Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Gameplay Questions => Topic started by: MrButtchicker on April 29, 2012, 06:37:10 pm
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My dwarves train military very slowly, as in like, maybe one skill point in a skill every minute or so. Is that normal, even though I have three squads all with very good mace dwarves as leaders? If not, how an I speed it up? Also, everyone in my military is getting unhappy. They all have private bedrooms, constant booze, and short duty hours. How could I improve their happiness?
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Break up your military in many squads, each with 2 soldiers apiece. Make one big barracks with all squads told to train there, then turn on all squads to Active/Train. You'll have legendary military in 1-2 years of game time.
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Break up your military in many squads, each with 2 soldiers apiece. Make one big barracks with all squads told to train there, then turn on all squads to Active/Train. You'll have legendary military in 1-2 years of game time.
I tried with three person squads, since two person ones are hard two manage, set the scheduled to train every month with at least two people, but now nobody is even training! They are all just storing in stockpiles!
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change the active schedule to Active/Train for every squad. Use 2, not 3.
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Use 2, not 3.
But you have to set the minimum number to less than the total, don't you? Otherwise, they get hungry and thirsty, or they do for me. So I put three in a squad and set the minimum to two.
That way two of them are always farting around, usually waiting for a class to start, while one does nothing at all. But their skills don't increase at all. And they're always complaining about long patrol duty, anyway - even when I've got them training one month and doing nothing the next month, in rotation.
And don't get me started on marksdwarves! Honestly, the military is worse than it was a two years ago, when I last played DF.
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Well, I need squads of three, because soldiers commonly complain about draft times. And it was all fixed. Exept for it being slow, it is only marginally faster.
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The only complain when they are turned into recruits. When they have a military skill and become an Axedwarf or sworddwarf, or spear dwarf, etc... They don't have bad thoughts from the draft anymore.
They will feed and drink when training. Other orders, like patrol and station, they won't, so they will need to be rotated out of duty to take care of themselfs.
I put 2 guys in a squad, leave schedule defaults> Train year round 10 soldiers minimum and it works fine. Get legendary soldiers in no time.
You won't see any progress if you watch them. Its like boiling water. Just check on them every 6 months, not every 5 minutes.
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Embark with two dwarves set with Proficient weapon + Proficient teacher, and the second Proficient armor/shield/whatever + Proficient teacher. Set them to train is a squad of 2. When you get migrants to recruit, split the two teachers into 2 squads and assign them a migrant each. Repeat as needed.
The "teacher" skill has a massive effect on how quickly the students learn, and it trains slowly.
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I don't even know how old my fort was. Rough guess is maybe 30 game years. t had 5 legendary teachers. 1 of them is 15+5 teacher. Its still faster to do 2 man squads.
Legendary teacher with 4 students is still slower than 2 squads of 2 dwarfs sparring.
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But you have to set the minimum number to less than the total, don't you? Otherwise, they get hungry and thirsty, or they do for me. So I put three in a squad and set the minimum to two.
Of course they get hungry and thirsty -- and then they go eat and drink. They won't starve or dehydrate themselves.
There hasn't been a need to mess with the number of actives dwarves since, like, the very beginning of the 0.31.x release series.
And don't get me started on marksdwarves! Honestly, the military is worse than it was a two years ago, when I last played DF.
You're micromanaging too much. Put 2 dwarves in a squad, give them the same weapon and a reasonable set of armor, set them to train all year round (by changing their alert to Active/Training). Give them a barracks marked with a "T" for their squad. Don't mess with the number of dwarves following the training order or any of that stuff. They'll take breaks for food, booze and sleep as needed.
That's all you need for melee dwarves. Now, marksdwarves are a bit more complex. I gave up on archery targets for a variety of reasons. What I do with marksdwarves is create two squads of roughly equal size. I set up my walls, and some points, and a route -- this route covers the whole wall, and includes a final point down in the courtyard where the ammo stockpiles are. Then I modify the schedule, creating a "Patrol Wall" order, and I have each squad spend one month Training, and one month Patrolling Wall. One squad trains while the other squad patrols.
