Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm not a historian, or even a history or military buff, but I've been thinking about this for a few days now. Military training has varied a LOT throughout history, with different focuses and approaches depending on the military, technological, cultural, and economic situation. When trying to apply these approaches to Dwarf Fortress, this is complicated by a few things.

1. Dwarves aren't humans. They differ from humans with naturally superior strength and toughness. They have different affinities and proclivities than humans usually do. The majority of dwarves seem to live in underground fortresses which enforce a degree of closeness, so dwarven cultures are going to have have a smaller variance than human cultures have in certain aspects. You might expect fortress dwarves to be more cooperative by necessity, and who knows what else. Also, dwarves can enter 'martial trances', which seem to be a weird combination of the flight-or-fight response and a flow state.
2. The world of Dwarf Fortress is a pretty hostile fantasy world. In real life, humans have always fought other humans, with similar physical capabilities. Dwarves are threatened by far more than other dwarven civilizations. The most common threats to a fortress are goblins and elves against which historical military tactics might work well, but fortresses are often attacked by undead, werebeasts, vampires, and megabeasts. A civilization that hasn't gone extinct yet in a world with such varied threats is likely to have developed approaches for dealing with all of the common threats, and clearly you don't find werebeasts the same way you do goblins, or a bronze colossus the same way you do elves.
3. Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress (and really every group) don't actually do battlefield tactics or fight as a unit yet. Fighting in formation was dominant throughout history, and you would expect civilized forces to fight in formation when fighting enemies with similar capabilities. Particularly humans and dwarves seem like they would fight in formation against humans, dwarves, goblins, and elves. Elves might be capable of fighting in formation, but as they are immortal their individual warriors should have individual skill that lessen some of the advantages of fighting in formation, and they also bring war animals that make it less practical to fight in formation. Goblins don't seem likely to fight in formation without the influence of a powerful leader (a goblin warleader rising to prominence could be a neat threat), and as they are also immortal the longest-lived goblins are going to be deadly warriors that have little reason to fight in formation. The lack of actual battlefield tactics right now invalidates a lot of historical training focused on unit tactics.
4. Every fortress starts with only seven dwarves and no military, so fortress-mode training to create a new force isn't going to be the same as the training to refresh an existing military. Unfortunately there isn't a huge amount of writing on the early days of historical military forces, probably because no one thought they were worth writing about until they were already an established force. There is a LOT more writing on modern military training, but I haven't really dug into it.

That all said, there's still useful stuff to be found in how soldiers and warriors trained or were trained throughout history, and there do seem to be some common threads, even ignoring unit tactics entirely. One thing I noticed is that almost every military force of note has been one dedicated to the purpose. Whether by the existence of a hereditary 'warrior class' or a standing, professional army, regular training and some degree of standardized equipment were common.

There are two common aspects that should perhaps inform Dwarf Fortress military training. There are other things, but these are the two most important and uniform things I noticed. Other things like specialization on top of a uniform standard of training are important, but not uniformly true.

Discipline and physical fitness are core to both training and combat performance. The training of professional armies begins with training designed to build fitness and discipline. Members of warrior classes developed physical fitness and discipline alongside and with their education. The recognition of the need for physical fitness dates back to the earliest professional armies and warrior classes. We don't have much writing at all on Tiglath-Pileser III's standing army, or on the training of the ancient Macedonian army, the first well-documented standing army. However, we know that the Spartans who centered their society on their warrior class put heavy emphasis on physical fitness as a part of early education. We have much better documentation of the training of the Roman Army. Before roman recruits trained with weapons at all, their training focused on discipline and physical fitness while simultaneously training important soldierly skills like marching and digging. The same is true of military training today. Even after training is complete, effective military forces attempt to maintain physical fitness. Roman soldiers trained every day to stay fit. Modern military forces do the same. Discipline is as important as fitness. Both warrior cultures and professional militaries place heavy importance on obeying orders, courage in battle, and often on self-discipline off the field of battle. Both ancient and modern forces use drills to teach soldiers how to behave in combat, to make combat regular so that when it happens for real they won't freeze up and will take the right action. After training, drills, inspections, labor, and field exercises help to maintain individual and unit discipline much as regular exercise maintains fitness.

