v0.34:Military design

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

This page is one of several inter-related articles on the broader topic of defending your fortress and your dwarves. Military design focuses on the training, organization and deployment of your military and how to prepare them for any situation. For a general overview of the threats that will challenge your fortress and things to consider when preparing a standard defence, see the defense guide. For tips on laying out your architecture to protect your military, see security design. or 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.

The role of a military force in fortress defense can be extremely varied depending on the player's overall approach and strategy; it can be central, non-existent, or anywhere in between. One of their advantages is their mobility — they can go where no static defenses exist, to rescue or support other dwarves, or escort a caravan through unknown or deadly threats. Only military can take the fight to the enemy (doomsday devices excepted).

Unfortunately, they are also expensive to maintain compared to static traps, and can cost a lot of resources for the metal, labor, as well as food, drink and accomodation for the military. Additionally, soldiers are almost constantly under high risk in their job defending the fortress, possibly draining the fortress of some otherwise useful dwarves. Finally, the military system can take a lot of time on the player's part to set up and get working. An efficient military design can offset some of these major issues.

Training

One of the important parts of a military is to have dwarves with high physical attributes and decent experience in combat skills, and that requires training them up. See cross-training for suggestions on various attribute training plans.

The danger room method is a quick and effective way of training shield user, dodger, and any weapon skills. Another very effective way of training is sending the military to actively fight captured invaders or wildlife, especially with training weapons equipped so that the combat takes longer. Certain creatures, such as flesh balls are more suitable for combat training than others. See mass pitting.

Daylight training room

Put a weapon rack, armor stand or archery target on the surface near your entrance and make it a training room by designating it as a barracks. Training dwarves will be in position if there's trouble. A major reason for training in daylight is that it also helps prevent cave adaptation in your military.

Archery

Archers are deadly, but vulnerable to melee — crossbows as clubs just aren't the best. Additionally, it is impractical to have archer towers every 15 tiles across the map (it is possible, but that sometimes would be tedious). Sometimes, the only option is to take it directly to the enemy. Beyond that, mixing or matching is largely up to you.

Fortifications are crucial to any archery platform, even the tallest towers. If these are built improperly or do not exist, enemy archers will return fire, causing mammoth losses to any archery squads.

Marksdwarf training

A couple tips/troubleshooting for training your ranged military:

• If you use archery targets, make sure you have one for each dwarf in the squad and assign each target to the squad.
• If you use live captured targets, you dwarves are most likely to shoot if they have no path to the target.
• Force your dwarves to stand next to fortifications (touching them). You can use burrows or walls for this.
• Every marksdwarf needs a quiver.
• Make plenty of ammunition and assign 100-200 bolts per dwarf to each squad, instead of the default 200 or so per squad.

Live targets

Building a goblin shooting range where live goblins are shot at can increase the speed of ranged training. The caged prisoners, obtained from cage traps, are dropped down a shaft 4-5 z-levels down, enough to break their legs but hopefully no more. Then have your marksdwarfs shot the stunned and immobile goblins from 14-18 steps away. The further away you place your Marksdwarfs, the higher probability that they might miss, thereby prolonging their target practice. Remember to add a lever and a bridge to retrieve the goblin corpses and items and clean up the mess you just made.

╔═══════════╗    four z-levels up:
║···········║    ╔═╦═╦═╦═╦═╗
║·+·+·g·+·+·║    ║·║·║·║·║·║
║···········║    ║+║+║+║+║+║
║▼·········▼║    ║+++++++++║
║+++++++++++║    ║+++++++++║   
║+++++++++++║      
║+++++++++++║       ║D║
║+++++++++++║       ║+║
║+++++++++++║    Locked tunnel
║+++++++++++║     one z-level down
║+++++++++++║       ║+║
║+++++++++++║       ║+║
║+++++++++++║       ║+║
║+++++++++++║  ╔════╝D╚════╗
║···········║  ║+ò+++++++++║
║▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼║  ║▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲║
║++☺+++☺++☺+║  ╚═══════════╝
║+☺++☺++☺+++║    Lever to  
║+++++++++++║    bridge

Squad management

Ordering multiple squads around can become cumbersome after a while. It's best to set most of your dwarves to follow a good regimen of training, guarding important burrows, and patrolling routes along the fort by programming their schedules. By preparing a number of different alerts with different schedules, you can largely manage your military by swapping a few squads to different alerts. With the majority of your squads patrolling the fort, you're free to take one or two squads of your highest-trained soldiers out to take care of some business.

