40d:Military design

This page is one of several inter-related articles on the broader topic of defending your fortress and your dwarves. This page will focus on the training, organization and deployment of your military, the soldiers that will use your defenses for the greater glory blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.

See the Defense Guide for a general overview of threats and considerations for fortress defense.

Many defenses rely on complex traps as a central part, that are, essentially, the defense themselves. For complex traps that are not a minor/optional part of a larger defensive plan, (but might be adapted or plugged into one) see Trap Design.

Military

The role of a military force in fortress defense can be central or non-existent, depending on the player's overall approach and strategy. Their one advantage is mobility - they can go where no static defenses exist, to rescue or support other dwarfs, or escort a caravan through unknown or deadly threats.

Militia & Armed civilians

Besides professional, full time military, it's quite useful to incorporate part-time soldiers or armed civilians into the mix.

Daylight training room

Put a weapon rack on the surface near your entrance and make it a training room. Training dwarves will be in position if there's trouble. This also helps prevent cave adaption in your military. You can use an archery target this way, too.

Roughing it

Always have your soldiers carry food. They will each need a backpack to carry it. This keeps your soldiers from wandering off to eat. You can also have them carry water in waterskins or flasks, but this isn't recommended for the long term, as it keeps your soldiers from drinking alcohol. For an around the clock guard, have them sleep on the ground while on duty. Hopefully the sounds of combat will wake them up before they get killed. Sleeping on the floor causes unhappy thoughts.

Armed Civilians (Gobbo Season Open!)

It can be a fairly decent idea to keep mass numbers of cheaply-made crossbows (or your lower-quality rejects) and bone/wood bolts on hand, and all expendable dwarves in one mass military squad set to use crossbows (and leather armor, if you have enough). What dabbling marksdwarves lack in speed and accuracy, they more than make up for with incredible enthusiasm, as a hailstorm of pathetically-aimed bolts will tear over anything stupid enough to move. Not nearly as effective or useful as properly-emplaced marksdwarves with high skill and proper equipment, but a good emergency measure, especially if you keep your craftsdwarves busy churning out cheap ammo from spare bones from the kitchens and cheap crossbows from fishbones from the dining hall.

non-hunting hunters

Sometime you will embark in an area devoid of (huntable) wildlife. In that case, you can turn on the Hunting skill for all civilians and use the military menu to arm (and more importantly, armor and shield) them. Normally turning on hunting will cause dwarves to wander outside looking for wildlife, and turning it on on all your dwarves would delay your economy greatly - but without wildlife, no hunting jobs are generated, and they go about their business armed and armoured. Note that if X number of hunt-able animals do appear on the map, that many dwarves will then go hunt them.

Woodcutters ftw

Any dwarf with the Woodcutting labor designated will carry an axe, even when they are not cutting wood. If one (or more) of your starting seven have one rank or more of axedwarf, no unhappy thoughts will be generated if they are drafted into active service. This dwarf might serve to fill several or all above-ground activities, such as Plant Gathering, Architecture and Masonry for bridges and defensive walls, above ground farming, and any hauling, as well as wood cutting. Later, a squad of dedicated woodcutters, possibly with some training in axedwarf, masonry and other skills, can respond en masse to orders to cut trees, providing mutual support and finishing off a large section of trees and getting back to safety that much faster. Actually training them in axedwarf is optional, but certainly helps.

Note that so long as you have no tree designated for cutting (or have no path to those trees), the woodcutters will not respond. However, if you do, as many woodcutters as trees will respond to those locations - it's recommended that if/when you do, you centralize the designations to allow them to more fully support each other.

Miners ftw

The above tactic can also be used with Miners. When you activate a miner with a pick into the military with "unarmed" weapon designated, they fight with the pick they are holding and their skill is their mining - and it's not hard for a miner to gain legendary miner skill quite quickly. Parallel problems arise when designating areas to be mined, but careful use of locked doors or hatches on mineshafts can prevent too many from responding to an area to be excavated.

A dwarf will hold either an axe or a pick, depending on which labor is activated - it's not possible to activate both at once, the game does not allow it.