Post by: Urist Da Vinci on December 01, 2011, 03:23:58 am
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.
Quote
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.
Post by: Dsarker on December 01, 2011, 03:27:50 am
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?
Post by: Flaede on December 01, 2011, 03:36:21 am
Post by: Iton Ibrukrithzam on December 01, 2011, 04:19:47 am
Post by: dreadmullet on December 01, 2011, 07:07:03 am
Post by: Moonshadow101 on December 01, 2011, 10:41:38 am
Post by: daggaz on December 01, 2011, 10:58:42 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Sutremaine on December 01, 2011, 03:00:08 pm
Here are the results of that after a year and two weeks of training:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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.
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 01, 2011, 03:02:48 pm
Post by: Nan on December 01, 2011, 03:26:15 pm
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).
Post by: Ifeno on December 01, 2011, 07:36:55 pm
Post by: Sutremaine on December 01, 2011, 08:19:42 pm
Tomorrow I'll skip the Organiser skill entirely, since forcing it via profile limits skill allocation.
Post by: Eric Blank on December 01, 2011, 08:30:15 pm
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?
Post by: OcelotTango on December 01, 2011, 09:45:36 pm
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.
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on December 01, 2011, 10:38:32 pm
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.
Post by: Nan on December 02, 2011, 06:40:28 am
Dodging trained impressively fast and consistently. Other skills soon followed, although somewhat haphazardly. Several dwarves got proficient biter. Even after about 3 years some skills such as armor/shield user, on some dwarves, remained as low as competent or adequate. But by then all had managed to get at least dodger and one of the defensive skills to proficient and beyond, which is pretty good.
The two dwarves which started with weapon skills, both gained skills in "fighter" considerably faster. Whether this is because they sparred more often, or because their sparring was more effective, is hard to say. However they also seemed to gain other skills like biter more slowly, so I suspect they tended to skip demonstrations in favor of sparring.
Spear dwarves didn't learn any axe, and vice-verca.
So far I'm quite impressed. The mob hasn't improved their weapon and fighter skill as well as they would have by sparring in squads of 2, but their defensive skills are considerably ahead. Nice to watch them dodging bolts. And their weapon/fighter skills are pretty impressive for being in such a large squad.
Late-comers I drafted into the squad quickly gained skill. One of these has better armor user than the originals, and is training them. I would guess they (the teachers) would learn quickly because they get mega skill in student, from attending so many demonstrations.
Happily the goblins are very active. One of my dwarves got her arm smashed open by a lasher, but made a complete recovery, not even a scar.
Post by: Qwernt on December 02, 2011, 03:47:39 pm
Post by: Telgin on December 02, 2011, 04:02:25 pm
After a few years of training, the other soldiers still suck. Completely preventable, apparently.
Post by: Nan on December 02, 2011, 05:37:34 pm
Now all of the original 6 are Proficient Biters, except the original Biter himself who is Talented and one who is only Skilled. The two newbies have demonstrated somewhat more resistance to learning biting. Right now a Biting demonstration is happening and one of the recruits (the one who has learned no biting at all despite being proficient+ in the other skills) has decided he would rather do an individual combat drill. Almost makes me wonder if some dwarves think "Bite and shake" is beneath their dignity.
I'm not sure how the Biter has raised his skill, I haven't seen him biting anything, but I guess he just gets the odd nip in here and there during sparring or combat, or perhaps individual combat drill (he chomps on his beard?)
Post by: dreadmullet on December 02, 2011, 06:17:46 pm
"Alright, time to practice biting. *gnaws at steel left gauntlet* Ach, that does nothing, I'll try training Armor User then. *bashes self in face repeatedly*"
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 02, 2011, 06:19:01 pm
That explains what they do during individual combat drills...