Keep in mind that dwarves are bloodthirsty fiends. If a creature crosses their path, no matter the odds or whether they've been ordered to stand down, your dwarves will open pursuit and attack until either it or they are dead. Keep an eye on your dwarves, and if they're going to be in combat it's a good idea to make sure there's a few highly-trained melee dwarves in the squad with them.

If trained to (near-)legendary in dodging, fighting and a weapon of choice, and armored up with steel or better, one lone hero can take out several squads of goblins without a scratch. But combat always has a random element — Fun happens.

Uniforms

Note that these uniforms are designed to simply "work", but they are not the best option. See the armor article for more about this.

Use the starter outfits in the armor article. They are maxed out protection for their material. If you know you have full suits of armor for the recruits, use replace clothes and exact matches. This lets you wear the full set without a XXCave Spider Silk RobeXX leaving your military less protected.

Starter Uniform

1. Leather shirts
2. Leather trousers
3. Leather gloves
4. Leather caps
5. Leather armor
6. Leather low/high boots
7. Bone gauntlets
8. Bone helms
9. Bone greaves
10. Wooden shields
11. Melee weapons (non-training) or Crossbows

Basic Uniform

1. Leather shirt
2. Leather trousers
3. Leather caps
4. Leather hoods
5. Leather gloves
6. Leather mittens
7. Leather shoes
8. Cloaks (6)
9. Socks
10. Metal helm
11. Metal mail armor
12. Metal gauntlets
13. Metal greaves
14. Metal shield
15. Metal melee weapon (non-training)

You can order your dwarves to wear more than one piece of same type, typically you would want three suits of mail armor and six cloaks. The Armor article explains these possibilities in detail.

Strategy & Tactics

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 alcohol or water in waterskins or flasks, though water isn't recommended for the long term, as it makes your soldiers sluggish - always remember to keep the booze stockpiles full. 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. Note that sleeping on the floor also causes unhappy thoughts; if floor sleeping is included in a military design, be sure to add counteracting thoughts.

Wait for my signal...

When ganging up on dangerous creatures (such as megabeasts), keep them far, far away until all your units are in position, and try to ambush the target in an area with no other creatures. If your dwarves get too close, they'll smell blood and charge in, regardless of what you do to try and stop them. Getting all your units into position, pausing the game, and then turning them loose at once, can achieve the desired advantage of numbers against formidable opponents.

When under siege or other attack, keep the entire squad far back from the exit until they are all armed and armored, and ready to roll as a unit. Having a good lockable front gate will also avoid this.

Animals

War animals can also be assigned to dwarves who go outside frequently, whether military or civilian. Then, when the dwarf encounters danger, the war animal runs at the danger while the dwarf runs away from it. Unfortunately, war animals are slower than dwarves with high agility, and do not shadow the dwarf perfectly. Try to not assign more than one or two war animals to a dwarf; the loss of happiness from an assigned animal dying (assigned War/Hunting animals are pets) can lead to a tantrum spiral. Also, war animals cannot be reassigned once they are assigned; to get around this, have the dwarf you want to be guarded train the animal themself.

V · T · E Military and defense
F.A.Q.
Guides	Military quickstart • Interface walkthrough • Defense guide
Managing soldiers	Soldiers • Scheduling and alerts • Squads • Equipment
Design tips	Military design • Security design • Trap design
Invaders	Ambush • Megabeast • Siege • Thief