Bay 12 Games Forum

I can't figure out what controls this, nor can I find a working link to mayday's for 40d to try and find it.

If you're not picky about which graphics pack you use, you could use RantingRodents, which I always preferred anyway. (and it doesn't exhibit this behavior)

thread's here
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=29706.0

preinstalled with 40d:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=1684

he's likely trapped down there, either due to a pathing bug or being cut off from the rest of the fort somehow. try saving and reloading, and if he doesn't start moving, have a miner dig him some escape stairs

So in order to get your dwarves to train efficiently, they need to be set to inactive, and have a barracks set to training and/or sleeping.  When a soldier dwarf is inactive, they will return to civilian status.  This can be confusing and make you think they will do civilian jobs and not train.  However, as long as a dwarf is in a squad, they WILL NOT do any labor jobs (this is based on personal experience, if anyone has experienced otherwise, please let me know.)  What they WILL DO is sit in the barracks doing "Individual Training".  Individual training is how the dwarf trains its main axe/sword/spear/etc. skill and fighting and other skills.  Currently, this is the ONLY WAY, from what I know and experienced, to get soldiers to be more skilled.

Setting your squads to inactive will not only make them more skilled, but it also solves your hunger/thirst issue.  Once newer fixed versions come out from Toady, this may change, so be sure to check the change logs on newer versions.

this doesn't work. i mean it might fix the not eating, I haven't left it long enough to see, but setting them to inactive and then setting train(or sleep) from the barracks just causes them to start dodging demonstrations

a) can you set the dwarves to equip different gear based on the alert level? i.e. wooden training axes for a Training alert and steel axes for OHGODGOBLINS?

b) can you determine what kind of training they do, or is it just random? one fort I had a military doing nothing but individual training drills, and they got skilled relatively fast, and would stop to eat. in another with the military set up in pretty much the exact same way they did nothing but watch dodging demonstrations and would starve themselves (they were however actually training, it wasn't the bug where the commander gets stuck on 'organizing'). so far i've never seen sparring.

So my first serious fort in the new version, I embarked with no items (except 2 picks and an axe), no skills, and 6-7 cows. this was not actually the source of the Fun. In fact I got a very successful fort going. Between breeding and trading I eventually had a big ol' herd of cows. Butchering all the bulls lead to a steady supply of beef and tallow. After some gathering I set up a strawberry farm outside the entrance. My dwarves were living the good life, eating beef and cheese roasts, sipping on strawberry wine. traded for everything I needed (high quality meat and cheese roasts are still fairly valuable despite food getting generally nerfed for trading).

I had a small military, outfitted in Leather, and training for about 2 years with wooden axes. I forgot to buy them metal ones from the caravan, and I hadn't started any metal industry at this point (I never found bituminous coal/lignite and after spending ages with 40d where i'd always embark with a magma pipe and use magma forges, I forgot about making charcoal from wood), but I figured eh whatever. In 40d a well trained dwarf could kill 2 goblins at once, naked. not so much anymore. Two ambushes showed up at once around year 3, clad in iron armor and wielding silver spears. Most of my military was slaughtered right up front, taking down maybe 3 of the goblins. 4 rampaged around my fort causing much death before they eventually wandered off.

My military commander however fought with 3 goblins at once for a full season. after she finally expired, half the fort was dead and the remainder were in full trantrum spiral, so I dumped the river into the remains of my fort.

I'm fairly new to DF, I loved getting attacked by goblins. Although in the latest version (Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong) I've never been attacked by goblins. Nothing seems to attack me in the places I pick. Where ... in the old version no matter where I'd get attacked by something sometime.

press tab a few times when selecting your embark site, there will be a list of civilizations there. if goblins aren't on the list, they may not be able to access your location, or they may have all died out in world generation (this is much more common in the new version)

This is more or less true. Although there is one thing to note, at least in my experience: With the new material/combat system, if your enemy has metal armor, you pretty much _must_ have weapons made from a stronger metal.

If the goblins have iron armor, for example, trying to take them on with iron gear will likely lead to a stalemate that ends either in the combatants starving to death or the very occasional lucky third-toe-left-foot-severing 'killing blow'. On the other hand, with steel or even bronze weapons (axes seem to generally be the most effective), the poor ironclad goblins will get hacked to pieces pretty much instantly.

now you tell me. I had an army of like 10 out of a 40 man fort, the first goblin ambush wiped us out, despite most of them being axe lords. unfortunately they had all copper gear because all I could find was tons and tons of malachite.

discounting any weirdness related to reclaiming, you could try setting the target, high quality stockpile to (t)ake from the regular stockpile that the artifact currently resides in.