"Alright, time to practice biting. *gnaws at steel left gauntlet* Ach, that does nothing, I'll try training Armor User then. *bashes self in face repeatedly*"
Don't worry, I'm a legendary teacher around here. *Bashes face in with axe*
Post by: Nan on December 02, 2011, 06:45:55 pm
So, would a teacher/miner teach how to use a pick in combat? I think I might have to try that...
From my observations - no, cross-weapon skills are not trained at all. What might happen is "Combat Demonstration" trains the dwarf in whatever weapon they are currently holding. But since mining is a pseudo-weapon skill, maybe it would work differently, I guess that would require testing to know for sure.
A Teacher/Legendary Miner might still be useful as an instructor, since presumably he would gain skill from sparring very quickly, and if combat demonstration does train the attendees on how to use their weapons, it might be very effective since the instructor is legendary - or it might not work at all since it's not a real weapon skill.
Post by: Sutremaine on December 02, 2011, 08:08:55 pm
Post by: Nan on December 02, 2011, 11:20:48 pm
Testing this out - with a whole bunch of teachers with a range of skills (including mining), I'm not seeing any combat skills at all being cross-taught, the dwarves armed with crossbows get hammer skill, but that's because they're armed with a crossbow which is a hammer.
When my hammer dwarf does a "Hammer demonstration", only the marksdwarves turn up for it.
Marksdwarf being taught is confirmed. But only the crossbow armed dwarves have gained it. Archery is not being taught. The reasoning seems to go that "marksdwarf" is "crossbow using skill" and "archery" is "crossbow aiming skill", so marksdwarf can be taught ("this is how you use your crossbow"), but archery needs to be practiced.
My hypothesis is that dwarves can only be taught equipment-based skills if they actually have the relevant equipment equipped. My "sponge dwarf" who is purely a teacher with no equipment except a shield, has only picked up Shield User (actually he is most skilled in it), Misc. Object User and the non-equipment based skills.
This might seem a needlessly pedantic distinction (does it matter if dwarves don't learn skills for equipment they don't actually have?) but it's something to bear in mind. Also, if a dwarf is equipped multiple weapons, he'll attend demonstrations for any of those weapons.
This (rather sensible) behavior is actually useful, because it makes it possible to optimize your dwarves training. If you want them to focus on teaching non-weapon skills, then give them all different weapons. On the other hand it'd make a lot of sense to assign rookies the same weapon as a teacher to get them up to speed more quickly.
So marksdwarf being cross-taught has not been observed under controlled conditions. What I speculate when it seems like it is being taught, is that the dwarf, with "individual choice, weapon" set, switches weapons on a whim, and attends lessons while wielding the new weapon. I have sometimes been surprised to catch one of my "melee" dwarves wielding a crossbow because I was careless with the uniform. This would be consistent with marksdwarf and hammerdwarf being the skills observed to be cross-taught.
I also tested putting some recruits with picks with the teacher/miner. I did not see any "pick demonstrations" and AFAICT the only mining skill gain came from sparring. That doesn't conclusively say it can't be trained using demonstrations, but if it can, it must be low priority (but most likely, being a civilian skill, it wouldn't be on the list of valid demonstrable skills)
Post by: Uristoteles on December 03, 2011, 11:00:34 am
I let them start train (8/12months, 3/3dwarves) almost immediately, made the teacher also the manager for a while and it seems to work out as I wanted:
the student learned fast to be a proficient teacher/axedwarf and the initial teacher followed to become a proficient student/shielduser rather quick (in 1 or 2 years), both also got proficient concentration in the process.
My first two migration waves were really small, so I added only three scapegraces, of which only one survived a nasty double-bowgoblin-squad-ambush, but two years after his draft he's also at least proficient in all mentioned skills.
In these two years I added more dwarves, which I gave swords/spears/hammers and they all are at least competent in weapon/shield/teacher/student/concentration.
Fighting and dodging leveled on their own through combat and sparring, only armour using drags behind, but thats probably due to the fact that I have only copper on my map and even goblinite consists mostly of copper, so all I do is training my armoursmith while waiting to have enough bronze/steel through trading before bothering about proper armour.
