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[Haytrid]

Alright, I've tried and tried, spent hours on this, watched video tutorials and I just can't get this to work.

I have a squad of 10 dwarves.  I forged 10 full suits of leather armor and 10 silver warhammers.  I can not get the dwarves to put on the armor or wield the hammers.

I have them set to train every moth
I have them set to wear uniforms at all times
I have the squad training schedule set to active

There the weapons and armor sits in the bins still.  They haven't moved since I finished manufacturing them.

I have tried making uniforms and assigning those
I have tried assigning specific items to each member

They simply have no interest in weapons and armor.

I have been playing for some time and accomplished *most* of the domestic tasks, this is my first foray into military.

I've done homework but clearly am missing something, can someone give me a bump?

Thanks!

[kardofaces]

Have you set a barracks for them to train/active? That may make them do something.

[slothen]

militia commander ->squad -> dwarfs in squad.

barracks -> assign train (T)

military screen (m) -> uniforms (n) -> new uniform (c) -> name uniform (N) -> add items to uniform (lower body (L), upper body (A), head (H), hands(G), feet (B), Weapon (W), Shields (S)) -> assign material components (m) -> leather for all, leave shields with no material specified, select silver for warhammers.

Materials specification is unnecessary, they will still wear whatever leggings/helm/boots they can find.  If silver hammers are your only ones they will use them even without specifying "silver."

military screen (m) -> equipment (e) -> assign uniform (U) -> select squad, select any squad member in middle column, then select your new uniform on the right and (SHIFT+ENTER)

should work with over-clothing or replace-clothing (always go with replace if you have enough armor, sometimes armor doesn't fit over clothes and your dwarf will be unprotected).

military screen (m) -> alerts (a) -> select active/train in left column -> select your squad in middle column (ENTER) -> you will see a green A next to the squad.  Important that active/train is selected.

go military screen (m) - schedule (s) to make sure that the active/train has training set.  This is the default unless you've messed with it.

-"leather armor" is a specific chest-piece armor made only from leather, analagous to chain mail.
-if you assign a uniform to a squad, new dwarfs assigned to that squad will be assigned that uniform automatically.
-if you assign a uniform to a squad, then change the definition of that uniform, it won't affect that squad unless you reassign that uniform to them (shift enter)

[greycat]

I generally don't assign materials in my custom uniforms.  I let the dwarves pick their own stuff.  They'll choose by value, and since steel is so intrinsically valuable, that means they'll choose the steel armor first, or the lesser-metal armor next, or leather if that's all they can get.

Are your dwarves training at all?  Are they going to the barracks and doing Individual Combat Drill?  Or possibly demonstrations and sparring?  Any of these would be a sign that you've got a potentially working military.

Are they on duty (solid colored smiley-faces in "ASCII", title like "recruit" or "hammerdwarf") or off duty (non-solid smiley faces, title like "leatherworker" or "ranger" or "farmer")?  Do any of them have Hunting, Mining or Wood-cutting labors enabled?

Is your militia commander alive, and is the squad's captain (if this isn't the first squad) alive?

Also, you can check on what equipment they've been assigned so far.  (m) (e) will give you the overview of whose stuff has been assigned, and (m) (e) (P) will give you the detailed view, letting you see precisely which item each dwarf's uniform contains.

Also also, if you just started this squad, has time advanced across a month boundary yet?  They may not go on duty until the 1st of a month.  You can force them to go on duty temporarily (and gear up) by giving the squad a "Station" order, waiting until they have some equipment, and then cancelling it.

[Fredd]

Haytrid, if you followed the advice above, and it did not work, create a uniform, with no items, assign it to the members of the squad. Then reassign the leather uniform, making sure it replaces clothing. Highboots, leggings, helms,caps, bodyarmor, are great. But gloves will mess you up if they already are wearing a pair as their civvy clothing

[zooeyglass]

militia commander ->squad -> dwarfs in squad.

barracks -> assign train (T)

military screen (m) -> uniforms (n) -> new uniform (c) -> name uniform (N) -> add items to uniform (lower body (L), upper body (A), head (H), hands(G), feet (B), Weapon (W), Shields (S)) -> assign material components (m) -> leather for all, leave shields with no material specified, select silver for warhammers.

