40d Talk:Soldier

I currently have a champion who will not obey orders. She has picked a station herself and remains there no matter what I do. Is this a champion behavior in 2.7?--User:Mlcy

Champions always behaved that way as far as I know. --Eagle of Fire 14:40, 28 November 2007 (EST)

No more sparring?

For some reason, my military has stopped sparring. I have 4 Wrestler Champions, 2 Wrestler Elites, 1 Wrestler, and they're all 'Soldier'ing. I now want to bring them all up to legendary Swordsdwarves too, but they just. Won't. Train. They have swords and a barracks, and they're not on duty. Still no training. Help? Runspotrun 07:09, 3 December 2007 (EST)

Make sure there is a barrack designated for them to train. You may have unconstructed one of the furniture from which you've designated the room, so you'd need to do it again. Also, dwarves need to train in pair, and they don't always train. They often take breaks. This mean that the biggest the amount of trainees you have, the greatest the chance two of them will head at the same time to the barracks to train. Also, they will never train unless you go in the military screen, enter each individual squad setting with v and then hit t to make them "stand down". Don't forget to do exactly the same again to place them "on duty" if you ever want to send them fighting again. --Eagle of Fire 14:26, 3 December 2007 (EST)

Viable barracks, check. Several pairs, check. Stood down, check. The weird thing is that they were sparring like nutters in order to get up to Champion, and then they all just lost interest and started Soldiering. I note above that Champions have a mind of their own - maybe they can't be trained to legendary in an additional weapon, or stop sparring altogether at legendary? Also, there's an unresolved post in the bug forum that suggests that dwarves only spar for 3 years. Odd. I'm not hugely bothered because there's nothing for the army to kill; no sieges and no megabeasts. Bit boring, really. Runspotrun 19:31, 3 December 2007 (EST)

I think I ran into the "no sparring after 3 years" bug, as my champions stopped sparring after around 3-4 years, then never sparred for the next 10 years, even when I drafted new recruits. They started sparring when I (f)reed the existing barracks and redesignated a new one from an armor rack instead of a bed.--Langdon 00:02, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

only water?

Do soldiers only drink water? Both those who carry water and those who dont, complain about not having had booze for too long and becoming slow. Even the ones who are standing down dont seem to get booze. My piles are loaded and my civilians are ok, so that cant be the problem. --Koltom 16:26, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

They should only do that if you have them set to use waterskins. It's generally better to just have them not use waterskins so that they'll go for a refreshing alcoholic beverage when they need a drink like regular dwarves. --Janus 19:11, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

I think i have it worked out; they don't drop the waterskin, even if you make them civilians or tell them not to carry water, and they use up the water inside before going for booze again. What you can do is order the waterskin dumped and a fellow dwarf will take it off him. --Koltom 22:09, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Cluttering my stockpiles

My soldiers are leaving their junk, mostly clothing, laying all over the place. I have a barracks room with about 20 beds in it, although its all the same room. Can I just throw some coffers in the barracks room for them to put their stuff, or do I need to designate individual rooms with containers in them? --Wafl 01:33, 15 April 2008 (EDT)

I made each of the beds separate rooms and put in a bunch of coffers, they are not moving their stuff, do i have to assign the barracks bedrooms, or will they claim them? --Wafl 12:17, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Okay, I feel dumb now. I am putting cabinets in the rooms as well... --Wafl 12:28, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Alright, I have cabinets next to every bed, as well as coffers, and they are assigned to dwarfs. They still are not moving their possessions. Is there any other way to move them? Dumping does not work, and neither do stockpiles for that item. --Wafl 14:15, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Undraft them and wait. If you are lucky, they might decide to clean their junk. If you are VERY lucky. They won't do it, while drafted, EVEN if they are standing down.--Dorten 23:09, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

Thanks for the tip, they seem to be cleaning up their stuff... very very slowly. I think this is going to take awhile. --Wafl 01:01, 18 April 2008 (EDT)

Overcoming Sobriety

I left a Champion on Use Waterskin for too long, and now he's beyond caring about the world. Any idea how long he'll take to drink himself out of his apathy? RomeoFalling 14:32, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

I'm confused... you can't directly make a dwarf only drink water. Anyway, "beyond caring" is, IIRC, caused by seeing lots of death, and it's a good thing (I believe it limits the effect of negative thoughts, while also limiting positive ones). Milskidasith 18:37, 13 November 2008 (EST)

Actually, a soldier assigned a waterskin will indeed drink only water, which is why you should never assign them waterskins. Hrmph. And "not caring about anything anymore" is caused by witnessing a lot of death, and is, like you say, a good thing, despite how it sounds.