The organizer skill is also a problem and I don't know what to do about it; the
initial teacher is a level 9 organizer, but everyone else is level 2 at best.
Also to mention: This is obviously no scientific approach, I didnt really look what happened when, but I'm satisfied whit the outcome.
Post by: Roflcopter5000 on January 08, 2012, 08:32:48 pm
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.
Post by: arzzult on January 09, 2012, 11:29:50 am
Post by: Psieye on January 09, 2012, 04:57:20 pm
The short version: Teacher, Student and Concentration skills affect how much EXP is being raised by demonstrations. Organiser had no visible impact on EXP - it may speed up the "organise demonstration lecture" phase but not so much that it's noteworthy.
The real obstacle to training via demonstrations is that once dwarves get into real combat, they'll start giving lectures on any random combat skill. If any dwarf in a squad ever threw one punch in his entire military career (be it from combat or sparring), then your entire squad's demonstration series will be greatly diluted in usefuless. There will be so many Striking demonstrations instead of [main weapon of squad] demonstrations. So unless you are willing to mod out kicking/punching/biting from your dwarves, you must have your teachers and students never ever face real combat to streamline the demonstration topics. Once students graduate, they must never ever go 'back to school' else they will pollute the skill pool and thus make demonstrations have useless topics mixed in.
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on January 09, 2012, 09:36:42 pm
The real obstacle to training via demonstrations is that once dwarves get into real combat, they'll start giving lectures on any random combat skill. If any dwarf in a squad ever threw one punch in his entire military career (be it from combat or sparring), then your entire squad's demonstration series will be greatly diluted in usefuless. There will be so many Striking demonstrations instead of [main weapon of squad] demonstrations. So unless you are willing to mod out kicking/punching/biting from your dwarves, you must have your teachers and students never ever face real combat to streamline the demonstration topics. Once students graduate, they must never ever go 'back to school' else they will pollute the skill pool and thus make demonstrations have useless topics mixed in.
I wonder what dwarves or skills receive priority for leading demonstrations. The "common knowledge" is that skilled dwarves teach their higher skills, but perhaps it doesn't work that way or is biased towards certain skills. I've seen dodging training appear often, for example. I might test this by embarking with well-rounded military dwarves, and seeing what they prefer to demonstrate when I interrupt and force them to restart demonstrations rapidly.
Post by: Blah on January 29, 2012, 12:38:05 pm
I suspect this is because a random dwarf is chosen to do demonstrations instead of the one best suited for it. Even then, the experience gained is noticeably less - could it be that the experience gained decreases the more dwarves are following a demonstration?
It's still worth it to embark with a few teachers but not worth using them to train later recruits.
Post by: dreadmullet on January 29, 2012, 12:52:56 pm
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.
Post by: darkflagrance on January 29, 2012, 03:59:09 pm
Post by: SauliusTheBlack on February 09, 2012, 06:24:27 am
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.
Post by: simonthedwarf on February 09, 2012, 08:36:07 am
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.
Post by: Loud Whispers on April 22, 2012, 12:45:26 pm
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.
Post by: simonthedwarf on April 22, 2012, 12:47:28 pm
Post by: Loud Whispers on April 22, 2012, 12:50:56 pm
Seems fitting he's the one teaching the rest how to take down elephants with sticks.
Post by: riznar on April 22, 2012, 05:33:34 pm
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on April 22, 2012, 05:56:58 pm
(http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/7018/themoreyouknow.png)
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.
Post by: Girlinhat on April 22, 2012, 06:13:51 pm
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
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.
Post by: Daenyth on April 24, 2012, 02:00:35 am
Post by: Scruffy on April 24, 2012, 06:05:31 am
Post by: chevil on April 25, 2012, 08:42:56 am
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.
