Editing Military quickstart

{{Quality|Exceptional}}

Look over all your dwarves. You are looking for any dwarves with [[combat skill]]s, or at the very least, without useful civilian skills. These dwarves will be your first [[squad]]. Starting with a bunch of otherwise useless dwarves with no combat skill isn't totally unreasonable, but it's best to get at least one with some combat skill so that they can teach the others. Note that [[peasants]] often arrive with military skills of competent or better. You will also need to assign a [[militia commander]], who benefits from having a good tactician or leadership skill.

Using job titles can help you spot expendable dwarves. For example, if a dwarf is a "[[Fish cleaner|Fish Cleaner]]" then their most expert skill will be fish cleaning and they probably won't be very good at anything but that. Since super-efficient fish cleaning isn't likely to be that useful, even if you do have a fisherdwarf, your legendary fish cleaner would be an excellent candidate for the draft. If they manage to survive and gain some combat skill, they'll be able to clean fish and kick butt at the same time. If they die, at least it won't impact civilian operations.

Make sure to exercise judgment when selecting dwarves, however. If your fortress only has one fish cleaner, but also has a large amount of fisherdwarves, drafting a fish cleaner may waste a lot of fish. Conversely, if the fortress has no animal or hunting industries, an otherwise precious [[butcher]] may be expendable.

Open up the squad sidebar by clicking at the bottom right of the screen or by pressing {{Menu icon|q}}. Click {{DFtext|Create new squad|2:1}} to create a squad. Then you're asked to {{DFtext|Create which squad?|7:1}}, and you will choose the second option to create the Militia Commander's Squad.  

Choose whatever uniform is most appropriate for the type of equipment you have or plan to have. A "uniform" is essentially just a predefined specification for a set of equipment, and you can change all of this later, but for the sake of simplicity, start with one of the default uniforms.

Enjoy a hearty laugh at the (no doubt) delightful name your dwarves come up with for their squad. ''All tremble before the might of the fearsome Geared Warthogs!'' You can, of course, change the name of the squad if you wish by clicking the [[File:Quill.png]] button.

Click on the [[File:Ui_u.png]] to add dwarves to the squad. If this is your first squad, the first dwarf shown will be your militia commander. If this isn't your first squad, you will need to {{DFtext|Assign leader|2:1}}: select the dwarf with the best fighting skills (or the best leadership ability). This is the leader of this new squad, and will appear in the {{Menu icon|n}} screen as the Militia Captain.

 

Once you select a dwarf for the first position, you can then select more dwarves to join the squad: dwarves you pick are automatically assigned to the next empty position. Notice that below each dwarf's name, a bit of relevant information is shown regarding their military abilities. For this quickstart, pick at least four more dwarves to fill positions two through five.

Make sure at the very least you have a [[weapon]] for everyone in your squad. Ideally, you should have at least a shield and helmet for everyone too. They will automatically go grab appropriate equipment as long as it is free for use.

Axes ''cannot'' be shared between a woodcutter and an axedwarf, not even if it's the same dwarf.  Likewise, a marksdwarf and a hunter can't share a crossbow, and a miner can't share a pick with a military dwarf assigned to use a pick as a weapon. <u>Un</u>assign the civilian labor to free up the weapon for military use. (The dwarf holding it will dutifully drop it where they stand at the time.)

Pick a location for your training grounds. It should be placed in a defended area, and ideally, it should be near the entrance. Training areas can be easily moved though so feel free to just dig out an area somewhere for now and you can move it to a better location later.

Create a zone of type Barracks where you want your dwarves to train. Select the banner with the yellow plus icon to assign the squad to the barracks. For now, only select the axe icon next to the squad name.

Open the squad sidebar again. Select your squad from the list. Notice that below their name it says {{DFtext|No special orders |7:1}}. This indicates if the squad has a schedule assigned to them, and if so, which [[schedule]] they will follow.

The default schedule for "Off duty" basically says "do nothing". Tell them to use the "Active/Training" schedule, by clicking on it. Avoid clicking on the {{DFtext|Edit|2:1}} and {{DFtext|Copy|2:1}} buttons for now.

Keep an eye on them using the {{Menu icon|u}}nits screen. Their tasks will initially be something like "Waiting for (something) demonstration" or "Organize (something) demonstration" but they should eventually start the session. The graphics won't look any different, but the units screen will change to show "Watching (something) demonstration" etc.

After a while, your dwarves may start "Sparring".  This trains several combat skills, much more quickly than demonstrations.  You'll also get combat [[reports]] of the sparring (indicated by a notification icon with crossed spears).

To train marksdwarves, you must create a zone with {{Menu icon|z}} and designate it as an archery range, then assign squads to the zone. Marksdwarves will stand at one end of the zone and fire at the opposite end; this firing direction is indicated by a crossbow icon in the zone's settings. For all dwarves to train simultaneously, there must be one 1-tile-wide firing path per dwarf.

You may place [[archery targets]] at the opposite end of the zone tiles using {{Menu icon|b|y|t}}. Similar to [[wells]], these buildings are created from raw materials when placed, rather than being crafted at a workshop and stored in item form (like [[doors]]). However, archery targets are not required to have a functional archery range.

Crossbows can be made of [[wood]] or [[bone]] at a [[bowyer's workshop]] by a dwarf with the crossbow-making labor enabled, or at a [[metalsmith's forge]] by a dwarf with weaponsmithing enabled. While the material used for a crossbow doesn't matter for shooting purposes, it does matter when dwarves use crossbows to bash enemies in melee combat. So, making crossbows of iron, while being heavier, can give archers a little more of an advantage in melee combat should they be unfortunate enough to get into that situation.

Once you have all of the needed equipment for an archer, the easiest way to set up an archer in the military is to create an archers-only squad and give them the archer's uniform. Then, assign one or more dwarves to the squad and set up their training schedule as described for melee training above. Make sure to set their squad to train at archery targets '''and''' the barracks (weapon or armor rack)--if you only use an archery range, your dwarves will not train.