40d:Military

Your military comprises the soldiers of your fortress. Pressing m will bring you to the Military screen, which lists your active soldiers at the top of the screen, and potential draftees below them.

About drafting

To get your dwarves to fight instead of fleeing when confronted with anything remotely dangerous you need to draft them.

You can draft any non-noble dwarf in your fortress through the military screen by pressing a on the dwarf in question. Alternatively you can select a dwarf using v -> p, and then press A (Shift + 'a') to draft him or her. A dwarf that has not yet reached hero or champion status may be un-drafted by the same method.

If you draft dwarves without any (non-dabbling) combat skills, it will generally give them an unhappy thought. Dwarves with little or no (non-dabbling) civilian skills will not like being undrafted.

Immigrant nobles will not show up in the military screen, and cannot be drafted. Appointed administrators do appear on the list, and can be drafted. However their military duties will interfere with their civilian ones, making it unwise to draft your administrators (the sheriff being a notable exception). It is worth noting that drafting the dwarf whom the liaison has targeted will cause said dwarf to cease all other non-priority activities (i.e. everything but eating, drinking, resting, sleeping, etc.) and will proceed to Conduct Meeting.

Dwarves who are in a strange mood can not be drafted and neither can dwarves who are affected by an insanity following a failed strange mood. Drafting a dwarf who is throwing a tantrum for another reason may work and may also cancel the tantrum. ^[Verify]

Promotion / squads

Pressing m will lead you to the military screen. Here you can promote dwarves and create squads. This is done by pressing Enter on recruits.

1. Select the dwarf you want to be squad leader.
2. Press Enter (-> promote).
3. Use arrow keys to select the dwarf you want to be his subordinate.
4. Press Enter.
5. Repeat for each dwarf you want in the squad.
6. Press Space to exit promotion mode.

To remove a dwarf from a squad select them and then press Enter again.

Complex chains of command can be created this way if the first dwarf you selected was already in a squad (he'll become leader of a sub-squad), though it is unknown if this has any current use.

Note that there are restrictions to who can lead whom: you can't make a hero subordinate to a normal military dwarf, nor a champion subordinate to anyone other than another champion, nor any non-recruit soldier subordinate to a recruit. Dwarves who become heroes will automatically become leaders of their squads if the current leader is less experienced.

Choosing weapons and armor

Pressing m and then w will show you a screen containing:

• Shortened names for weapon types.
• A number indicating the number of weapons you want them to carry (note: this is not dual wielding, this is the dwarf carrying a backup weapon slung across their back in case the first weapon becomes stuck in a combatant)
• A shortened name for the level of armour they should aim to wear (Leather, Chain, Plate) and the shield they should carry (Buckler, Shield).

Note: Giving a dwarf a weapon will affect their non-military professions, if the weapon in question conflicts with their labour tasks. For instance, issuing a mace to a dwarf will cause them to discard an axe they were carrying for woodcutting, or a pick they were using for mining.

When a dwarf is drafted into the army he or she will go pick up his or her equipment, if it is available (a dwarf set to fight with a sword will fight unarmed until a sword is forged), and when released back to civilian life, will drop this equipment. Exceptions being dwarves with the 'woodcutter' labour enabled who carry an axe while in civilian mode, and dwarves with the 'hunting' labour enabled who carry a crossbow and leather armour while in civilian mode.

Miners set to fight unarmed will use their pick as a weapon, and get damage bonuses from their Mining skill level.

Swapping weapons and armour

Frustratingly, a soldier will not necessarily choose the best-quality weapon available. Thus a speardwarf might choose a -bronze spear- rather than a ≡steel spear≡ if given the chance. A marksdwarf might pick up a single iron bolt rather than your stack of *steel bolts [25]*. When equipping your dwarves for active duty, you will generally want them to use the best weapons available; when dwarves are set to spar, you generally want them to use the worst weapons available. Unless you are saving your good armour for a certain dwarf, you will always want your soldiers to be equipped with the best possible armour.

Swapping weapons and armour is a frustrating and somewhat time-consuming process. It is easiest if you make different stockpiles for your best and your worst-quality weapons. Creating a stockpile only for high-quality steel and iron weapons or armour will make it easier to find the weapon or armour you want to give your dwarf. Likewise, a special stockpile for low-quality silver or wooden weapons will make it easier to assign the right sparring weapon.