Post by: slothen on April 25, 2012, 10:37:07 am
Post by: Loud Whispers on April 25, 2012, 11:41:35 am
Post by: Mudcrab on April 27, 2012, 01:09:00 pm
Its a big downside to the plan :(
Post by: Calech on April 27, 2012, 04:34:04 pm
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.That is, (Axe+Teacher) and (Student) in two separate dwarves.
- 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
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.
This has actually gotten me interested enough to try this out. I've been quite fond of bringing military instructors at embark, and it would be nice to know how best to choose them!
I've thrown together a test embark with (hopefully) enough food and drink to last seven dwarves for a year; any migrants will have to provide for themselves or be given a complementary slab inside the training area. The idea I'm using is to create a fixed starting point, ie. use the same Summer save to start with, and partition the dwarves into three squads along a different division each time, with possibly a control group of 6 single-dwarf squads (who should logically do Individual Combat Drills non-stop due to lack of other options).
The dwarves will be unmodded so their bodily needs may cause a little variance in the numbers, but since the same is true of a 'real' fortress anyway this simulates the practical case a little better.
It does appear that the biggest time-consumer in this is likely to be writing it all up; I've just done an overview of the situation at the end of the first Summer (ie. a quarter of the way through the experiment) and it's taken quite a while to extract the numbers from DT, copy them down, and type random waffling discussing the results. Still, hopefully the end results will prove interesting, unless my Concentration skill fails me by the end of it :)
Post by: Sadrice on April 27, 2012, 10:34:04 pm
Post by: Calech on April 28, 2012, 03:12:21 pm
I've uploaded the initial embark setup to DFFD (here (http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6228)) if anyone wants to set a scenario running using it, or just wants to see what happens if you wall out the immigrants and let them be savaged by honey badgers.
The first year of experiments has been run, and it doesn't really tell us anything particularly insightful or interesting, just that having more skill is better - which is sort of intuitively obvious, really.
Starting skill levels (start of summer year 1):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
First test:
Axe/Teacher + Student
Axe + Student
Teacher + Unskilled
Summer, 1st year
Spoiler: Log (click to show/hide)
End of Summer report:
Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)
Conclusions, Summer, Year 1:
It looks like Concentration and Student train at the exact same rate, which is interesting - and the Teacher skill of the Teacher trains at the same rate as the Student/Concentration skills of the student. The Leader skill is included here as a minor interest, although a dwarf who isn't a captain has got 10xp of Leader somehow, even though none of the other 'members' did - not sure how he got this.
Squad 1 (with all the skills present) has quite clearly gained the most, with the Student in the squad gaining 6 levels of Axe skill in a single season - and the Teacher hasn't done too badly herself, gaining 3 levels in the same span of time.
Squad 3, with only a Teacher and no weapon skills to start, is suffering a little - they have attained the rank of Novice, but haven't gotten any further, and exhibit the lowest skill gains of the three squads (as you may expect).
Observer appears to be being trained here too; the Worker (who is not in the militia) has zero Observer skill. If Observer affects anything important, like spotting ambushers, it seems that fighting trains it - there doesn't seem to be an obvious link with the Student/Concentration skill gains so I'd guess it might not be linked to the demonstration aspect?
Autumn, 1st year
Spoiler: Log (click to show/hide)
End of Autumn report:
Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)
Conclusions, Autumn, Year 1:
Well, it looks like a few of the dwarves gave up on teaching - 3 of them gained no Teacher experience, and correspondingly their 3 opposite numbers gained no Student experience. The dwarves with higher skills gained even more, while the dwarves who are still on lower skill are gaining fewer points. Most of the dwarves are now showing as very agile or extremely agile, except Ral who is only 'slow to tire' (which isn't even agility based); I'm not entirely sure how much effect attributes have on the training process but if agility increase the rate of action, the higher agility dwarves will in theory pick up their skills faster, which should lead to a snowball effect in this case (train skill -> gain agility -> train skill faster -> gain more agility -> etc.) - it's just a question of how quickly you can get them to that 'critical mass'.
