40d:Soldier

Dwarves in your military will be one of the following types of soldiers. What type of soldier they are will be determined by whichever weapon they are most skilled at using. All soldiers can carry shields, regardless of what weapon they use. Weapon, armor, and squad choices are controlled from the Military screen (key:m). The dwarven military is organized via use of the squad system.

Training

Soldiers will train when not on duty. Marksdwarves will shoot at archery targets if they are correctly set up and you have wood or bone bolts available. Melee dwarves (including wrestlers) will spar with their weapons in a barracks if you have built one.

Sparring can sometimes cause horrible accidents involving loss of limb or life for your soldiers. To reduce these risks, you can take several precautions:

• Outfit every dwarf (including wrestlers) with a shield. This will train their "shield user" skill as well.
• Outfit every soldier with the best armor possible. Iron chain is good, steel plate better, high-quality steel plate best of all. High-quality steel shields are also recommended. See Using Armor for more details.
• Set inexperienced soldiers to "Unarmed" (wrestling) until their skills improve a few levels.
• Arm dwarves with less-lethal weapons. Silver weapons are good for training, doing only 50% the damage of iron. Also, wooden weapons have the same strength as silver, but cannot be made locally; they must be imported. Dwarves armed with these weapons will do less damage when facing foes as well.

Soldier Classes

Every weapon has an associated skill, soldiers will name themselves according to what weapon they are most skilled at using, as long as they are at least a novice rank in one.

Marksdwarves

Armed with crossbows and deal pierce damage from afar. A bolt does a fine job at piercing the internal organs of a creature while also doing some damage to outside parts. This is of limited use against creatures without organs, such as magma men. Occasionally a bolt will get stuck in a target; the only known use for this is that a wrestling dwarf may grab the bolt and twist it in the wound.

A Marksdwarf who is forced into melee will use the hammer skill to bash enemies with their crossbow.

Immigrating Trappers often arrive with a Novice Marksdwarf skill.

Speardwarves

Specialize in pierce damage, and will puncture an enemy's organs quickly and critically once in range. The spear doesn't hit as hard as an axe, but it has a higher chance of piercing organs, making it a better choice against large, living creatures like demons or dragons.

Axedwarves

Specialize in slash damage, aka the fine art of mangling and severing limbs (red and dark grey wounds) on opponents. This damage type is useful for taking away opponents' mobility and means of attack while eventually bleeding them to death. Battle axes move slower than swords but do more damage per stroke.

Sworddwarves

Deal both slash and pierce damage. Short swords can cut off limbs, like an axe, but also reasonably good at hitting internal organs, like a spear. A good all-around weapon.

Macedwarves

Specialize in blunt damage. Blunt damage breaks the bones of the enemy (yellow wounds) and will often repel the enemy some distance, causing extra damage if they are bashed into a wall.

Hammerdwarves

Specialize in blunt damage. A war hammer is, in game terms, exactly the same as a mace or morningstar, but human Hammermen use a two-handed maul instead of a war hammer.

Mauls focus on breaking bones rather than mangling limbs, though that does also happen on the occasion. This weapon has a greater chance to knock back an opponent than a mace does but comes at the cost of speed. Also should someone be knocked back into an obstacle, they'll take extra damage.

Wrestlers

Focus on tying the opponent into knots, choking them, and breaking limbs. Creatures tied up in wrestling will do nothing else and remain immobile, perfect for a marksdwarf to pick off the creature at a range or an armed dwarf to carve into bite-sized pieces. Also note that this skill determines how much a dwarf will evade/dodge attacks.

Wrestler skill is also exercised when using any improvised weapon in combat (such as, for example, a tightly grasped artifact).

Recruits

Any dwarf without at least one of the above skills at Novice level or better will be classified as recruits. If you keep them off duty, they will train at their selected weapon until they reach Novice skill in it, at which point they will turn into one of the above weaponsdwarves.

Heroes and Champions

Once soldiers reach Great skill level in any weapon (or wrestling), they will become heroes, and can no longer be removed from the military. Their "Pref" menu will be replaced by the text "This hero need not work", and you will not be able to deactivate them (make them civilians again), transfer them into or out of the Guard, or assign work dogs to them.

You can still change their weapon and armor settings via the military screen (weapons), and to change their soldiering orders (view squad). Heroes in either the Fortress or Royal Guard cannot be given military orders (via the Squads screen, x), and will become permanently useless. Even worse - any soldier can be elected Mayor and will never conduct any meetings droving your Outpost Liason insane. If you have any Expert, Professional, or Accomplished soldiers in the Guard, be sure to transfer them out while you still can.

Upon reaching legendary skill level in any weapon, a hero will become a champion, with the following announcement: "<dwarfname> has become a legendary champion! Hail <dwarfname>!". Champions behave the same as heroes, although they are additionally exempt from the dwarven economy, like all legendary dwarves. Champions cannot serve under heroes or normal soldiers, but willingly serve under other Champions.