v0.31:Military

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

The military is one of the most important aspects of a successful fortress. Even with many Template:Ls, Template:L and Template:L, your military will still need to fend off Template:L Template:Ls, Template:Ls, Template:Ls, and fiendish Template:L Template:L. Using a combination of Template:L and Template:L, you can set up an elaborate offensive, defensive, or balanced military structure for your Template:L Template:Ls to follow. Turning your dwarves from Template:L into bloodthirsty killing machines never hurts (unless you're the enemy).

Related articles:

• For a very simple "How to attack a target", see Template:L.
• For a list of frequently asked questions, see the Template:L
• For a general overview of threats and considerations for fortress defense, see the Template:L.
• For specific suggestions on the physical defenses that will defend your military, see Template:L.
• For complex traps that are not a minor/optional part of a larger defensive plan (but might be adapted or plugged into one), see Template:L.
• For specific advice on how to get your soldiers prepared for any threat, see Template:L.

For quick reference: from the main menu the military screen is accessible through the m key, the Template:L screen is accessible through the s key, the points/routes/notes screen is accessible through the N key, and the Template:L screen is accessible through the w key. The military screen and all its tabs are mouse-compatible, and can be navigated through mouse clicks rather than strictly keys (when in windowed mode).

Creating a Military

While far more confusing than before, the new military system makes up for its initial impenetrability with a huge increase in versatility. Squads can be assigned, reordered and restructured at will, dwarves can be set to equip a highly-specified uniform along with the rest of their squad or stand out and equip something unique, and you can give incredibly detailed commands and programming to your squads to follow out based on time of year, circumstance, location, and user convenience. That being said, there's a lot to be learned.

This article is about the general aspects of what comprises a military. For more detailed information including specific keypresses, see the associated article expanding on a subject.

Squads

Full article: Template:L

Squads are the groups of soldiers that make up your military. Your military is now led by the appointed Template:L and has many other squads led by militia captains under him. Creating a squad in the military screen is one of the first things you should do when starting your military.

• For some reason your Template:L can not be appointed as a militia captain or commander. He can still be assigned to a squad as a regular soldier however. It is unknown if this is intended behavior.

Equipping Soldiers

Full article: Template:L

Rather than simply pick a level of equipment and hope your dwarves pick up the right stuff, you can select what your dwarf will wear by item type or specific item, or create a new uniform template and apply it to a dwarf or entire squad all at once. Even the material and color of your soldiers' uniform is configurable. You can create identical armored units with intimidating red cloaks or just slap something together based on need and circumstance. Even artifact weapons/armor are now selectable - luck and micro-management have been removed from the equation.

Arsenal Dwarf

The Arsenal Dwarf was removed in version 0.31.09 but may be re-introduced in a later version. The rest of this section is only applicable if you are playing an older version.

In the early stages of your fort your dwarves will equip themselves, but once enough migrants (13, making your population 20+ dwarves) have arrived your fortress will require an Template:L (designated in the nobles screen) to manage your armory. The Arsenal Dwarf serves the role of quartermaster; without him your dwarves will be unable to change their equipment. Once you have a dwarf selected, make sure to give him an office - like a Template:L, an Arsenal Dwarf will need to sign off on equipment changes before they can be made.

Note that if you don't have an option for an Arsenal Dwarf, it just means your fort isn't big enough to need one yet. Dwarves will equip themselves until your fortress grows too large - just keep an eye on the nobles screen every time you get migrants, and assign an Arsenal Dwarf when you need one.

• If your Expedition Leader/Mayor is killed it can cause all unassigned nobles to vanish from the nobles screen. This could cause your arsenal dwarf position (among others) to be unavailable. A new expedition leader should eventually arrive, although this may take several years. ^v0.31.02
• There have been reports of the Arsenal Dwarf not appearing despite the population criteria being fulfilled. This is likely caused by your Expedition leader/Mayor being absent.^v0.31.02

Directing Soldiers

Getting your military to actually do something is a lot more difficult than it once was; gone are the days of simply designating a barracks and letting your recruits have at it. It is now possible to give your squads different monthly schedules, create different alert levels which will cause squads to follow out new user-programmed instructions depending on circumstance, give direct orders to attack one or more specific targets or move to a specific location, or follow patrol routes and stations with greater accuracy.

There is now a clear discrepancy between active orders and passive orders-- the latter is programming that a dwarf will follow to the letter and acts more as a defense method, and the former is used for taking the fight to the enemy. The squads menu is predominantly used for active commands, and the alert and scheduling menus are used for passive commands.

Active Command

Full article: Template:L

In the new military, soldiers operate much more like part-time militiamen than full-time warriors. When soldiers are not passively doing their civilian duties or following their schedule programming, they can be actively sent to do small tasks to aggressively defend your fortress. After these orders have been carried out or cancelled, your dwarves will happily return to their passive programming as if they were never interrupted. It is possible to select multiple squads or specific dwarves to carry out these orders.

Your forces can be commanded to carry out two types of orders: Move orders and Attack (or kill) orders. Move orders are much like the 'station squad' command in previous versions; your selected dwarves will run to wherever you've sent them. Similarly, attack orders will select an enemy (by location on screen, general area on screen, or list) and send your dwarves charging off that way.