Did the soldier get back on the bottle, Romeo?--Maximus 22:57, 13 November 2008 (EST)

The Cripple Squad

I have a military consisting of roughly a half marksdwarves, a fifth champions, and the rest melee dwarves. Unfortunatly, most of these melee users have spinal injuries (brown-ish or grey). Luckily, most of them are right below "great" in their primary skill. Would it be in my best interests to slap on a custom title and send them to do civilian work?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Should we note that, at least in my game, soldiers tend to become friends with other soldiers quickly? Currently some of my nobles and even some of my more "sociable" dwarves (the ones working in areas with many other people) have no friends, yet a recently drafted recruit is already friends with one of my marksdwarves. I think this subject could do with some research (including of squadmates tend to be friends, if squad captains tend to be friends with one another, etc.)Milskidasith 03:51, 14 November 2008 (EST)

Soldiers take a moment to chat after they spar together, presumably talking about their sparring. Since talking becomes part of their routine, soldiers make friends with the other soldiers pretty quickly. In most of my fortresses, most civilians are lucky to have 2 friends, while soldiers usually have 5-10.

Incidentally, this is a huge problem for the mood of your armed forces; having a squad wiped out is quite likely to cause tantrums in the other squads. --ThunderClaw 00:19, 14 November 2008 (EST)

Damn I keep forgetting to sign. Anyway, yeah, one of my champions happens to have something along the lines of 27 friends and all proficient or near proficient talking skills... 0_o. Now I can see destroying my (mostly friendly firing) atom smasher was an even smarter move (last time I only lost an expert marksdwarf). Milskidasith 03:51, 14 November 2008 (EST)

This can also lead to soldiers falling in love and marrying quite often, leading to some of your forces wading into battle wielding babies... --Bilkinson 09:29, 14 November 2008 (EST)

Aka meatshields.--Maximus 14:02, 14 November 2008 (EST)

Soldiers divide their time between training and standing around in meeting halls. To reduce the amount of socializing they do, you can create more and larger meeting halls; however, soldiers will always follow their leaders. Even if the squad commander is sleeping in a private room, they'll all come to watch and talk with each other. At the least, smaller squads and more meeting places and barracks will mean less interaction, both in general and between squads.--Navian 12:36, 14 November 2008 (EST)

I've been trying a military-heavy fortress with at least 75% drafted and apart from the first couple of batches of recruits, most of the soldiers (upwards of forty or fifty) don't have any friends at all. Standing down soldiers have not been in squads and I've got one large barracks where everyone trains and there are no meeting halls. I suppose that in a larger army soldiers would be less likely to spar with the same dwarf twice and minimising the different opportunities for socialising in meeting halls is no doubt adding to this as well. It's actually turning out pretty useful because my army seems to be able to actually absorb losses without everyone falling into misery and unhappiness. Extar 00:00, 21 November 2008 (EST)

Restructure military articles?

How would everyone feel if I

1. moved the descriptions of the soldier classes to their respective weapon articles. 2. changed the skill articles (e.g. the "marksdwarf" page) to say something like "Marksman is the skill that controls how good you are at using a crossbow." 3. beef up each weapon article with all the info I can find regarding that weapon, its users, and how it's best used in combat.

Gairabad 00:48, 19 November 2008 (EST)

I've been thinking that all the weapon-specific stuff should be in weapon, not in separate articles: when choosing a weapon, it'd be good to have the pluses and minuses all on one page. I'd convert the prose into weapon-centric format instead of "weaponsdwarf" format.

It's hard to get solid info on what each weapon is good for. Adventurer mode one way to test, but that doesn't tell you how effectively DF-mode dwarves fight with them. I'll share what little I know right now: any weapon, even a wooden one in the hands of a newbie, is better than wrestling. It takes forever to do real damage while wrestling. It's okay against individual weak animals but disastrous against a goblin squad. Your dwarves will either get chopped in half while wasting time, or exhausted, which makes them extremely vulnerable to damage. Wrestling skills are desirable for dodging, and a good way to keep sparring dwarves from cutting each other apart, but pathetic on offense.

Swords and spears periodically get stuck. The only time I've seen that to be a real problem in combat is against zombies: both creatures freeze up, a bug I reported to Toady recently. Aside from that, though, swords work well. Axes work great against anything. There's really no effective defense against getting chopped into little bits. Hammers and maces work fine, at least against goblins. Despite what the article says about blunt weapons repelling the enemy, I've seen swords and axes do that as well. Maybe hammers just do it better. Regardless, anything that gets thrown backward by a blow is not getting up again. Though it does seem to me that edged weapons kill foes more quickly -- maybe because of bleeding.

Crossbows are utterly lethal, especially in the hands of an elite marksdwarf. Even a novice with a crossbow can usually kill any single non-megabeast safely. But they run out of bolts very quickly, so never send a marksdwarf into combat alone.--Maximus 01:55, 19 November 2008 (EST)

Heroes & Champions

Alternatively, a dwarf on the verge of becoming a hero in one weapon skill can be transferred to another weapon and retrained; the attribute bonuses from gaining each weapon skill will stack.

Does this mean that once a dwarf reaches Hero level, if you change his weapon preference he will gain no attribute bonuses as he increases skill? Would it then be preferable to allow a hero to reach legendary if he's already passed hero? Or if you change his weapon, will he gain attribute bonuses for the levels in his new weapon that are beyond his old weapon's maximum? Aristoi 16:35, 16 January 2009 (EST)