Well, I just read 10 pages of thread...
If I'm correct, what we're trying to train here is:
-all military skills
- climber
- swimmer
- discipline
- not caring about death
- no, or little, social relationships
Before I can contribute much, I'll need a quick rundown on a few things.
- climber:
How exactly does it work? What causes a dwarf to want to climb, what can they climb, how does exp gain for climbing work (i.e. Is it X exp per tile, extra for multiple, exp for holding on?), how useful will climbing be, and how can we encourage climbing?
- swimmer:
I'm fairly sure there's research on this already, but if we can get all these things answered in the one spot, it gives a good starting point. Obviously swimmer is a useful skill. What methods are used for training? Remember, it doesn't have to be quick and efficient training. You have over 10 years to train this skill, so a training method which doesn't hinder other training is a good idea.
- Military Skills:
This seems to be the primary focus here, and much science is going into how to effectively train without serious injuries/fatalities. When designing this, again, remember that you have years. You don't need to have a legendary in 2 years like you'd expect from a normal training program. Take more time = decreased casualties
- discipline:
Scary things raise discipline. Periodically exposing to something such as a goblin chained up would work well. Have a mechanism to control when said scary thing is visible.
- not caring:
I'm assuming that being exposed to lots of dead things helps out with that. We don't want this to make a mess too often though, so perhaps a puppy exploding room, which is cleaned out by a flush of water every so often. Don't know too much on this, but we should include it.
- socialising:
Relationships are bad, but some social skills are needed. Earlier the suggestion of putting two children together, to force friendship and marriage has been suggested. As far as I'm aware, this won't guarantee marriage, whether from sexual orientation, or lack of desire, or even just conflicting personalities. So perhaps having 4 per room to provide a little more option here.
I'm kinda at work, on my phone, so I've lost my train of thought, but I'll post back when I'm home, and can draw up more of an idea