Soldiers following orders will attack any hostiles they encounter on their way to their destination as well as wild animals and whatever other creatures they might encounter, whether you like it or not. As a result it is very difficult to attack members of an enemy group with any sort of precision, and if your dwarves cannot take down their target there is no real way to get them out of combat; it's do-or-die. It is unknown whether this is a bug or a feature.

Orders can be cancelled through the squads screen, but your dwarves tend to be so enthusiastic that they'll just ignore you in their bloodlust. This is likely a bug.

Passive Command

Full article: Template:L

The new alert level and scheduling system is a new feature that is both incredibly versatile... and, initially, completely impenetrable. Once you learn the system, though, you will find that you barely need to manage your military at all. Effectively, a schedule is programming for a squad to follow within an alert, broken up by month, and alerts can be quickly and easily swapped in order to apply different schedules of your choosing to different squads of your choosing. Without scheduling, alert levels would do nothing; without alert levels scheduling would be horribly inefficient; the two functions co-exist and rely on each other.

It is now possible to give your squads different monthly schedules, create different alert levels which will cause squads to follow out new user-programmed instructions depending on circumstance, give direct orders to attack one or more specific targets or move to a specific location, or follow patrol routes and stations with greater accuracy. The entire system (including alert names) is completely configurable, and in time you will find yourself using complicated scheduling to rotate squads between training and defending/patrolling specified areas over the course of a year without any user input, or to start defending the fort entrance or trader route with a few easy key presses.

Civilian alert levels are also possible - civilians can be restricted by Template:L to where they can roam should the need to tuck them away into a panic room arise. The 'entrance dance' bug of the previous version has also been removed - if a dwarf restricted to a burrow is not there, he will do his best to make the journey.

The scheduling screen is broken up into a list of squads, months, alert types and order criteria. Each order (applied to one month; multiple orders can be stacked on one month as well) can be given criteria to define how many dwarves within a squad will follow its programming at once, allowing you to make a few dwarves out of the squad active at a time while the rest go about their business or to make the entire squad always active for a matter of the utmost importance, foregoing food, sleep, and booze. You can also choose which positions in a squad the order will prefer to utilize when forcing a squad to follow it.

Four types of orders can be given (as well as the 'inactive' command), defining different types of patrolling or stationary defending. Squads can spar and be given combat demonstrations in the Template:L, defend a Template:L, patrol a route, or defend a single station. The monthly schedules can be named so as to better suit your needs, and a new (if still a bit buggy) copy/paste system has been introduced to eliminate some of the tedium in creating fancy scheduling for many months. The display can also be flipped around.

Barracks can now serve the needs of multiple specific squads at once. A barracks can be defined as a place to train, sleep, store squad equipment, store individual equipment, or any combination of the above, in any weird overlapping combination of barracks you like. Barracks are still necessary for training, but due to a bug it appears that your dwarves will only train when Inactive, despite what the Train command may have you believe. Marksdwarf training also appears to still be a bit glitchy.

When dwarves are being ordered to train, squad leaders will set up training classes for particular skills, or they will have dwarves spar. Any dwarves in the squad that don't qualify for these will default to individual training. In the current release, training classes are bugged where if a squad leader sets up a training class, he will wait forever (Or until you change his orders) for students, even if nobody shows up. Likewise, if students decide to request a class and the squad leader is doing individual training, they will wait for him to finish, even if they start starving. Thus, at the moment it's best to alternate your forced training schedules with downtime so the longest a dwarf will be stuck waiting is a game month (which isn't long enough to die), or just leave them off duty all the time and have them do individual training only, at least until this issue is fixed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Full article: Template:L

Reported Military-Related Bugs

• Setting Dwarves to train will result in them idling instead of training. Instead, set them to have no assignments and set up a barracks with training enabled for their squad.
• If one of your soldiers equips a dagger it causes an immediate crash when you select that squad in the military screen.
  • Editing your raw files and replacing [SKILL:DAGGER] with [SKILL:SWORD] is a workaround that prevents this crash.http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=378
• When selecting new dwarves to place in a squad the cursor always returns to the first available dwarf instead of remaining where it is.
• The list of dwarves available to join a squad includes dwarves that are already in a squad.
• Soldiers who have completed a kill task do not cancel their kill task. This may be intentional.
• There are still various problems with dwarves not equipping what they should; notably marksdwarves (who try to train not with archery practice but by sparring with crossbows as blunt weapons).
• Dwarves that are training and forced to stop (for example with deconstruction the barracks) will go into "no job" for eternal, they wont count to idle, just like "on break" ones, but will never ever lift a finger again... ever, neither for training nor civilian. They still will obey kill or move orders.
• When reclaiming a lost fortress, soldiers will not use ANY armour or weapons assigned to them, insisting on training and fighting unarmoured and barehanded. This behaviour seems related to the arsenal dwarf position - when the fortress population becomes high enough and a dwarf is assigned to the position, soldiers will finally use the equipment they have been assigned. It seems that, on reclaiming, the game acts as if you need to have an arsenal dwarf right from the start, despite there not being any way to assign one.

Fixed Military-Related Bugs

These bugs in DF2010 have been fixed in more recent versions.

Fixed^v0.31.05

• If your Expedition Leader/Mayor is killed, all unassigned noble positions vanish.

Fixed^v0.31.03

• Copying and pasting an empty order onto a non-empty order causes a crash.
• Going to the military-schedule-grid screen and selecting your inactive alert group causes a crash.
• Accessing 'Pri/Assignments' (m, e, U, P) when no squads are formed causes a crash.