Fresh recruits are trained by the experienced. A new recruit is assumed to have zero applicable skills. After developing some degree of fitness and discipline, they begin training in the various skills a soldier is expected to have. First a recruit is trained in the basics of a skill. Once the basics are developed, the skill itself can be trained. Usually they are taught by a specialist with training in the skill, with a training program designed to improve their skills. Many skills cannot be practically developed from scratch by independent practice. Those that can still generally require some sort of training program, so the person practicing can measure where and how they can improve. A great example is firearms marksmanship. It is possible to go from no experience with a gun to a great shot, but the initial stage of learning how to use the gun and the basics of aiming and shooting goes much faster with someone to instruct you in the process. Even after you have some degree of proficiency, simply shooting at a target won't make you a better marksman. Practice can help you maintain your level of skill, but to improve you need to identify where and why you are failing and seek to improve that aspect. The same is true of many skills, so military training tries to provides the basics and then puts the recruit on a training program designed to develop the skill to a target level. Of course, not every skill is so easily measured as marksmanship, and not every skill can be usefully trained solo. Hand-to-hand combat both in the military and in civilian life is trained by a combination of guided drills, sparring, and direct instruction. Drills help teach people the movements and build speed, accuracy, and power, but actual fighting can only be taught by experience. Even so, the experience will be more useful if there is an instructor to provide perspective on what you did right or wrong.

It's also important to note that learning continues after basic training. Historically, 'green' units comprised of all or mostly fresh recruits have performed much worse than units that were mostly veterans. New recruits whether enlisted or officers can learn from their peers, superiors, and subordinates.

How to apply this to DF fortress mode training? I don't know, but I'm seeing two things the current system lacks. One thing the current fortress-mode system lacks is a way to focus on physical training; right now, most people who are going for a highly-trained military pre-train their soldiers with mining or pump operating. The second thing we're lacking is a way for dwarves to be trained in skills by dwarves experienced in those skills. This could be achieved by the addition of more dwarf behaviours, or by the addition of features like seconding or per-barracks instructors. Adding more micro is undesirable but currently training recruits with an experienced soldier is pretty clunky, so the addition of new features will probably be a reduction in micro.

I did separate threads because they're separate suggestions that seem like they'd be exclusive of each other, even if they accomplish similar results. I apologize if I seemed demanding.

The champion sort of accomplishes what I want, but not completely. I'll try it out anyways.

I'll explain my use case, I guess? I have a squad of four legendary soldierdwarves. Three of them are from the first few years of the fort; the best of them is one of the original seven. I want to use them as a cadre to train up a more sizeable military, because four soldier dwarves tire out before they get through an entire siege. To do this, I would have to remove them from my existing squad and move them to my existing training squad. This moves them to another barracks and requires me to assign a second uniform (troublesome, since they're attached to stuff). The hero squad is also my first line of defense against werebeasts and the leading edge of sieges if my gate doesn't close in time. If I wanted to respond to a werebeast or berserk dwarf with my original squad, I would have to move them back and then wait for them to switch uniforms. I could individually order the teacher of each squad to respond to the threat, but they're not in their best uniform.

I do have an alternative suggestion, so I guess I'll go make a thread for that.

Forgotten Beasts are generated as being composed of a random material. There could be more detail, but there are a lot of neat materials in interesting configurations an FB can be made from, and the properties have a real effect on how hard they are to kill and what kind of threat they represent to the your dwarves or an adventuring party. Similarly, armor and weapons in Dwarf Fortress have material properties based on the item they're made of, and these affect how they behave in combat.
Unfortunately, material properties do not currently determine what materials result from a slain megabeast or carry over to the resulting materials. Static megabeasts also provide only mundane materials.
It would be very neat for it to be possible to create mood and non-mood artifact items out of the remains of megabeasts. For example, I fought a Hill Titan described as having small brass scales. I would have liked for the Titan to leave behind a leather or a hide that would tan into leather with some of the material properties of brass. Similarly, I'd love to be roaming the world in adventure mode and see a heirloom suit of armor made from the scaled hide of a dragon someone's great-grandfather slew and for it to be more than a suit of leather armor with a grand history. Fantasy stories often have dragons as having hides and/or scales of incredible toughness.

My suggestion is really two suggestions, one less ambitious and one substantially moreso. They are not exclusive; one could be done in one update and the other done at a time when the systems involved are already being reworked.

