v0.31:Military

The military is one of the most important aspects of a successful fortress. Even with many Template:L, Template:Ls 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. Turning your dwarves from useless migrants into bloodthirsty killing machines never hurts (unless you're the enemy).

See also:

• A Template:L to the military interface. (now largely incorporated into this article)
• 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.

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.

For quick reference: from the main menu the military screen is accessible through the m key, the squads 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.

Forming Squads

Before you can do anything with your military you will want to go into the noble screen (n) and designate a Template:L. Subsequent squad leaders can also be designated through the nobles screen; once you designate a militia commander it will open up a slot for a Template:L, and once you designate one of those it opens another captain slot, etc. These roles are all functionally equivalent.

When you have designated a commander/captain, going to the military screen will show that dwarf under the "Squads/Leaders" heading and you'll notice an option to create a new squad. You can also create a new squad before you designate your militia commander; the first dwarf you choose will automatically be thrust into the position. Creating the squad moves the the display of the dwarf from the 'available' heading to the squad heading. You can then fill out the squad with any dwarf in the fort. It appears that no more than ten dwarves can be assigned to any one squad. When you add a dwarf to one squad they will be removed from another; for this reason you will always see the majority of your dwarves in the rightmost pane.

Equipment, Uniforms, and the Arsenal Dwarf

In the military screen, press n to open the uniforms tab. Each listing under the 'Uniforms' header is essentially a pre-designed set of equipment that you can quickly apply to any individual soldier or entire squad, much like a template. You can create new uniforms if you want and add or remove items from any uniform set by navigating this menu. Uniform templates are only created in this tab, not applied.

While still in the military screen, press e to open the equipment tab. The default sub-tab, 'View/Customize will be open. In this screen you can select individual dwarves and apply individual pieces of equipment to them, from Armor, Leggings, Helms, Gloves, Boots, Shields, and Weapons, as well as Material and Color depending on the piece of equipment highlighted. To select a specific piece of equipment (such as an artifact), select 'specific _____' under that equipment type (eg. 'specific armor' in the Armor field); for your convenience, highest-quality equipment is listed first.

To apply your preset uniform templates, press U in the equipment tab to open the Assign Uniforms sub-tab and move the selector to the Position Uniform header. Pressing enter will apply the selected uniform to the individual dwarf of your choosing, and shift+enter will apply the selected uniform to the entire squad.

For ranged soldiers, open the ammunition (f) tab and assign them something from there. If you don't care what they use, you still need to give them ammo - just pick 'bolts' and it will default to any bolts they can find.

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 and 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.

* There have been reports of the Arsenal Dwarf not appearing despite the population criteria being fulfilled; it is assumed that this is a bug. The position may still appear later. *

Directing Squads

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 kill orders to attack one or more specific targets, or follow patrol routes and stations with greater accuracy.

Alerts

The alert level is a fundamental concept of military management. In each alert level, you can program instructions for your military and/or civilian dwarves to follow. The game contains two alert levels by default - 'Inactive' and 'Active/Train'. In 'Inactive', all squads are assigned no orders. In 'Active/Train', all squads are assigned to train the entire year. By default, your squads will all be set to 'Inactive' and will do nothing unless you cycle their alert to 'Active/Train'. You will need to make more alerts if you want them to do anything more complicated than this.

Your entire fortress is always set to exactly one civilian alert level. This restricts where civilians, any non-military dwarf in the entire fort, may go. To define the restriction area, you must first create a Template:L encompassing the area you want to restrict your civilians to. Then, go to the alert screen (a in the military screen), create a new alert level (you can Name it something like 'Danger'), highlight it in the left pane, then press enter on the correct burrow in the rightmost pane. Multiple burrows may be selected.

Individual squads can be set to a certain alert by highlighting the appropriate alert level, then selecting the correct squad in the central pane and pressing enter. You can also select a squad's alert level by pressing s to open the squads menu, a to select a squad, and t to scroll through alerts. You can change the currently active civilian alert level by pressing enter while the correct alert level is highlighted. Squads and civilians can only be set to one alert level at a time, so selecting one alert level for a group removes them from the former alert.

Scheduling

Each squad can be given a schedule to follow for an entire year, broken up by month. Each squad has a separate schedule for each alert level; it can be swapped between these schedules with the procedure outlined in the previous section. The scheduling screen can be accessed by pressing s in the military screen.

On the main scheduling page you will see a list of months on the left side and a list of all of the squads in your fortress along the top edge. Scheduling is done separately for each alert level; to switch between alert levels use the secondary page up/down keys (by default / and *). You can use the secondary up/down keys (by default + and -) to scroll through the squads at the top if you have more than will fit on one screen. Use the up/down arrow keys to navigate the month list, and the left/right arrow keys to navigate between squads. The orders in the currently selected cell are displayed in blue towards the bottom of the screen.

