Welcome one and all to this introductary course in dwarven warfare, if this lesson is popular i might be persuaded to make more!Edit: Changed the text under the barracks designation in light of recent clarifications
There are many people that are having some problems getting their little dwarven army to behave, and i cannot blame them,
the interface isn't exactly what you would call intuitive, and the bugs havent exactly been helping either.
BUT, there is still a rumour going around that normal training is broken, and that the only way to train is via danger room. This is false, my current fort has a twenty dwarf strong legendary army trained without the use of danger rooms or caged goblins.
This will be a VERY basic tutorial, so some of the more experienced people might groan a bit.
I started out a quick fort just to show how this will work, i'll just be building a barracks and equipping my dwarves with brought gear.
Bringing some basic copper gear (note that i realized halfway through this that i had forgotten any means of getting a bed, so i restarted, so you might see some different dwarf and squad names further down, ignore this.. this never happened)
Step one is to set one of your dwarves as a militia commander through the (n)obles screen.
The dwarf i chose had a few skillpoints in hammerdwarf and teacher, something i have done alot lately since it seems to really speed up training an early militia.
Now open the (m)ilitary screen, and press (c) to create a squad using the commander as their leader
you will now be prompted to select a uniform, you can edit these yourself, but that is outside the scope of this particular tutorial.
Add all the dwarves to the squad, leave the screen, unpause and go back. if you press (e) you should see a green weapon rack on the side of some items, these mean that that item is currently assigned to that dwarf, a missing rack means there are no available items that fit the criteria of the uniform. You can use the keypad to scroll through the dwarves to make sure all of them have their proper weapons.
You can also use the equipment screen to assign specific items to dwarves, but that is again, outside the scope of this tutorial
Back on the military screen press (s) for schedule. This is where we will set up what your dwarves will do, and when. Start by clearing all the orders by pressing (x) on each month. then press (o) to start a new order. (note than you can give several different orders on the same month, more on this later)
Cycle through the different available orders with (o) you want the one called training. The important thing here is to reduce the MINIMUM number of dwarves required to follow the order (+ and - to change). In this example i use two, if this number is too high dwarves will stand around waiting for the correct number of people, and will stand around doing nothing while doing so. This is the minimum number however, so more can join a demonstration, they are just not required.
IMPORTANT: You finish an order by Shift+Enter pressing escape will clear the order
To avoid burning out my recruits, i usually start off with a 2 months on 1 month off schedule. As dwarves in the military has a tendancy to train themselves to death trying to follow your orders, this is a safer alternative (and they'll still train in the barracks in their offtime if they feel like it)
Now comes the time to activate your squad. On the military screen press (a) to open alerts, arrow down to select Training/Active then press right and enter to set the squad to this alert state.
Note that you can set up several different schedules for different alert states, for instance, you can have all your military dwarves automatically station in the killing hall while all your civilians run for the bunkers, all at the press of one (or a couple at least) button!
Your dwarves should now activate, if you don't already have a barracks (a bed, armor stand or weapon rack is required to make a barracks) you may need to deactivate your military and have them make the preparations.
Here is one i prepared earlyer. The important thing to note is that i have attached the squad to this barracks, this is now their home and they will spend their idle time here. If you prefer a people's militia that are armed and ready to fight if needed, but also do actual work, you can't assign them a barracks.
Also note the three letters behind the squad, this lets you know that the squad will (T)rain or store their (I)nduvidual Equipment and s(Q)ad Equipment. (Note that i have never seen dwarves actually store any equipment in the barracks if they don't have a designated bed with their name on it)
When you unpause (if you havent already) you will see your squad happily running towards their barracks, and if you've done everything right, and you haven't encountered any silly bugs. you should soon have your reward
That should do it!
If anything is unclear, let me know and I'll update the tutorial accordingly
Feedback is welcome!
