User:Rhenaya/MilitaryTutorial

I am often asked on how i get my military so efficent, strong and well done, so i decided i make a little tutorial.

First off: i dont use danger rooms or other exploits to make my military, so personally i see this as the true way ;p

Stats and Conscription

To get started you should choose your militia commander already at embark, because now you can distribute some skill choices easily, and maybe wont see them as fast again with migrants. This commander should be at least very agile, if you dont have a dwarf (or whatever creature you are playing) with at least very agile, simply abort and embark on same location again until you find a unit with the traits you like. Preferably high strength, toughness, recuperation, endurance and spatial sense its good too, but agility is the number one stat for military. If you ever happen to get migrants with very, extreme or even amazingly agile, make sure they dont have skills you need (like an migrating legendary weaponsmith) and put them on hold for a military squad asap.

Personally i look through all dwarfs that join the fort and give them a profession name depending on their skills and likely future use (like farmer, crafter, military, smith, etc.) via Dwarf Therapist. After this i go again all new recruits ingame with that new "military" tag and add their agility score (for example anything with clumsy/no agility "Military C" and the other marked with A, VA, EA and AA). So i have a quikc overview with sort by profession screen on whats aviable.

Some may ask now, why agility? Agility is the stat that expresses the speed of all units. With the [SPEED:x] tag in creature raws this gives how fast they run (with 1k is average on the speed, and the 5k maximum is about twice as fast). But it also makes how fast they strike, and modify their dodge, block and parry. Meaning high agility means more attacks and less damage taken overall. Strength gives them little advantage with heavy equipment and more damage, but with legendary armor user this is negated anyway and a adamantine axe dont need much strength to be devasting ;) Thougness and recuperance are only in affect if you are already getting hit and will only affect how long they will stay in hospital afterwards... and if the lucky strike punctates your militarys lungs or severe off arms, they are completly useless, so you better aim for agility anyway. Spatial Sense is kind of important too for dodgeing, but not as much overall like agility.

Militia Commadner

My default commander get stats like this: 5 Dodge (hardest to train so boost fully on embark), 2 in weapon of choice, 1 armor user, 1 fighter and 1 in either leadership or shield user i personally play my moded race of drow often so i use two handed swords as the commander weapon thats then i use leadership skill, if i play dwarf i go for hammr or axe and a shield some my say leadership is useless, but it does affect squad training a bit (even if another one is the teacher, only the squadleaders will earn leadership skill)

Materials

After embarking and making your default layout and hopefully found some metal already its time to decide how to build your squads, depending on materials aviable:

• Leather should be used for quick armor and should be used even if you have a running metal industry (more to it later)
• Silver is great for hammers and maces, but cant be used for armor (and would be pretty useless anyway), odly enough its a good for whips and spears too
• Copper is a cheap source for metal armor, but should be avoided for weapons if possible, but does work better than steel for hammer and maces too
• Iron is a solid choice for all weapons and armor and most often the only abundant metal
• Bronze and Bismuth Bronze are pretty much on same level as iron, but because of the rarity of having copper and tin on the same map hard to come by, if you have copper ores try to import tin to make bronze, or simply stay with iron.
• Steel is a great for armor, swords, axes and spears but also hammers and maces are very good (but silver is better)
• Adamantine is exceptional for armors, swords and axes... but pretty much useless for hammers and maces, with spears they are critical strike weapons: they can be devasting or completly useless depending on luck at the battlefield.
• Feather Wood, while wood isnt that great in geneneral, feather wood does make great shields, because the shield material doesnt seem to affect blockrate as much as skill, and being the lightest material for it its a very good choice... if you find feather wood armor of some quality in elven caravans use it instead of leather armor, because its even lighter and elvish works are quite good too.

Basicly you should try to get silver, iron and flux (for steelmaking) on the same map for best effect, or import as much as possible if you dont have them.