Barracks training for marksdwarves means they'll get a smidgeon of shield/armor/dodging training, an occasional crossbow demonstration, and some individual weapon drills. It doesn't train them up very fast, but that's not the point -- the point is to fill out their defensive skills, which an archery target wouldn't do anyway. Their offensive training comes during the Patrol months, when they shoot anything hostile that they see. Live target training is way better than archery target training.
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Catch several necromancers, use them for undead battle arenas.
Or whack on flesh balls with blunt weapons/training edge weapons.
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I figured out the secret to train markdwarfs. BOLTS.
If they aren't shooting at your archery targets, you probably don't have enough bolts.
Basics stuff:
For a 10 man archery squad
You just need 1 barracks and 10 archery ranges. Put a T for Train in all of them. They will do a mix of normal training and archery training. As their markdwarf skill increases, they will spend more time doing archery practice. Everyone needs a crossbow and a quiver. Go to the military ammunition screen m-f. change the number of bolts assigned to your squad to over 500. If you don't have any hunters, delete the ammo for them.
Say you have hunters and 2 mark squads set to all have bolts. 100 for hunters and 500 each for markdwarfs. You look at your ammunition stockpile and see lots of bins full of bolts, but lots of your markdwarfs are not training. WHY not? You don't have enough bolts. If you have 800 bolts. 100 is used up by the hunters, 500 by Squad A, so that leaves only 200 left for squad B, thats not enough for everyone to have a full quiver, so everyone won't train. As that ammo is depleted, they won't pick up more ammo because all the ammo still in the stockpile is assigned to the hunters or Squad A. So Make more bolts!
If nobody is doing archery practice, you have likely run out of ammo. Check random dwarfs with v then i for inventory. Look in the quiver. If it is empty make more bolts.
Making 10 archery ranges for a single squad does work. I've seen every range being used simultaneously. But its likely only to occur when they are higher skilled and prefer archery practice over combat drills.
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Of course they get hungry and thirsty -- and then they go eat and drink. They won't starve or dehydrate themselves.
I don't know if they'll die, but they do get unhappy thoughts. And my dwarves aren't all that happy to begin with (especially since they started throwing themselves in the river, riding over the waterfall and going splat at the bottom).
You're micromanaging too much.
You're probably right. But I was seeing them get unhappy from long patrol duty, unhappy from getting hungry, unhappy from being thirsty,... and in general, I get worried in Dwarf Fortress when I start seeing those kinds of things!
But I'll give that a try. Thanks!
Now, marksdwarves are a bit more complex. I gave up on archery targets for a variety of reasons. ... I have each squad spend one month Training, and one month Patrolling Wall.
Again, I kept seeing unhappy thoughts from long patrol duty, but I'll give this a try. Still, my marksdwarves won't shoot through fortifications, anyway - even when I've arranged prisoners for them to shoot - because they're too dumb to step close enough to the wall to fire through it, even when they happen to be carrying bolts (which they do about half the time, I guess) and I specifically station them there!
So they never get any better (because, as you say, archery targets seem to be completely worthless). And almost all of my military consists of novice marksdwarves, because I've gotten almost no migrants with other military skills (and no two melee skills the same).
It doesn't train them up very fast, but that's not the point -- the point is to fill out their defensive skills, which an archery target wouldn't do anyway.
Hmm,... I never worried about their defensive skills, because I thought they'd be firing from behind fortifications, anyway. But if they won't do that, I guess I'll have to send them down into melee range, huh?
Heh, heh. I had a troll show up in my dining room unexpectedly (my miners opened up a cavern in a location I missed), so I sent my military to kill it. My marksdwarves showed up with their wooden crossbows and no bolts. You know, it takes a LONG time to kill a troll when you're just slapping him with a light piece of wood! If it wasn't for a couple of dogs which happened to be there, I would probably have lost a lot of dwarves. (The dogs didn't really do any damage, but the troll attacked them, rather than my dwarves.)
The thing is, I thought this new military system was hopelessly confusing, but I expected that it would work after I finally figured it out. Well, after more than a year now, I thought I had it figured out, but it still works terribly for me - not to mention being awkward and even less user-friendly than the rest of Dwarf Fortress!
But maybe I just need another year to figure it out. :) Thanks for the tips!
Embark with two dwarves set with Proficient weapon + Proficient teacher, and the second Proficient armor/shield/whatever + Proficient teacher.