Winter, 1st year
Spoiler: Log (click to show/hide)
End of Winter report:
Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)
Conclusions, Winter, Year 1:
Happy New Year 251! Some interesting numbers this season. Squad 1 gained a huge amount of Teacher/Student experience (comparatively), but only improved by a lesser amount in their Axe/Fighting skills over the previous season, only gaining 4-8k experience compared to the 8-12k in the autumn. However their other fighting abilities, like Dodging and Wrestling, made some bigger gains, taking them to Novice in each.
Squad 2 is still not gaining any Teacher/Student experience - I wonder if they've actually been doing any demonstrations? - but have advanced by a decent amount nonetheless, gaining another ~4k experience in their major skills. Squad 3, which started with no weapon skills at all, is also only making progress at about the same rate as last season, but have been exercising that Teacher/Student relationship a bit - even so they have progressed at about the same rate as each other.
Spring, 2nd Year
Spoiler: Log (click to show/hide)
End of Spring report:
Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)
Conclusions, Spring, Year 2:
Mostly this is just the same story as before; the dwarves at higher skill levels are gaining skills faster, whilst the lower skilled
squad is struggling to catch up (but is gaining experience a bit faster now).
Also, Cog, the Student in Squad 2, displays a little anomaly - he has gained 264xp in Student, but 270xp in Concentration (and his captain gained 270xp in Teacher also). Wonder what happened here? If the training was cut short or interrupted somehow, only gains in Student were lost - the squad is not currently in a demonstration at the time of the save, either.
Dodging seems to have become the fashionable skill, as there were several observed Dodging demonstrations, and it seems that most of the dwarves are now Novice or better Dodgers - except Squad 3, who are still trailing along behind in all aspects.
Conclusions after one year training, first experiment:
The two squads of Axe/Student dwarves fared much better than the squad with only a Teacher - presumably, it's useful to have something to actually teach! Of the two squads to start with weapon skill, the Teacher/Student pair have become Legendary +5 in a year, whilst the Non-Teacher/Student pair are only just short of Legendary at the one-year mark.
All of the dwarves appear to have gained stats, although I don't have exact values and can't remember how they started out - Squad 1 have almost all the ultra-positive statements like 'basically unbreakable', Squad 2 are all high-positive, and Squad 3 are positive but not superlatively so.
Splitting the dwarves in a different pattern for the second experiment will give us more useful conclusions than simply "more is better". If the Axe/Teacher is paired with an Unskilled Dwarf, this should show how significant the Student skill is to the relationship, and coupling the Teacher and Student with no weapon skills should show if the combination can make up for the lack of weapon skill. The Axe-Only dwarf can then be partnered with the Worker (who is technically also Unskilled, as he has no weapon skills - Mining shouldn't be relevant if it's not an equipped weapon) to see what effect is gained from military-only skills with no academical capabilities. The other Student will therefore be left hauling the barrels around.
Post by: Calech on April 30, 2012, 10:56:26 am
Results are in for the second and third experiments that I've run;
Experiment 2
Squad 1: Domas (Axe/Teacher) + Dastot (Unskilled)
Squad 2: Ral (Teacher) + iton (Student)
Squad 3: Nil (Axe) + Etur (Worker, unskilled)
Cog has Hauling duties this time.
To try and make the experiments work a little faster I did make one change, namely setting the FPS cap to 1000 instead of 100, so hopefully things will go a little quicker, although there is the potential for everything to go horribly wrong (but then what else is new?)
Spoiler: Summer log (click to show/hide)
End of Summer report:
Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)
Observations, Summer, 1st year:
Some curious results here. Squad 2 (Teacher + Student) are worse off than their counterparts from the first experiment (Squad 3 there, Teacher + Unskilled) in their primary skills - and show a rather unbalanced Teacher-Student partnership, with the Student gaining 6 times as much Teacher xp as the Teacher! Also it's interesting to see the non-round numbers again here, with Concentration at 'full' gain but the Teacher and Student both at 'partial'.