Materials specification is unnecessary, they will still wear whatever leggings/helm/boots they can find.  If silver hammers are your only ones they will use them even without specifying "silver."

military screen (m) -> equipment (e) -> assign uniform (U) -> select squad, select any squad member in middle column, then select your new uniform on the right and (SHIFT+ENTER)

should work with over-clothing or replace-clothing.

military screen (m) -> alerts (a) -> select active/train in left column -> select your squad in middle column (ENTER) -> you will see a green A next to the squad.  Important that active/train is selected.

go military screen (m) - schedule (s) to make sure that the active/train has training set.  This is the default unless you've messed with it.

this should be hotkeyed for use / somehow stickeyed / engraved on this forum's wall. V handy.

[Haytrid]

I had missed one step, this one:

"military screen (m) -> alerts (a) -> select active/train in left column -> select your squad in middle column (ENTER) -> you will see a green A next to the squad.  Important that active/train is selected."

Everything else I had already done, once I went specifically into the alert screen and took it off CIV they jumped to action.  Thank you very much, it seems like there is a lot of duplication in the military steps.

Although once they started training their happiness quickly dropped to "0", I'm assuming they were maybe starving to death???  I imagine I have to put some breaks in their schedule?

I mean there were still some inconsistencies like one dwarf being labeled as an axedwarf even though I didn't have any axes and he still didn't pick up his hammer.

Also, I set the military screen to "sleep in barracks as needed"   I have 10 beds in the barracks, not sure what the preferred setting on this is.

I am officially en-route though with my first official military.  The training seems painfully slow, I basically had them training until I noticed there happiness dropped to 0, I then canceled their training and not a single dwarf had gained a single "blip" in Dwarf Therapist in the hammerdwarf column.

I'll mess with it and monitor it more tonight though, thank you for all the advice!

[CognitiveDissonance]

If this helps, I never set up uniforms - I equip every single dwarf manually.

As in, go to equip, and select their gear dwarf by dwarf.

So far, it has worked perfectly! My most recent dwarves dutifully picked up their bucklers, crossbows and shell/leather armor, and went to practice at the archery range.

[slothen]

the alerts/schedule system seems redundant, but in fact allows for a high degree of pre-sets and customization.  Each alert has a schedule for active squads, and a set of burrows to restrict civilians to.  By hitting enter on the left column for alerts, you set the civilian population to the burrows allowed in that alert.  Or, you can ignore that, leave civ on inactive all the time,  and just select which burrows you want when a siege/ambush happens, and manually deselect the burrows to remove restrictions when the siege ends.  Then, squads can be set to different alerts individually, this is done by highlighting the alert, moving over to the middle column, and then hitting enter on the squad.  At that point each squad will do whatever is described in the schedule for that squad under that alert.

Even without setting the squads to active/train they should have picked up equipment and done individual training drills when not busy with other jobs.

The job title reflects a dwarf's highest weapon skill, not the weapon currently assigned.  A dwarf gets this job title when he is under alert that has a specific order (or a station/kill command).  Dwarves are not considered on-duty if they are training in a barracks while no orders are assigned.  They will only do individual combat drills in this circumstance, they will keep their civilian profession name.

happiness dropping to 0 because of training is caused by 2 things.  There is a bad thought associated with "the draft" when a dwarf becomes set to an alert that gives him any order when he doesn't have any military weapon skills at novice or better.  You can tell because his job will be "recruit."  At one point, going on and off duty multiple times could cause this thought to stack rapidly with itself, which was bad.  Not sure if that's still the case.  The second bad thought is "grumbling/depressed/enraged by long patrol duty."  This is caused by many months of consecutive active duty.  These thoughts are often ignored by players as they aren't that serious if the dwarf has nice things to admire kill, and they stop getting this thought when they become champions.  If you don't want to see these thoughts, they can be countered by giving dwarves months off.  Or setting minimum number in the shedule below the squads full size, which allows a few dwarves to do jobs and be civilians while others in the squad are training.  Not many people bother with this second option though.