Well, with only 7 dwarves and a whole lot of other skills they need - some of which also train slowly - that's kind of hard to do, isn't it? But I often embark with one dwarf with military skills, just not with teacher. Thanks for the tip.
I figured out the secret to train markdwarfs. BOLTS.
If they aren't shooting at your archery targets, you probably don't have enough bolts.
I suspected that, awhile back, but it still doesn't seem to be working for me.
OK, so for a two-man marksdwarf squad, can I set them to 50 bolts - 25 for each? Well, 50 wood, for training, and 50 metal, for fighting? Won't they pick up new bolts when those are used up?
And if they need to train defensively, I should set them up in 2-dwarf squads, shouldn't I? Wouldn't that be the same as my melee dwarves?
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OK, so for a two-man marksdwarf squad, can I set them to 50 bolts - 25 for each? Well, 50 wood, for training, and 50 metal, for fighting? Won't they pick up new bolts when those are used up?
I make my marksdwarf squads larger. I don't deploy them the same way as the melee dwarves, and I don't train them the same way. I don't have the same expectations.
Marksdwarf squads really, really tempt me to use danger room training. Or to cross-train them as hammerdwarves with actual hammers, and some time spent sparring. The important thing to raise is shield skill. Even if they're behind a fortification, they will still get shot by goblin elite bowmen/crossbowmen. Elites ignore fortifications as if they were empty space. Shield skill is their best chance of not getting pincushioned.
But... usually I let nature take its course. We need some bodies for the medics to practice on after all.
Oh, right -- the other part. They will not reload ammo if they can see an enemy unit. They will stand there and do nothing, rather than let that enemy out of their sight. One way to force them to reload ammo is to take them off duty and then put them back on duty. During their time as an off-duty (civilian) dwarf, they will be frightened by the enemy unit, and will run away, rather than standing there stoically. If you're lucky, they'll even run away to some place where they lose sight of the enemy, at which point they can think again, meaning they can do things like reload. But in any case, the transition from civilian back to on-duty military dwarf almost always forces a Pickup Equipment job, if one is required.
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Again, I kept seeing unhappy thoughts from long patrol duty
Unhappiness from "long patrol duty" is a known bug (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3190). Ideally, you should either be giving your squads idle periods every few months, or setting the training #'s to less than squad size to give dwarves a break and prevent the "long patrol" thought, but for whatever reason the idle breaks have stopped preventing this thought.
Keeping military happy is pretty difficult in the current versions. On average, they're usually the least happy group of dwarves in my fort. I now try to focus on providing them luxuries before my civs.
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Oh, right -- the other part. They will not reload ammo if they can see an enemy unit.
Thanks! That should clear up one of my problems.
Ideally, you should either be giving your squads idle periods every few months, or setting the training #'s to less than squad size to give dwarves a break and prevent the "long patrol" thought, but for whatever reason the idle breaks have stopped preventing this thought.
And this is something else I didn't know. Even when they were getting a break every other month (one month training, one month idle), they were still complaining about long patrol duty.
Thanks!
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Melee dwarves get happy thoughts from long sparring sessions, and you can deploy them to kill wildlife for joy of slaughter.
For marksdwarves you can train them as hunters or use archery targets. Make a 1x6 path with walls on both sides to the target, and channel the tiles around the back and sides of the target. Make one target per dwarf in your squad, and assign the squad to each target making sure the barracks designation doesn't overlap. Also, make sure the target is set to fire from the proper direction and that your dwarves have bolts to fire. Each dwarf will fire at a seperate targey until they run out of bolts or nature calls.
For bolts, assign 30 or so bolts per dwarf (so 300 bolts for ten dwarves) and assign all bolts forcombat and training (It's thay way by default). A legendary bone bolt shot from a legendary bone crossbow by a legendary crossbowdwarf will down most threats.
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... use archery targets. Make a 1x6 path with walls on both sides to the target, and channel the tiles around the back and sides of the target. Make one target per dwarf in your squad, and assign the squad to each target making sure the barracks designation doesn't overlap.
I wasn't aware that this was required. What's the significance of the barracks designation overlapping?
Maybe this is why my archery targets aren't used very often, but I never heard that it was required. Thanks for the tip!
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wood bolts are good for training if you have lots of wood as each task is 25 bolts instead of the 5 bone bolts you get