Dwarf Fortress > DF Gameplay Questions

How can I develop a good military?

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agentanorexia:
I'm pretty new, on my third fortress. First game I got wiped out by a siege. Second by an ambush. I decided the third I'd survive longer. When I hit one of the first migrant waves, I created a military squad. Started them training, no big deal. They trained for some time, as more migrants appeared, I added members to the squad. Finally, a goblin squad appeared. Haha I thought, I've been preparing for this for some time. There was only ~3 of them, macemen. Sent my nine dwarves up to meet them. It was a slaughter, no dwarves survived and all the goblins did. They are now rampaging around, game over.

So few questions:
I was using dwarf therapist, the training dwarves never seemed to increase in military skill level, why? They had no other jobs and I saw them training. The squad was active and training was their only order. Had a min of 4 out of 9 squad members.

I keep reading that they are supposed to pick up gear on their own, but they never seemed to. I had to assign them weapons, and I can only assume they didn't have armor. I was buying crappy stuff from traders, but it was there nonetheless. How can I make them do that without doing the pick specific item all the time?

Other random questions:
What z level does metal generally occur on? I can't seem to find any. What about with shallow metals? I'm on 15, no sign of anything.

How in the world do I build ramps (up). I select build ramp. My walls start flashing green. But no matter what I do, I can't seem to actually build the ramp anywhere. Not next to the wall, not on top of the wall.

Thanks all, off to reclaim my fortress.

celem:
Ok.  Your dwarves are training, but training is slow.  It takes years to create decent fighters on training alone, the good ones train and survive their battles (which yield a lot more xp).  Check the training schedule for your squad with 'm'-'s', make sure the minimum number needed to train isnt higher than the number of dwarves in the squad.  This can cause them to hang around a lot waiting for a class to fill, best a few below the squad size.

Armor.  Did you have any armor?  Weapons on skins is brutal, you only need to get hit once and you are seriously messed up.  Even dwarves with weapons will die eventually when someone hits them if they dont have armor.  Leather/bone is...meh, it sucks but slightly better than nothing.  Your metals should be there somewhere, dig a little deeper and send some exploratory passages off to look for veins.  Get your military into metal armor as soon as possible, even copper, whatever.

To get your dwarves into the right gear you can customise a uniform in the military screen ('m'-'n') and then assign the uniform to a squad with ('m'-'e'-'U').  When designing a uniform its best to have it fully replace clothing ('r') or they may not fit all the metal pieces on.  Hope this helps.

Sutremaine:
Make smaller squads, and make your military dwarves full-time. Two-dwarf squads will result in extremely fast skill gain.

Training can be done in two ways, demonstrations or sparring. Demonstrations are done more often when skill levels in the active dwarves are unequal, and sparring is done more often when skill levels are equal. In a large squad, sparring and demonstrations done while dwarves are missing will result in those dwarves falling behind a little, causing more demonstrations to occur. In a small squad, all dwarves are likely to be present for sparring and demonstrations, keeping their skill levels equal and encouraging more sparring.

Sparring is what you want -- it always provides good XP, while demonstrations are dependent on the slow-raising Teaching and Student skills.

Be careful about how much armour you're putting on your training dwarves. Metal armour is heavy, and it will slow down unskilled dwarves a lot. The main culprits are the upper and lower body pieces, and while it's nice to have heavy shields for bashing you can easily swap metal for wood or leather.

Trif:
Nine untrained dwarfs won't learn how to fight if nobody can teach them - well, they will eventually, but it takes a few years. If you include a dwarf with a high teacher skill in the squad, they'll learn much faster. Maybe you should consider including an experienced military dwarf in the reclaim party.

Also, small squads are most efficient. Two dwarfs per squad will do more sparring, and sparring is the best training.
If you understand the schedule screen very well, you might also try this:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)You can set the squad minimum multiple times. To avoid managing many small squads, use your big squad and set a minimum of two dwarfs three times, as well as a minimum of three dwarfs once. That has the same effect as making four small squads, but is a bit more complicated.
Celem's advice is good. Armor is very important, and leather and bone armor is a big improvement over the civilian clothing (still, you should go for metal armor as fast as possible).

Regarding your random questions: Metal can be quite random, but if the embark finder said so, there will be some sort of metal in the stone layers. Just remember: in Dwarf Fortress, an iron ore isn't called "iron ore", but it has its proper geological name (like hematite, limonite or magnetite). Check the wiki's guide to rock for more information.

I don't really understand your problem regarding ramps. You have to place it next to a wall (constructed or natural), the dwarfs need a path to it and that's pretty much all there is to it. You can only build them up though, so you need to be on the lower level.

Send a screenshot if this didn't help. Good luck!

Edit: Oh no! Ninjas!

agentanorexia:
Alright, thanks for the replies guys. I read in another thread that they won't put it on unless I choose put over civilian clothes or something like that (think that may have been the problem). I had a mish-mash of random copper/leather items for them to equip.

With the ramps, I do d-r, which brings up the "x" marker, and my walls start to flash green. I hit enter, and it makes the square like I can put a rectangle of something. I move the cursor one over (still along the wall) and hit enter. Then it disappears and no ramp is built.

Another question: reclaimed my fortress, but there's ghosts. I have coffins, the ghosts own the coffins, but the body parts in my corpse stockpile aren't being transported there. I tried making one dwarf have no labors except burial, and he just idled. The cemetery is a pretty close distance to the coffins. Any ideas there?

Edit - I forgot to mention that the dwarves in my military had minimum 3 in some combat skill (hammer/sword/whatever). My most experienced had 6 sword I believe.

Edit2 - Aha! The metals make so much sense now. Thanks for that page, cleared it right up. Kept looking for them like I was finding gems.

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