Squads and Uniforms

Now with that information you should group your military in 5 groups:

• Shock Squads: this are your main squads, they will be placed strategically on chokepoints while sieges/invasions occur, you should have 3-5 full squads of them (about 20-30% of your total population on average will be in those squads)
• Scout Squads: about 3-5 units in each squad, the most agile ones should be in those squads (like very agile and upwards), they get light equipment to be as fast as possible, you will use them to hunt down thiefs, snatchers, ambushers or fleeing siegers and patrolling on routes. They will only use leather or if you have access adamantine armor and a light weapon (like short swords or dagger if you play a modded race)
• Marks Squads: a good ranged army is always good, you will normaly place them in groups of 3-5 and they should patrol or be placed in marksman towers on strategical points.
• Specical Squads: guards, royal guards (if hammerer will ever work) and the commander are getting special treatment, meaning they will have very different training shedules.
• Civilian Squads: not really necassary but i like to use some civilians in squads too like my herbalists/farmers and woodcutters, so they can have a little training and armor too while going outside the fort

Shock Squads

Being your main squads, they should get a good armor and shields you have (steel, iron or copper). And varying weapon types. Depending on weapon material aviable: For best effect you should go for a layout of at least 2 blunt, 2 edge, 2 pierce and 2 ranged weapons, leaving 2 for choice (if you have abundant silver for example add 2 blunt weapons). So they can take down any enemy coming near them. Basicly you also want to but the clumsy ones there because those are the expendable squads you will rearange quite often. i give them a profession name with squad number and weapon (like "SQ1 Macedwarf") so i have a quick overview again.

You want to have them all 10 dwarfs and give them access to archery range for the ranged ones. their training shedule should be around the year with pausing twice a year on caravan months (for example Felsite and Hematine to work on hauling for the trade depot while the elves arrive). In their off time they double as haulers a lot, also i give them no-skill-for-quality-related jobs like melting, weaving, wood burning, mason for building walls etc. also you should give them the feed prisoner/wounded and retiev wounded jobs.

Their will get 3 alarms with corresponding shedule:

• 'inactive' without any shedule, thats for example if you quickly need their workforce to build walls, dump a large zone of stuff, this is defaulted in any game anyway
• 'active/training' this one is defaulted two but need some tweaking: go into shedule and choose the alarm and then give delete the training, then add a new one with "minimum 6, #1 prefered" this means that 4 of them will do individual training or help hauling, this prevents unhappyness (if one needs a drink he will just opt out of training instead of waiting till he is nearly dehydrated for example and another one opts in), the #1 prefered means the squadleader will do the most training, addionally you can also set #9/#10 to prefered too (your marksman) so they train a lot on their aiming ;) have them at least blocks of 2 months off, and training on 3-5 months. For example only 4 months training a year, or two blocks of 4 months with 2 months pausing between, also make sure the pausing is on the season overlapping so they can help with "bring item to depot" jobs, and cleaning it afterwards
• 'siege' alaram, in this alarm set them to defened burrows or patrol routes on chokepoints so your civilan dwarfs are secure. all months should be the same, but dont forgett to release them after the goblins, megabeast, etc. is defeated or you will get "long on duty" negative thoughts.

Scout Squads

This will be your fast troups, like your shock squads they will help with hauling, but should get more training, and will be set on patrol jobs more often. Alarms and shedule setting:

• 'inactive' again just let it be, you will use it a lot to get a quick stock of workforce
• 'active/training' also you need to tweak it a little, just you can make the offtimes more varible, also make sure the minimum required is lower as the squad size (for 3 use minimum 2, for 5 use minimum 3, etc.) and again #1 prefered, a good squad leader will get more leadership and teaching skill, and train/spar more often so he can teach the others more too.
• 'siege' place them on burrows and routes behind the shock troups, or near closed backdoors so they dont take the first hits, but can quickly put into place, you will use the move squad menu more as the sheduled defend point, its just to make sure they are equiped and ready. if you use backdoors open them once the battle beginns and quickly move them around the front lines to fall the goblins into their backs.
• 'patrols' if you play with an open fort you want to keep nasty wildlife at bay, so you want to have patroling around in the caverns and surface, this means you will need to take some effort to create routes, but for an autorunning fort you dont want to make every micromanagmant later: its worth the effort!

Marks Squads

you may have a lot and small squads of them, but they should get most training (because they will train their weapons melee option anyway too so need more training to be good at range too) alarms are similar to scout and shock squads: make minimum for training lower than your squadsize but use the siege option for placing them on their respective towers or fortification bunkers etc.

Special Squads

Captain of the Guards and the Guards in general can be basicly used like the shock squads, but i also use an own squad for doctors (because they have to much freetime anyway and only need them after fighting) and the commander. In the commander squad i often add other nobles and strong/though/agile ones as escort, as my main battle force that will do the most training, and dont have hauling jobs etc enabled (so they will do more invidual training in off times too)

Civilian Squads

you can basicly just use the default settings or tweak the training one, so your farmers and woodworkers can act as true mility... for bonus points use a mod that inclues pitchforks for your farmers/herbalists or just use spears ^^