Squad 1 have also not performed as well here as their counterparts from Experiment 1, despite much higher gains in the academical skills - of course, in the first experiment, the equivalent squad already had Lvl 5 Teacher/Student skills, so (in theory!) they would have had better gains from the demonstrations they did do.
Squad 3 (Axe + Unskilled) have actually performed fairly comparably with their counterpart squad in Experiment 1 (Squad 2, Axe + Student). They had higher overall gains in the academical skills, and have finished at the same skill level in their main skills, albeit slightly behind in raw xp terms.
Spoiler: Rest of Year log (click to show/hide)
End of year report:
Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)
Conclusions, Second Experiment:
Just as before, Squad 1 contains our only Legendary Axedwarves. But while the pairing from the First Experiment had both reached Legendary +5 by now, here we've only reached Legendary +2 or +3, with the initial Student skill removed from the equation.
Squad 2 in this experiment (Teacher + Student) actually did pretty well for themselves. Comparing against the First Experiment, they did better than their counterpart squad (Teacher + Unskilled), and are only 1 or 2 levels behind the other squad (Axe + Student).
Squad 3 (Axe + Unskilled), comparing against the same two squads in the First Experiment, performed marginally better than (Teacher + Unskilled), being about 1 level higher, but worse than (Axe + Student), with a difference of about 4 levels there.
It appears, then, that having both academic skills present in a pairing is significant, as it seems to produce better skill gains over time than only having the Teacher skill (ref: Sqd 1/Exp 1 vs Sqd 1/Exp 2 and Sqd 3/Exp 1 vs Sqd 2/Exp 2), or not having the Teacher skill where the Student skill is present (ref: Sqd 1/Exp 1 vs Spd 2/Exp 1).
Surprisingly it's possible to train up from only the academical skills quite satisfyingly, as Sqd 2/Exp 2 attained better results than Sqd 3/Exp 2, despite Sqd 2/Exp 2 having no initial military experience.
From the original list of tests, this leaves only two untested combinations plus a couple of other interesting cases;
Unskilled + Student
Unskilled + Unskilled
Indvidual Combat Drills only (squad size 1)
Larger squad sizes (eg. Axe/Teacher + 2x Students)
Since I have a tragic lack of unskilled dwarves in the testing area, with only 2 of them, it makes some amount of sense to couple one of the remaining test cases with one of the other cases, to keep the dwarves occupied.
Experiment 3
Squad 1: Unskilled + Unskilled
Squad 2: 3-dwarf squad: Axe/Teacher, Student, Student 2
You kind of know the drill by now, migrants arrive, attacked by raging honey badgers, etc.
Spoiler: Log (click to show/hide)
End of year report:
Spoiler: Skills (click to show/hide)
Observations, Third Experiment:
So there's a couple of interesting points here. The Unskilled squad, who had no prior military or academic capability, attained Legendary +2, a result only bettered by two other combinations so far, namely Axe/Teacher + Student (Sqd 1/Exp 1) and Axe/Teacher + Unskilled (Sqd 1/Exp 2). They soundly outperformed even the Teacher + Student squad from Experiment 2 (Sqd 2/Exp 2).
Meanwhile, adding an extra dwarf to Squad 2 seemed to slow down individual skill gains somewhat, although two out of three are Legendary +1 after only a year's training with another dwarf at Master skill. The most stand-out number to me, though, is the Observer skill on the Axe/Teacher - your eyes do not decieve you, she gained 5 levels in Observer, the most I've seen in the course of the experiment. I suspect it may be linked to being attacked - in the 3-way sparring sessions, she was the target of 2 attackers, which may explain why her skill gains here are that much higher than others.
The total gain for Squad 2 in Teacher is less than the gain for Student/Concentration, so it may well be the case that the Teacher skill advances at the same rate irrespective of how many dwarves are being taught; note however that the intended Teacher gained far more Teacher skill than her subordinates (2350 > 650 + 760) so dedicated Teachers may be able to win out over dabblers.
