Question 1:
I am curious exactly how training is supposed to work.
If I select a rack or armor stand and assign a unit to train there, that's ALL they do. I was under the impression that if they were set to Train, but the unit wasn't active they'd come here and do drills in their off time or if they had nothing particular to do. But they never leave but to eat, drink, or sleep. And I've been slowly training and gearing up sort of militias so my average citizens can defend themselves but they don't often do their normal jobs. Then they complain "about long patrols" when they haven't been active. I heard that was a bug and I recall someone mentioning a way to fix that?
Without using non standard training lessons, my Dwarves also skill up insanely slow. I see talk of people training Axelords and such, but I've only seen that maybe twice in 15 forts. And they only get it by surviving combat. I can have 3 fully equipped melee and 2 ranged squads set to train almost full time for years and they're lucky if they see Proficient without combat.
What am I doing wrong? I'm making a large room and putting in racks and pressing R to make the room nice and big, and them set T for training for each squad. I also have archery targets for my ranged squads but they don't often seem to use them. I have them set the correct direction. I usually make the room very nice with engraving and statues to help them get happy thoughts.
Question 2:
For and entire year, I had some Magma Forges set to make Iron Chests and pipes, and a Craftsdwarf shop set to make wooden and bone bolts for training. However, despite skilled laborers and abundant supplies of all these materials, they never got made. My manager set them up as jobs, too. What gives? The forges and such all work because I've fully geared up about 40-50 military Dwarves.
Question 3:
This is an extremely tiresome issue that I've had since I first started playing years ago. After maybe 3 or 4 years, and I guess after becoming a Baron my Leader/Broker won't do jack other than sleep or take breaks for entire freaking seasons. But he always has the best stats for trading and does it well for the first few years. Sometimes I've assigned him to a burrow on the depot and he'll still mill around on break. And he so commonly decides to do this right before/after a caravan arrives. This last game, combined with question 1, he will train until his breaks come around. He simply refuses to go trade. He has good stats for being responsible, energetic, etc.
This time I tried changing my broker to my manager, and guess what? He wants to screw around too. I request him to go trade, and double check only broker may trade, and I'll see him pasturing animals when he has NO hauling labors, over and over he'll do this and not trade. However, the burrow did work but why does this keep happening? It's driving me crazy, to watch them screw around and ignore important time sensitive tasks for menial labor that there are 20 other idlers available. I don't really like letting anyone trade because half the time you'll get someone who can't even give you a guess at item values, even if they can, the traders insist on obscenely lopsided deals.
At this point I'm ready to accept some DFHack script or just about anything to find a way to deal with this. Any way to cancel sleep/breaks or just get the dummies to do their jobs?
One more side question, what is everyone's stance of females in your military? If I'm good on laborers I usually just put anyone with the right skills/attributes to be soldiers. But it can be nasty when they pop out a baby and carries them into battle which seems more and more common as time goes on. Outside of emergencies I'm beginning to wonder if I should only allow males into my military.
