Bay 12 Games Forum

The tutorial I'd offer is this:

1. create squad through m or n menus by assigning a militia commander/creating your first squad.

2. place an armor stand or a weapon rack where you want your troops training. Set the correct squad to train at the armor stand by making it their training barracks (q--scroll down to right squad--t).

3.  the hard part:
A. create a burrow for civilian safety, remember that burrows can be selected across z-levels. When danger comes hit m-a and select the safe burrow on the far right column--the green "civ" tag should appear near the burrow name. this will make civilians stay in the burrow during battle. deselect after battle

B. Set you military schedule-- hit m-s and look at your squad.  The default order for active/training is train 10/10.  Set this to 7/10 (or about a 70% ratio of however big your militia is--this ensures they rotate to eat and sleep, but train always).  You can also order them to station somewhere, defend the burrow and patrol a set of points previously designated through N(otes).

Uniforms--don't bother too much, standard uniform for metal works fine, only exceptions might be adding extra shields, extra cloaks, for the obsessive, exploiting the laying mechanic to create super packed uniforms (and dwarves that resemble medieval riot police).  If you want to assign an artifact weapon, (or just a particular weapon) to a dwarf hit W, find the dwarf find the weapon etc.

Otherwise schedules and burrows are the only things that one really needs for effective training/keeping civilians inside and military out.

When you attack don't use the k(ill) order, use the m(ove) order instead--its better for positioning and lets dwarves choose their own targets instead of chasing someone they might have already killed.

When you get melee down, try archers, they are waaay more challenging to manage, but well worth it.

Despite the awesome article on palace economy, I must point out--it's still communism if you kill the nobility 

But you can piss them off?  I thought they would never get offended unless you started at war with them.

I thought Alligators were North America specific, whereas Australia is known for its salt-water crocodiles.

Zerg should cut [pet_exotic] and try to integrate cavern species into the swarm

What?! Who dares speak against grazing? Grazing is awesome!  Herds of tigers guarding entrances, with some raw editing, herds of trogs defending your deep entrance. No ropes!

And make a well--1 block, 1 rope, 1 mechanism, 1 bucket= no more thirsty dwarves