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[Garath]

Ranged gobs only have the ammo they brought with them.
Birds breed like rabbits cats.
Gobs are just as happy to kill your animals as they are to kill your dwarves.

Your egg farm could double as an arrow sponge, but you need a lot of birds to soak up the incoming fire. A small creature like a bird can be easily killed in just one shot.

There are benefits to allowing your dwarves to soak up the fire. By being on the receiving end of the goblins your dwarves will improve their defensive skills.

I once had a dog above my entrance on an unreachable ledge (unreachable from outside, I just had to pull the right lever) which acted as goblin bait. He survived 3 ambushes and 2 sieges before finally kicking it. At that point he looked more like a porcupine than a dog, had all its bones broken, lots of punctures, nerve damage etc, the whole 2x3 ledge was a mess of dog blood, but the goblins never managed a kill shot for a long time, despite him not being able to move. It was very funny to see.

[Rutilant]

There's a bug presently that causes the unhappiness from patrol duty to accumulate even if they receive breaks.  Unless you fix it with dfhack (tweak patrol-duty) it's probably better to just try and get them to be amazing warriors as quickly as possible, yeah.

[Flanderbland]

Just an update here...

Finally managed to chase the goblins that camped outside my entrance off (at least made them move off a bit), and started collecting bodies that had been caught in the crossfire etc... Nice to have some breathing room!

...

"A Vile force of Darkness has arrived!"

...

You got to be kidding me! I can't handle one siege, and now I got two at the same time?!

So, without further ado, I decided to give up. Go out in a blaze of glory. I'd had a good run with this fortress, couldn't last forever I guess.

I assembled my troops, lowered the bridge and met them head on (we're talking around 70 goblins and trolls now, versus my remaining ~12 dwarves with various experience).

Didn't think they'd last long. Surprisingly enough though, they went out and kicked ass!
Or well, a couple of them did. Some just died right away. Others went martial trance-crazy (had one guy who had 3 in a row, his kill-count from that fight alone is around 25 kills).

A squad of trolls got past the defenders though and entered the fortress, and here I thought I'd see lots of dead civilians...
Surprise again! Apparently my civilian dwarves got tired of doing nothing, so they decided to swarm the trolls and beating them to death with their fists. Lovely show! A few of them died though, but it's all worth it!

They didn't get all the invaders, but boy, a goblin on the run sure is fast!

...

Thanks for all the advice everyone, I'll make sure to try my best to be better prepared the next time, and judging by the display I just witnessed, I think I've underestimated my dwarves quite a bit!

[Edit]
Huh, seems I was a bit rash in declaring myself having survived... Still lost about 20 dwarves to the entire ordeal, and while that might not be too bad considering the circumstances, these dwarves were, apparently, related to a lot of dwarves in the fortress, so now I got a massive tantrum spiral. !Fun! !

[Rutilant]

Don't worry - you'll go back to underestimating them again when your legendary whatever gets his skull kicked in by a grumpy yak because juuust a few too many of them managed to accumulate.

[nanomage]

I've just had an idea:
If you have a bronze colossus at your disposal, you can pit it before your entrance as a bait for crossbowgoblins to waste their bolts at. After the siege, you can seal the pit back with a drawbidge so it desn't scare your haulers.

[Garath]

mad dwarf zerg rush saves the day. That's why I love DF

[Flanderbland]

Just thought I'd share further events with you..

...

Ah well, guess it had to end sometime...

My fortress has fallen.

The tantrum spiral that started after the goblin siege that was miraculously fought off soon raged like a wildfire throughout the fortress.
About 30+ dwarves died from this (exact number is not known, new bodies were being found all the time), and it would have surely been my end if not interrupted prematurely by...

"A Vile Force of Darkness has Arrived!"

Pretty much the worst time for that to happen, yep. All things considered though, I guess it was a good thing, better for it to end this way than having to see my fortress destroy itself.
The military made a defiant last stand (at least that's what I'd like to say, truth is they all ran around like scared chickens as they got peppered by goblin bolts), and then the goblins were inside.
Slaughter commenced. Dead dwarves were everywhere.

Thus ends the tragic retelling of the fate of the Dwarven fortress known as GeniusCastle (never understood that name, none of them seemed to be that clever)...

...

Once more, thank you all for the advice, it was too late for this fortress it seems, but I'll do my best to make the next one better!

[Edit]:
One funny thing I noticed though, after having lost the fortress I took a look at the legends, and it seems that one of my dwarves went epic post-mortem. I'm pretty sure that this guy was dead when I quit (didn't show up in unit-list at least), but there are like 20 entries at the end of the legends where he kicks goblin ass using a copper pick-axe before bleeding to death. Awesome!

[Hyndis]

Its always good to have a few backup plans. Build a drawbridge both before your gatehouse with your soldiers, as well as one after.

That way you can cut off your fortress entirely by raising the drawbridge, saving your soldiers from having to fight. And then a second one after your soldiers lets you save the fortress should your military become overwhelmed. Seal off the airlock and leave the military to the goblins to save everyone else. You might still get some tantrums, but its better than goblins in your booze hall.

[Rude]

Its always good to have a few backup plans. Build a drawbridge both before your gatehouse with your soldiers, as well as one after.

That way you can cut off your fortress entirely by raising the drawbridge, saving your soldiers from having to fight. And then a second one after your soldiers lets you save the fortress should your military become overwhelmed. Seal off the airlock and leave the military to the goblins to save everyone else. You might still get some tantrums, but its better than goblins in your booze hall.

I played with this idea a while ago, but I designed my airlocks to trap the goblins IN so they couldn't flee with my goblinite. and so my axe teacher could boost his kill list.