When you've highlighted a cell, press tab to switch focus to this order list. From here, you can press e to edit the standing orders or o to give a new one. Both will open to the Give Orders screen. Pressing o will scroll through and change the order type. This cycles between 'Train', 'Defend Burrow', 'Patrol Route', and 'Station'. To use any of the orders other than Train, you will first need to set up the appropriate Template:L, station, or route. When you cycle to the order you want, highlight the burrow, station, or route you want the order to go to (in the left pane) and press enter. It should now be highlighted in green.

Orders have a soldier-based order criteria that lists how many soldiers in the squad will follow the order at once. Using the secondary up/down keys you can choose how many soldiers must be in a squad the order applies; by default this number is ten. You can also select specific positions within the squad in the right pane to set those positions as 'preferred' - the order will try pick these dwarves to follow the orders if there are multiple off-duty dwarves to choose from. When you are done, press shift+enter to save the order and return to the schedule screen. If desired, multiple order criteria can be set for each month.

Note that the text displayed on each cell (like 'Train') is a completely customized text; it does NOT reflect the actual orders in the cell! When you have a cell highlighted, you can press 'n' to edit the label. Don't be confused by the fact that when you edit the orders in a cell, the label does not change to reflect your changes. You need to update the cell text yourself to be consistent with the orders.

To eliminate some of the tedium in scheduling many months, you can copy-paste orders from one cell to another with the c and p keys. Press c in the cell you want to copy from, then go to the cells you want to paste to and press p in each one.

By pressing shift+tab in the scheduling screen, you can flip the display of the rows and columns in the main grid. This allows you to see more squads, but fewer months. This can be useful if you want to see all your squads at the cost of not seeing the entire year's schedule. This change is cosmetic only; the tools still work the same way.

Warning: Dwarves who are permanently on-duty with no downtime have been observed to begin to starve themselves keeping to the rigorous schedule, and thus grow unhappy. Do you really want to find out how much damage that practice spear can do? To allow some of your dwarves to go sleeping when they need, you need to lower the minimum number of dwarves of the squad that need to follow the current order at any time in the order criteria as listed above. You want the criteria to be at least one or two dwarves less than the current number of dwarves in your squad. This will change the limit for the current month only, so use the copy/paste feature to update every month.

The orders are listed below as follows:

Inactive

When dwarves are in the military but not on active duty, dwarves with good self-discipline will visit the barracks and train themselves in their spare time - if you see a dwarf doing "Individual training" when you have them off-duty, that's what's happening.

Training

For your dwarves to train a Template:L must be designated. This can be done through using q to examine an appropriate building and assigning it as a barracks. Previously only beds, armor stands, and weapon racks could be designated as barracks, but many storage objects are now eligible. There is a new 'Position' option that allows you to assign specific beds/storage to specific dwarves. If dwarves aren't assigned anything in particular they'll just use whatever they feel like, as per normal.

When being viewed, barracks can now be named, used for sleeping, training, or indiv eq. and squad eq. You can choose if a squad trains in one place and sleeps in another, or in multiple, and so on. Multiple squads can overlap with one barracks.

To get marksdwarves to train in any way other then bashing each other with their crossbows, they must have quivers and an archery range. Archers will no longer fire bolts without a quiver to store them in (ie. they will not hold a single stack in their hand). The archery range that is set up for the squad via building an archery target and listing it as a training area for that squad.

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.

Defend Burrows

After a Template:L has been created in the w menu, you can order your dwarves to defend it. If an enemy enters the burrow (and is not hiding) the assigned squads will be alerted and attack it. It is unknown if a soldier defending a burrow is limited to his line-of-sight or is simply aware that an enemy is present.

Stations

Stations are set in the Notes menu. Simply place a point where you want a squad to stand, give it a name if you want to be able to find it quickly, then open the scheduling menu and set your chosen squad to be Stationed and select the station you want.

Routes

Routes are made by combining stations. Once you have stations set along your desired route (at least two stations are necessary), hit routes while in the Notes menu. add a route, name it something appropriate, then edit its waypoints. You need to add the points in the same order you want the dwarves to follow. They'll loop back to the initial point when they reach the last one. Waypoints can no longer be arbitrarily made; only stations can be selected as waypoints.

Direct Command (Kill Orders)

The kill command allows your military to focus their attack on one or more specific targets. It is a very unsubtle way of beating into your dwarves' booze addled minds that they are to kill your target or be killed in the attempt. It may very well be your last command to your dwarves if things are getting desperate.

In the squad menu, you can press either a/b/c/etc to select the squad that will execute the kill order, or hold shift to select multiple at once. You may press p if you want to toggle between having an individual dwarf or the squad perform the kill order. After selecting your dwarves will execute the kill order, press k to 'Attack'.

