn't occur till Felsite 19, nearly two months later, and only one dwarf watched it as the rest of the squad was doing Striking demonstrations.  This sort of behavior was fairly typical for the duration.

But when the appropriate teacher did the appropriate demonstration, it was very effective.  It seemed like the entire squad would jump a level in Dodging when the teacher managed to pull everyone into watching him, which he did fairly often.  The other teachers didn't have nearly as much success.

I did notice two occurrences of "Watch Sparring Practice" by the teachers.  Wonder what that does...improve skill gains by the sparring dwarves, perhaps?  The teacher gained no exp in anything while watching.



Last thing I noticed about demonstrations...the dwarves gain Exp in the skill in chunks as the demonstration goes on.  I had originally thought they gained all the EXP in one big chunk when it ended, but it turns out they gain a certain amount (around 35  from the ones I was watching) per 'tick' that the demo continues.  The first demonstrations by a skilled teacher brought the students up very close to Lv1 in one go, though that exp came through in bite sized chunks.  Just an observation.

[SAFry]

Very interesting results, considering I read in the wiki once that teaching was unused and leadership was used for training. That seems to be completely wrong!

What I'm wondering is how would the same test have faired without the teaching and learning skills? Presumably they would still glean something. Also I wonder if teaching and learning skills are passed on. Have your students learnt anything about teaching?

[Duuvian]

Since teaching was introduced I try to start with a Sensei dwarf who is good at dodging and teaching. I figure since the other skills are easier to achieve that dwarf is extremely valuable.

The downside of having an extemely valuable and irreplaceable military dwarf is goblin ambushes.

However while he is living it is a great way to give the dwarves a few skill levels in dodging. I also do this with immigrants with surprising dodging ability. If you are better than I at establishing self contained forts (having Fun with zombies is my usual game) it would be well advised.

[Loud Whispers]

Since teaching was introduced I try to start with a Sensei dwarf who is good at dodging and teaching. I figure since the other skills are easier to achieve that dwarf is extremely valuable.

The downside of having an extemely valuable and irreplaceable military dwarf is goblin ambushes.

Teaching is a free skill. With a large enough army, the odds are in your favour you'll have at least some veterans who are great teachers alive till the end. They're very replaceable, given time.

[Sutremaine]

As a lot of people probably already know, a squad of 2 that does constant sparring becomes very powerful very fast.  It's been only a half-year and both dwarves in the Squad 1 are at Legendary levels of both their Weapon skill and Fighting.  They've got squat for their defensive skills, though.  So this sort of squad setup makes fragile but deadly soldiers.

Parrying gives some defensive skill, though with no other defensive skills and little armour (before the hauling update you could slather a raw recruit in copper and they'd move just fine. Not so much now) they'd better be really good at it.

Soldiers can be forced into being more rounded by denying them first weapons, then shields, then finally any sort of armour. Doing this safely requires either an extra fully-equipped squad or a fortress in lockdown.

[Tryble]

What I'm wondering is how would the same test have faired without the teaching and learning skills? Presumably they would still glean something. Also I wonder if teaching and learning skills are passed on. Have your students learnt anything about teaching?

The students I had never gained any Teaching experience from the demonstrations they watched, but they did lead some on occasion.  They picked up a tiny bit of teaching whenever that happened.  None of those dwarves in my posts above ever managed to bring themselves up to Novice level, though.



And I might be imagining this, but it seems like Nonweapon, nonarmor skills receive the most demonstrations; Dodging, Striking, Wrestling, all of those I saw very frequently.  Weapon skills I didn't see quite so often, and I saw very, very few Shield demonstrations.  I didn't do all that many tests though, so I'm willing to chalk it up to coincidence.

I might try another few runs, to see how dwarves without the student skills do.

[Rakushun]

In my current fort, I embarked with 7 proficient teachers. Proficient student, wrestler, dodger, striker, kicker, biter, shield user. Now they're all in a militia academy squad and set up to do nothing but train, but for some reason they refuse to teach each other anything or even spar, they just constantly individual combat exercise or whatever. What the Urist?

Edit: Never mind, the wiki informs me that I neglected to set my squad to follow the Active/Training alert.

[Graebeard]

Posting to watch.  An thorough training guide (without the use of danger rooms) is sorely lacking.

[Mudcrab]

The thing is when you then separate your two 'sensei' dwarven teachers into new squads it largely becomes the case that the recruits start to lead demonstrations, not them. Its really annoying, an addition to the squad interface which allows the allocation of a lead demonstrator NEEDS to be added!

[Urist Da Vinci]

The thing is when you then separate your two 'sensei' dwarven teachers into new squads it largely becomes the case that the recruits start to lead demonstrations, not them. Its really annoying, an addition to the squad interface which allows the allocation of a lead demonstrator NEEDS to be added!

The inverse method would be to add a noob or two to a squad consisting mostly of highly skilled teachers, in order to rapidly promote them, and then shuffle them out to the patrol squads. The teacher squad is always kept in reserve and only sees actual combat in emergencies or in "gladiator" situations.

[Duuvian]

The thing is when you then separate your two 'sensei' dwarven teachers into new squads it largely becomes the case that the recruits start to lead demonstrations, not them. Its really annoying, an addition to the squad interface which allows the allocation of a lead demonstrator NEEDS to be added!

The inverse method would be to add a noob or two to a squad consisting mostly of highly skilled teachers, in order to rapidly promote them, and then shuffle them out to the patrol squads. The teacher squad is always kept in reserve and only sees actual combat in emergencies or in "gladiator" situations.

This is how I've had the most success.

Since teaching was introduced I try to start with a Sensei dwarf who is good at dodging and teaching. I figure since the other skills are easier to achieve that dwarf is extremely valuable.

The downside of having an extemely valuable and irreplaceable military dwarf is goblin ambushes.

Teaching is a free skill. With a large enough army, the odds are in your favour you'll have at least some veterans who are great teachers alive till the end. They're very replaceable, given time.

Yeah, that's true. Since zombies though I've had too much Fun with them and I've not settled elsewhere so it's more a personal problem than something else. I tend to get zombies from off the edge of the map, try to lure them to the uncursed land, then have a dwarf die on cursed land and then I have armored zombies.