User:Dree12/Basic military setup guide

Setting up a decent, self-sustaining schedule of military training can be quite tricky at first. Without using danger rooms, it becomes even tougher to optimize training; however, it is possible to make training reasonably manageable.

Begin preparing a military at your first or second migrant wave, usually during summer or autumn of the first year. If your first wave is reasonably small and you need more time, it may be a good idea to delay creation of the military, but by the time the third wave arrives you should have at least some structure completed.

This tutorial does not go into the more in-depth areas of "why" to do this, or even how you use certain screens like the military screen and scheduling system. Using these more advanced features right can produce a truly self-supporting military without need of micromanagement.

Roughneck Squad

Sometimes, the only purpose of a squad existing is to prevent an early goblin attack from crippling your military before it is even trained and equipped properly.

Requirements

• 10 sets of bone/leather armor, or any cheap but reasonably effective armor you can get your hands on. It does not have to be anything complex. Suggestions on armor can be found further below.
• 10 melee weapons. Axes work great (and if the squad is disbanded, can also be used to cut wood), spears are also useful to make traps, and hammers, although only useful for the military (and the occasional weapon trap), are excellent if you plan to draft the survivors as future marksdwarves. If you can, try to mix axes, spears and hammers. Crossbows or any ranged weapon as well as ammo takes too long to set up for it to be useful at this stage. Most importantly, do not use training weapons.
• 10 reasonably expendable dwarves. Having as close to ten dwarves as possible is best for a roughneck squad (more than ten soldiers is impossible, eight or nine soldiers works, three to five soldiers does not work). Their attributes or skills do not matter significantly; however, you may not want to use your best dwarves for this — use peasants or professions that are not in use in your fortress (common ones are lye making or fish cleaning. Because this squad is expendable, choose dwarves without friends and family, become ill quickly, heal slowly, or are weak and flimsy.
• A bed or other building that can be designated as a barracks (armor stands or weapon racks also work).

Steps

1. Make a 10 man squad in the panel. Try to pick people with as few friends as possible for this; it does not matter if they are flimsy in stats or if they are extremely susceptible to disease. We literally do not expect these dwarves to survive a decent siege.
2. Assign them the predefined "leather armor" uniform in the military panel (or make your own cheap and fast uniform; anything you have on hand is good, even metals if you brought them on embark, and have an anvil and some fuel). If you do not have everything for the uniform for every dwarf then stick to leather and bone, and let a dwarf or 2 be dedicated solely to crafting everything those cannon fodder dwarves need. Once they've trained crafting skills you can use them to craft the leather parts of the armor the "real" military squad is going to need.
3. Once you have your ten dwarf "Suicide Squad", make a barracks with your barracks item (bed, armor stand, weapon rack, etc.) next to your entrance or next to your most busy area (preferably outside) and assign your roughnecks to it. Make them active in the squad menu so they will hang around in the barracks constantly, waiting for their chums to show up for training (and sometimes even train!).

Try to have only one entrance in this stage, or at least only one "outside camp" — it's easier to defend.

Step 2: Conscripts

Requirements

• 6 sets of decent armor - more info about it below.
• 6 weapons, preferably something like 2 spears, 2 axes and 2 hammers. If you really want marksdwarves, flip the hammers for crossbows and also craft some bolts... but I advise against it for now.
• Your roughneck squad from step 1.
• 6 new dwarves with decent to good stats. Basically anything goes as long as they are not susceptible to diseases, not weak or flimsy, do not tire fast or have some other military related traits handicap.

Steps

1. Create 2 (yes, 2...) new squads. Put 3 dwarves in each squad and try to make them "compatible" (don't put dwarves that are friends or hate each other together, and don't put spouses together). Give them the decent armor as their uniform. Now go in the schedule panel and make it so 2 dwarves minimum train year round for both squads. (In other words, 1 can break from training and can eat/drink/be useful while 2 train.)
2. Now make it so your roughneck squad gets some breaks in their training - something like only half of them have to train each month, so they can be used as haulers or whatever you need dwarves for at this point. If you haven't gotten an ambush by now, expect one to show up any day. Defend with your roughneck squads only. Keep your conscripts as last resort and preferably never counter-attack any enemy further then 20 blocks from your entrance.

Step 3: Standing army

Requirements

• Your roughneck squad (if some survived)
• Your 2 "conscript" squads
• 3 or so more decent armour sets
• 3 or so crossbows and for each crossbow 1 quiver
• Minimum of 100 bone bolts or 50 metal ones and 200 wooden bolts per crossbow
• Flasks and backpacks for everyone
• 3 Archery targets

Steps

1. Once your 2 squads of 3 dwarves with decent armour show they are battle worthy (at least "competent" at their weapon and armour but more is better), take out 1 dwarf from each squad, and put them in a new 3rd squad (set the new squad up just like the other 2). Disband your roughneck squad if some survived up until now and spread them over the 3 squads evenly, make sure you are not using any seriously wounded dwarves!
2. Add in 1 new dwarf in each squad, give him a crossbow and decent armour. Try to aim for at least 3 squads at this time, each holding 2 melee dwarves and 1 crossbow dwarf.
3. Make lots of wood bolts and some bone or metal bolts, metal is by far better but can still be too costly at this point, bone bolts are very easy to make and do reasonable damage but come in small stacks...
4. Now set those marksdwarves to carry the bone or metal bolts for combat in the ammunition panel and the wooden for training, a total of 100 combat and 200 training bolts will do, be sure to make a quiver! This is also a good time to be making backpacks and flasks for each of your military dwarves.
5. Make sure any squad is set so 2/3th is training while 1/3 is off duty throughout the year, keep check on your bolt supplies and any medical "incidents".

Once every dwarf in a squad has reached "talented", start merging two squads together, but keep the basic makeup of three melee dwarves for every one marksdwarf in each squad. Add in a fortress guard of weak and flimsy dwarves that wear the same armor as our roughneck squad, but also get crap wooden crossbows (so that they suck at melee; they will beat people with them occasionally and you don't want some of your dwarves to die from them).