The really unusual result here is that the completely unskilled squad has managed to do better than the squad with the military experience (Sqd 3/Exp 2), and beat out the squad with the academic qualifications (Sqd 2/Exp 2).
Post by: Loud Whispers on April 30, 2012, 01:52:31 pm
Also that's not double posting, that's !!SCIENCE!!
Post by: jwest23 on April 30, 2012, 02:23:20 pm
The really unusual result here is that the completely unskilled squad has managed to do better than the squad with the military experience (Sqd 3/Exp 2), and beat out the squad with the academic qualifications (Sqd 2/Exp 2).
Thanks for taking the time to run the experiments and document the results. Fantastic work!
My hunch is that the unusual result might have to do with the personalities of the dwarves involved. I'm not in a position just now to load up the save and inspect it for myself. Are the Sqd 3 / Exp 2 dwarves more motivated than the dwarves in Sqd 2 / Exp 2?
It might be worth re-running this particular scenario a few more times to eliminate any sort of odd personality bias.
Post by: Calech on April 30, 2012, 03:05:57 pm
The really unusual result here is that the completely unskilled squad has managed to do better than the squad with the military experience (Sqd 3/Exp 2), and beat out the squad with the academic qualifications (Sqd 2/Exp 2).
Thanks for taking the time to run the experiments and document the results. Fantastic work!
My hunch is that the unusual result might have to do with the personalities of the dwarves involved. I'm not in a position just now to load up the save and inspect it for myself. Are the Sqd 3 / Exp 2 dwarves more motivated than the dwarves in Sqd 2 / Exp 2?
It might be worth re-running this particular scenario a few more times to eliminate any sort of odd personality bias.
Good point; ideally for comparing the skill effects alone there would be 'standard' dwarves with identical stats and personalities, but I'm not sure that can even be modded / edited easily or if it would give meaningful results!
There's no specific 'motivation' personality token, but looking over the wiki I can see a few that may be relevant: ACTIVITY_LEVEL, DUTIFULNESS, and CAUTIOUSNESS all seem likely candidates, and a few of the others (ORDERLINESS, ACHIEVEMENT_STRIVING) may also have some bearing.
Loading up Experiment 3 (which uses the same dwarves as the previous experiments), Dastot (Unskilled) has low caution (38) and high excellence (68), while his squadmate Etur has a pretty high nervousness (75) which didn't stop him leading more demonstrations (higher Teacher skill at the end of the year). iton has low caution (31) which, coupled with Cog's disorganized (39, stat is 'organized' so low = disorganized) nature may explain why they attained differing skill levels. Domas, the Axe/Teacher who has usually done pretty well, has a high excellence (67) and is unusually willing to help others (75), and doesn't care what anyone thinks about it either (neurosis of 5).
None of the dwarves in the test environment have unusual (ie. reportable via messages or recorded in Dwarf Therapist's view) activity level or dutifulness attributes.
Going back to the very first save to check their attributes (unfortunately I don't have a tool to get at the exact values at the moment :( ) Dastot shows as 'agile', Etur is 'slow to tire, agile, susceptible to disease', Domas is 'slow to tire, susceptible to disease', Nil (who sat out the last experiment) is 'indefatigable and quick to heal', iton is 'quick to heal and weak', and Cog is 'agile and tough'. (Ral has no physical attributes listed in the beginning)
I know agility is often one considered of the most important stats because it affects speed of action, and I always love watching my highly-trained militia zipping around at about twice the speed of your average dwarf - perhaps having two 'agile' dwarves together did some good here?
Dastot also has a 'feel for music' so he will be the militia's bugler once playable instruments are implemented.