Now you have several options: you can move the cursor to what you want to attack and press enter, press list and select what you want to attack from a list, or rectangle to select an area of things you want dead. Upon pressing enter your dwarves will happily run off to execute the order by executing the target. To cancel this order, press o while in the squad screen and selecting the appropriate squad/order.

F.A.Q.

My dwarves won't do anything but stand around!

By default newly-created squads are assigned the 'Inactive' alert. You will need to Template:L or Template:L to get them to do what you want. Note that 'Inactive' and 'Active/Training' are not the only two options available - they are simply the two default alerts and rather useless without creating more alerts and scheduling.

Alerts? Schedules? What am I looking at here?

A schedule is what a dwarf/squad will do when a particular alert is active; once alerts are made and scheduling is performed within these alerts, you can simply change a squad's alert based on the scenario and they will follow out highly specified and complicated programming. For example, if you make two alerts named 'Caravan Guard' for protecting incoming traders and 'Bloody Kobolds' for attacking thieves, we can change Squad A's scheduling in 'Caravan Guard' to Template:L and change their scheduling in 'Bloody Kobolds' to Template:L around your entrance. When a caravan shows up, you can change Squad A to be under the 'Caravan Guard' alert (either a in the military screen or t to cycle through when in the {{k|s}quad screen with a squad selected) and they will begin running up and down your route as the traders make their way through. When you get the 'Protect the horde from thieving scum!' message, you can change their alert to 'Bloody Kobolds' and Squad A will charge off to defend the entrance.

Different squads can be given different alerts at once, but these squads can also be given different scheduling within the same alert - for example, you could make Squad B's scheduling in the 'Caravan Guard' alert to defend a burrows around your trade depot, then assign both A and B to 'Caravan Guard' when the traders appear and have one squad walk them in and the other keep the depot clear.

As schedules are broken up by month, you can make very complicated schedules in which dwarves train two months, take one off, then patrol your map for a season then take a shift defending the entrance, while having a second squad do something completely different, and change their scheduling instantly by applying a different alert. For ease, orders can be copied and pasted in the scheduling menu. Once you get the hang of the system it becomes extremely versatile. See Template:L and Template:L for more information.

I can't seem to apply orders to my schedule...

When you finish with the Give Orders menu and hit shift+tab to save your changes, you may notice that your changes have not been saved. This is because your order does not have a defined location. Station orders need a station to be assigned to, patrol route orders need a route to follow, and defend burrows orders need a burrows to defend. When giving or editing orders, you must select the specific area from a list on the left pane.

Keep in mind that the left and right panes in the Give Orders menu can both be highlighted even if one is empty - if your pane doesn't seem to be highlighted, hit the left or right key to properly select it.

My dwarves won't wear the uniform I made!

The uniforms tab within the menu screen is not for assigning uniforms to your dwarves, it is for making uniform templates that can later be applied. Open the eequipment tab then the Uniform sub-tab and you will be able to apply your uniform to either a single dwarf at once with enter or a squad at once with shift+enter. Your uniforms should appear in the rightmost pane.

My dwarves won't pick up equipment!

Your fort has become too large (20+ dwarves) and now requires an Template:L. Open the nobles screen and assign one, and give him an office. He must now process all equipment changes at his desk before they go into effect; until then your dwarves will wear whatever was previously assigned.

I don't have an Arsenal Dwarf position!

Your fort is not yet big enough to need on (<20 dwarves). For now your dwarves will simply equip themselves as soon as you make the changes.

If your fort is big enough, you may be encountering what is believed to be a bug. The position may randomly become available later. Currently why this happens is unknown.

How do I make my dwarves kill things?

If your soldiers are stationed, defending a barracks, or patrolling a route, they are defending. To make them go on the offense, you need to open the squads screen, select a squad using a/b/c/etc. as listed and hit k to 'Attack.' Then you pick your targets: either hit l to choose from a list of possible targets, r to select all targets within a rectangle, or simply move the cursor to what you want to attack and press enter. Your dwarves should now have the 'Kill _____' duty and charge after your target(s). To select multiple squads at once just hold shift while selecting, or hit p while selecting to select specific dwarves.

My dwarves won't go off-duty! They're starving themselves!

Your order criteria is too high - order criteria is the number of dwarves in a squad required to follow out an order. By default a new order's criteria is set to 10 dwarves, or the entire squad; this means that you've told your dwarves that this order is of the absolute highest importance and that the entire squad needs to be on duty at all times. By changing this to two or three dwarves less than the number of dwarves in your squad, some of your dwarves will be able to relax and take some me-time while the others follow your orders out.

I keep activating my dwarves but they still have their civilian positions!

If a squad is off-duty it may be dressed in its civilian clothes and thus listed as civilians (ie. a swordsdwarf may revert to 'carpenter'). There also seems to be a discrepency between which orders are 'civilian' orders and which are 'military' orders; further investigation is necessary.

If you have further questions, please ask them on the discussion page. Frequently asked or standard questions will be added to the FAQ as necessary.