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[Lordraymond]

So am I very far behind on training for my dwarves? I've been grouping my twenty military dorfs into two squads of ten so demonstrations have a broader effect. So far, I have most dwarfs to competent or skilled in weapons skills and dodging with proficient in fighting and novice-adequate in other combat skills and they're on duty 24/7 training or killing things for the past two or three years, nearly the start of the fort.

Of course, there have been set backs. I have only copper so in the latest goblin siege I lost about six of my twenty trained fighters, five dying in battle including my from-embark militia captain who had the best weapon skill (adept axedwarf) in the fort, and was tied for best teacher at adept with the commander. The commander also died from melancholy after getting his foot torn off by a ghost rising because I didn't bury the casualties from the siege fast enough.

My question, I guess, is that now that my two greatest teachers have died after two years or so of instructing and I have nodwarf above competent in teaching, should I just organize into squads of three, which I hear is the optimal size, or go on with my current structure, or do something else entirely? My military is 100% axedwarf right now, and everyone has masterwork or exceptional candy axes and copper armor, so maybe there's another arrangement that would be best?

[WolfeyS]

I find crossbows are godlike until I can get good weapons and armor.  I found that out after 2 crossbowdwarves took on a siege, beat it, and lived with no wounds.

[Loud Whispers]

2-3 dwarves is the optimal size for sparring.

It's slower to train than demonstrating early on, but soon sparring will overtake xp gain from demonstrations

[Lordraymond]

I find crossbows are godlike until I can get good weapons and armor.  I found that out after 2 crossbowdwarves took on a siege, beat it, and lived with no wounds.

Well, I would, but there's a reason I have no ranged. I have about 5 guys who are recruits right now because I can't use their fairly high marksdwarf skills. They won't pick up bolts and just run out and whack gobbos till they get their leather-armored faces bashed in.

Also, I forget how to set up an archery range effectively, it's been a while since I've run a fort with primarily military defenses.

[WolfeyS]

I actually don't use archery ranges to train mine.  I use a much better method. *giggles*

Anyways make sure you have quivers, bolts, and crossbows assigned to the rangers, and the bolts are enabled for combat.

If you still want to use melee, either do what Loud recommended or try beating prisoners with wooden practice gear, then sparring/demonstrations.

[Mitchewawa]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=95018.0

Good thing I had this in my favourites.

Generally, small squads with elite leaders (both the teacher and combat skills apply seemingly equally) are the quickest to train. However, I run squads of 10 for simplicity, and I run Fortress Defence so they get Legendary across the board abnormally quickly anyway.

I recommend either picking up iron or tin (for bronze), as either are, at the very least, infinity times better then copper.

[Lordraymond]

So, I just tried getting a marksdwarf squad set up and even when I set them up with specific weapons they get "Urist McMarksdwarf canceled pick up equipment: Equipment mismatch" and then the get "Soldier (Cannot follow order)" and wander around until they try to pick up gear again and fail. I have bolts and quivers which they have equipped and have archery ranges set up with them set to train, but while the other dwarves get combat experience they waddle around ignoring their equipment and generally being annoying.

How does I fixed this?

[WolfeyS]

Don't assign them specific weapons, just tell them to grab any crossbow

[Nan]

Sparring is indeed the quickest way to train most military skills - but particularly weapon skill, fighter and shield user. It is good if they gain some shield user, dodging and armor user via demonstrations - but not essential. Weapon skill is used for parrying, so a dwarf with high weapon skill also has a good defensive ability.

Unfortunately sparring isn't that effective until they level up weapon and fighter skill some, so immigrants who come with a weapon skill should generally be armed with that kind of weapon, this will improve the effectiveness of their sparring quite a lot.

Something which helps in general is to make a "meaty bolt sponge" squad out of useless immigrants (particularly ones with useless moodable skills like tanner). These should be sent in ahead of your elite squad to draw enemy fire. Your elite sparring squads can then mop up, taking minimal injuries.

I normally wouldn't recommend such tactics, because you should be able to keep ahead through effective training and ordering bronze/iron/steel from the outpost liaison. But since you're losing your best dwarves you're probably behind the curve and will need to compensate.

The final thing to say, is you only need a few dwarves if they're furious little gods of war. It's better to have 3 dwarves in full candy, and 17 in full copper, than 20 dwarves with candy weapons and copper armor. Invest the vast majority of your military resources into your best dwarves, and consider the remainder to be expendable.

[Lordraymond]

I'll start candying up my captains at least, I apparently had strand extraction on repeat for about a year and now I have 35 or so wafers to spare, plenty enough for a few sets. Somehow my marksdwarf commander picked up a BOW of all things, even though I checked and his uniform is set to crossbow... Ugh.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Excluding exploits such as the "danger room", you almost always want to optimize squad size for sparring.

Teaching/demonstrations aren't as useful, except if you embark with "Proficient Teacher/Proficient X" dwarves, where X is the military skill that you really want taught. You might also get lucky with migrants.

If you embark with a "Proficient Teacher/Proficient Marksdwarf", he can teach other dwarves via demonstrations how to be a marksdwarf without using up any bolts.

[BackgroundGuy]

Excluding exploits such as the "danger room", you almost always want to optimize squad size for sparring.

Teaching/demonstrations aren't as useful, except if you embark with "Proficient Teacher/Proficient X" dwarves, where X is the military skill that you really want taught. You might also get lucky with migrants.

If you embark with a "Proficient Teacher/Proficient Marksdwarf", he can teach other dwarves via demonstrations how to be a marksdwarf without using up any bolts.

In the OP, he states that he actually did this at embark.  He just had the poor luck to wind up with both of the teacher dwarves dead of life after a few years.

When you assign a marksdwarf squad, are you using a specialized marksdwarf uniform, or a modified melee uniform?

[krenshala]

... also, are your military marksdwarves also your hunters?  if they are hunters (or miners, or wood cutters) then you can get the mismatch issues from what i've read.

[Lordraymond]

I drafted a few hunters in because they had skill in marksdwarf.

On a related note, after drafting  a fresh hunter migrant into the squad, two marksdwarves picked up bows and went to archery practice. The other two remain with the (Cannot follow order) status.

[krenshala]

This is another reason I can't wait for the next update.  From what I've seen we will be getting much better notices about what exactly the problem is that causes the "soldier cannot follow orders" message.