Hopefully, when I run a test for Individual Drills, it should highlight if there's any sort of individual bias caused by particular traits, although running a set of identical tests with a fresh set of dwarves should help to show up variances as well. Something to add to the list I guess! :)
Post by: Werdna on April 30, 2012, 03:34:25 pm
Post by: chewie on April 30, 2012, 06:36:19 pm
Also, PTW.
Post by: MrButtchicker on April 30, 2012, 08:44:43 pm
Also, might I add, the teacher skill is hard to train up at first, but good teachers advance quickly. Now just to make sure none of my instructors die.
I would suggest that people put demonstrators through sparring with every type of weapon so the demonstrator can learn all the skills, then the process won't be slowed.
Post by: expwnent on May 01, 2012, 07:51:12 pm
Post by: Hanslanda on May 01, 2012, 11:13:16 pm
Post by: MrButtchicker on May 02, 2012, 12:46:33 am
Post by: Calech on May 03, 2012, 10:22:04 am
Spoiler: Experimental notes, fourth experiment (click to show/hide)
The summary - Individual Drills give experience at a fairly slow rate (about 300xp per month, obviously with some variance for dwarven behaviour), but they are steady and consistent. It's most interesting to note that the Individual Drills hit Novice level at about the same time as the Unskilled dwarf squad did - this seems to suggest (as noted above) that if you have no relevant skills at all, it takes about the same length of time in a squad as it does alone. Once some skills are present, the rate of gain from squad activities exceeds that of Individual Drills.
It should be noted that during these experiments I haven't taken into account armour or shields, both of which are also trainable skills, but not usually ones that I consider at embark - this may be an oversight as weapon skills train far faster than the auxiliary combat skills (Dodger, Armor User, Shield User, plus the non-weapon skills Biter, Kicker, Striker and Misc. Obj. User - although only the first three tend to be desirable in most situations).
Post by: Daenyth on May 03, 2012, 07:05:01 pm
Post by: Tryble on June 11, 2012, 11:42:53 pm
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)
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.
Post by: Tryble on June 12, 2012, 12:22:45 am
Okay, after 6 months exactly, this is what the final stats looks like:
(http://i48.servimg.com/u/f48/14/08/55/00/6month10.jpg)
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.
Post by: SAFry on June 12, 2012, 01:15:51 am
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.
Post by: Tryble on June 12, 2012, 01:21:36 am
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.
(http://i48.servimg.com/u/f48/14/08/55/00/traini10.jpg)
Final Results:
(http://i48.servimg.com/u/f48/14/08/55/00/6month11.jpg)
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.
Post by: SAFry on June 12, 2012, 05:01:04 am
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?
Post by: Duuvian on June 12, 2012, 06:08:36 am
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.
Post by: Loud Whispers on June 12, 2012, 03:19:53 pm
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.
Post by: Sutremaine on June 12, 2012, 03:53:11 pm
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.
Post by: Tryble on June 12, 2012, 03:56:11 pm
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.
Post by: Rakushun on June 13, 2012, 11:09:40 am
Edit: Never mind, the wiki informs me that I neglected to set my squad to follow the Active/Training alert.
Post by: Graebeard on June 13, 2012, 03:03:29 pm
Post by: Mudcrab on June 13, 2012, 05:49:53 pm
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on June 13, 2012, 07:56:22 pm
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.
Post by: Duuvian on June 13, 2012, 08:40:03 pm
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.
Post by: Kobold6 on June 14, 2012, 03:21:05 am
Ezum: proficient teacher, proficient student
Ineth: proficient teacher, proficient dodger
Kivish A.: proficient teacher, proficient student
Kivish M.: proficient teacher, proficient axedwarf
Zefon: proficient teacher, proficient student
After 1 year, all in the same squad. Idea was that the students will teach more in the long run
(http://i.imgur.com/VEQwR.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/KsUri.png)
Post by: khearn on June 14, 2012, 06:46:25 pm
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.
What do you mean by "free" skill?
Post by: Tryble on June 15, 2012, 04:42:19 am