There are two ways to swap weapons and armour. The simpler way is to use the military menu. This process will let you swap out your soldier's weapon or entire suit of armour:

1. Press m to access the military menu.
2. Find the soldier whose weapon or armour you want to remove, and set them to Unarmed or armour- and shield-less.
3. Watch the soldier until he or she removes his or her equipment.
4. Next, designate all of your current weapons or armour (hopefully all of which are in your stockpiles)) as forbidden. Then manually find the weapon or armour piece(s) that you want your dwarf to pick up, and designate it, or them, to be reclaimed.
5. Return to the military menu and re-designate the soldier to have the weapon and/or armour you want.
6. Wait until your newly-naked dwarf realizes his or her situation and decides to Pickup Equipment. If you have properly forbidden all other weapons or armour, the dwarf should make a beeline for your weapons or armour stockpile, and don the right item(s).
7. Reclaim your stockpiles of weapons or armour for regular use.

The other way to swap out weapons or armour, which is particularly useful to replace an individual piece of armour but not the entire suit, is as follows:

1. Make sure you have an area (any area) assigned as a garbage dump.
2. Find the soldier whose weapon or armour you want to replace, by using the view command and going to the dwarf's inventory. Select each item you want the soldier to get rid of, then hit Enter to view it. Press d to mark it for dumping. When you select an item to be dumped, it will create a hauling job for a civilian dwarf, who should presently arrive to cart the weapon off to your junk pile. If you want to save the weapon, catch the hauler before he or she reaches your dump and un-designate the weapon; alternatively, find it in the dump and reclaim it.
3. As with step 4 above, designate all of your current weapons or armour as forbidden. Manually find the weapon or armour piece(s) that you want your dwarf to pick up, and designate it, or them, to be reclaimed.
4. As with step 5 above, wait until your newly-naked dwarf realizes his or her situation and picks up the proper equipment.
5. Reclaim your stockpiles of weapons or armour for regular use.

Equipment and encumbrance

Depending on what equipment you outfit your soldiers with, they can easily become encumbered. A new recruit with no strength attribute, for instance, can only carry 2000Γ before being encumbered, which is less than the weight of a full suit of chain mail. A crossbow plus a full stack of metal bolts can weigh as much as 1000Γ by itself.

Controlling your squads

By pressing x you will select squads near your marker. You can station the squads at the current cursor position if the squad in question is on-duty. You can also place patrol points, which creates a path for the soldier to follow. The last patrol point placed will always be connected back to the first in a loop. Pressing x again after placing patrol points will remove the entire path. Setting a patrol for a squad leader will set all dwarves in that squad to that patrol. Dwarves will keep their old patrols when assigned to a new squad, so a number of dwarves can be given individual patrols, and then put into a single squad so as to activate them all at once. Squads will fight and pursue hostile creatures until they or the enemies are dead or the squad moves too far from its station. Squads can be set to pursue regardless of how far they move from their station and to attack wild animals (along with various other options) via the military screen, in the view squad submenu. For more information on fighting, see combat.

Food and water

Under the view squad menu, you can order squads to carry water and/or food along with them. To carry water the dwarves need access to waterskins, and to carry food they need backpacks. This can be useful when sending your military out on long patrols.

Training / sparring

Wrestling or melee weapon-equipped squads that you marked as "standing down" by the squad-management screen in the military screen will head to the barracks and begin sparring to train their skills. Soldiers with crossbows will go to a shooting range to practice.

How to increase soldier skills is covered in-depth in the sparring article. You may also want to peruse the cross-training article, which covers how to beef up your recruits most efficiently, and how to support army's logistic needs best.

See also

• Army arc
• Assign animal

Military FAQ
How do I get my dwarves to fight?
Recruiting, equipping, and managing your military
How do I train my dwarves' martial skills?
How to train civilians into super-soldiers
How do I keep armor from slowing my soldiers down?
How do I train and deploy animals when needed?
Help! My civilians keep running into combat!
How do I remove weapons from caged prisoners?
Why can't I get my dwarves equipped?
How do I stop my marksdwarves from wrestling?
Why do my soldiers keep dropping their equipment?
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