The first suggest is to leave static and dynamic megabeasts as they are but change the materials resulting from titans and FBs to have properties based on the material the megabeast is made of. Some static megabeasts like dragons, rocs, and colossi should also get special materials that they leave behind when butchered. A titan or FB with scales would leave behind leather or skin that tans into leather with properties based on the material the megabeast is made of. Those with shells should leave behind a material that counts as bone for the purposes of crafting, but with the material properties of whatever they were made of. A dragon might leave behind leather that behaves like bronze or steel, and a colossus might leave behind bronze that makes items that recover from wear. A roc might just have leather that's tougher than usual. The bones of giants and dragons could be be substantially stronger than normal bone.

The second suggestion is to rework the materials of megabeasts completely. Determine the form first. Determine how many materials it's made of. A blob probably just has one material. A humanoid might be one solid material, like a colossus, or might have separate materials for bones, organs, and skin. If it has scales, the scales and skin might be one leather material like snakeskin, or it might have scales large enough to be considered a material separate from the skin. A beast could have osteoderms in addition to other external structures, and those are another potential material. A beast with an exoskeleton probably won't have a skin or scales, but a beast with a bony shell like a turtle would.
Once the number of material slots are determined, then materials can be assigned to them. The materials should make sense for the slot, but they don't have to be exact copies of mundane materials. One beast might have large scales that are identical to mundane bronze in every respect, and your dwarves can melt them down and turn them into bars. Another might have bones that have the mechanical properties of iron, but they can't be melted. Instead, a bonecrafter needs to work them into armor as though they were bone. The reverse could also happen; bones that get melted into bars, and large scales that have to be worked by a dwarf like bone. A beast with stone scales might provide skin that tans into leather with many of the mechanical properties of stone. Maybe the materials could be procedural as well as the beasts; determine which properties should carry over into the resulting materials, and which shouldn't, and a bit of randomness for certain parts to determine how they have to be processed, whether they need to be melted down or chiseled into shape by a craftsdwarf or forged directly into an object by a smith.
Some parts of beasts aren't going to result in useful materials; that's fine. Some beasts won't have anything that can be turned into useful armor or weapons, but I personally feel that ideally most beasts should leave behind some usable materials, even if it's only really usable for furniture.

It would also be neat if the different materials a beast was made of were thematically connected; maybe they could be selected from the spheres a beast is associated with.

I would expect most things made from the remains of a forgotten beast would be artifacts. It would be neat to be able to see where all the major pieces of a beast ended up. I'm not sure how raw materials like bronze bars melted down from the scales of a beast would be dealt with and items subsequently made from them. I'm not sure how wear would be handled, either; should FB artifacts be wear-immune like mood artifacts, or wear-resistant, or normal?

Thoughts?

Artifacts have gotten a lot of love with the update, and look like they're going to get more during the magic update. Related to artifacts, are there any plans to make the properties of procedurally generated megabeasts carry over into the materials they leave behind when they die or are butchered? Similarly, might bronze colossi and dragons leave behind less mundane materials?
It would be very neat for it to be possible to create artifacts or special/artifact items out of the remains of megabeasts, i.e. Leather armor with some of the material properties of brass from the skin of a Titan with small brass scales. I'd love to see a heirloom suit of armor made from the scales of a dragon someone's great-grandfather slew.

Thank you! After adding pets (I thought I'd added those when I was originally creating them but must have gotten distracted), and adding some tokens to attempt to force hostility, I've gotten trade but still no hostility. I'll just have to try harder. They might not be hostile because they only seem to have survived in isolated areas..

edit: Okay yeah, they're getting murdered in worldgen. By Elves. Does anyone know where I can read up on the mechanics of world-gen warfare and optimize for them? I'm thinking I need the orcs to be more aggressive and attack first, but I'm not sure about that, and don't know how to achieve that.

edit: I changed their 'kill sentients' ethics to acceptable and required, and their eat sentients ethics to acceptable. I *think* they're more aggressive and one test (although that's a HORRIBLE sample size) says they're surviving much better. They're still not hostile to most of my civs, but I did get one dwarven civ at war with both Goblins and Orcs, so that's progress.

edit: Gave up and added ITEM_THIEF. Between that and utterances, I'm pretty sure they're perma-hostile. Sadly, not much war, but hostile will do.