As for overall training strategy, smaller squads lead to more sparring and thus faster skill gain.  Dwarves will not spar until they all have a couple levels in their weapon skill.  Demonstrations teach skill very slowly when the guy giving the demonstration has no teacher skill and only novice in the skill he is teaching.  2-man squads have been proven to churn out legendaries faster than any other training strategy save danger-rooms or perhaps training weapons vs chained/live targets.

If this helps, I never set up uniforms - I equip every single dwarf manually.
As in, go to equip, and select their gear dwarf by dwarf.
So far, it has worked perfectly! My most recent dwarves dutifully picked up their bucklers, crossbows and shell/leather armor, and went to practice at the archery range.

manually equipping lets you pick specific items, but those items aren't removed from the list when equipping the next dwarf, which i believe causes issues (have to use selective forbidding for this).
I find uniforms save time, especially if you move dwarves between squads.

[CognitiveDissonance]

If this helps, I never set up uniforms - I equip every single dwarf manually.
As in, go to equip, and select their gear dwarf by dwarf.
So far, it has worked perfectly! My most recent dwarves dutifully picked up their bucklers, crossbows and shell/leather armor, and went to practice at the archery range.

manually equipping lets you pick specific items, but those items aren't removed from the list when equipping the next dwarf, which i believe causes issues (have to use selective forbidding for this).
I find uniforms save time, especially if you move dwarves between squads.

I just do "crossbow" or "spear" or "steel spear". The only exceptions I make are artifacts, when I have them. Works for me

Uniforms definitely save time, but they aren't robust enough for me.

[micha]

manually equipping lets you pick specific items, but those items aren't removed from the list when equipping the next dwarf, which i believe causes issues (have to use selective forbidding for this).

please explain. are you saying that by forbidding a specific weapon that is also assigned to a dwarf i can (1) have the dwarf use that weapon normally and (2) stop that weapon from showing up in the list? 

I find uniforms save time, especially if you move dwarves between squads.

ditto ditto ditto and square that with macros!

a macro to delete the default uniforms and add one for naked, one to add names:
 [wrestler, melee,axe 1h,axe 2h,hammer 1h, hammer 2h, spear, pick 1h, picks x2, shields x2, ranged, crossbow]
one to turn those names into [leather,metal] uniforms,
one to add the default items,
one to add the differences between uniforms by position

i agonized dunno how long before i made myself record these
and it was so worth it.

[Drawde]

On happiness I think armor is currently bugged, though I'm not certain.  Every time they switch status, like going to train, eat, or drink, they check for bad thoughts.  And marksdwarves go that even more often when they run out of ammo.  I think some of the armor doesn't count as clothing.

I've had my military be unhappy, despite expensive personal rooms, masterwork food and drink, and a good dining hall filled with artifacts.  And their main bad thoughts were long patrol duty and no shoes.  As soon as I switched them out of their armor boots into shoes, they went to ecstatic, despite still having the long patrol duty thought.

[Xen0n]

manually equipping lets you pick specific items, but those items aren't removed from the list when equipping the next dwarf, which i believe causes issues (have to use selective forbidding for this).

please explain. are you saying that by forbidding a specific weapon that is also assigned to a dwarf i can (1) have the dwarf use that weapon normally and (2) stop that weapon from showing up in the list? 

I find uniforms save time, especially if you move dwarves between squads.

ditto ditto ditto and square that with macros!

a macro to delete the default uniforms and add one for naked, one to add names:
 [wrestler, melee,axe 1h,axe 2h,hammer 1h, hammer 2h, spear, pick 1h, picks x2, shields x2, ranged, crossbow]
one to turn those names into [leather,metal] uniforms,
one to add the default items,
one to add the differences between uniforms by position

i agonized dunno how long before i made myself record these
and it was so worth it.

Wow, thank you.  I had long been dreary of re-making my custom uniforms for Axe/Sword/Spear/Hammer/marks Dwarves and Civilians for each new fort, as I couldn't find a way to save them to carry over.  But I never thought of making a macros to create the uniform!  Thanks to you, the next time I create those uniforms will the last!  May your pick always strike true.