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[Zambaku]

I've had a couple of goblin ambushes lately, nothing big. About 3-4 at a time and I was thinking about capturing a couple of 'em. And I was wondering, what's the best and preferably simplest way to catch 'em in cages?

[JamPet]

Goblin ambushes come in squads of maybe up to 8 or so.  And they'll send more and more squads at a time as your fort gets more populated and/or more wealthy.

If your fortress only has one entrance, just lay a few rows of traps across it and try your best to keep your dwarves from wandering around outside.  I manage to catch most of my goblin toys from sieges though, ambushers are hard to actually capture without walling off the entire map which, to me, seems excessive.

You could also build a little structure with a chain or rope inside of it and attach a stray animal which you have to it.  Occasionally goblins will try and go after this structure if they consider the animal inside to be the nearest hostile unit.  Make the entrance narrow and stick it full of traps, one such construction nearby each map corner.  I did this recently to capture for fun instead of kill the fire imps in a magma pit.  A 1x4 hallway into a tiny chamber with a pig tail rope and a cute kitty-cat.  Irresistable to imps!

[Zambaku]

Humm, humm. So I just build some cage traps then. Do I need to put any pressure plates or so anywhere or will they trigger once the goblin walks on the trap?

[The Architect]

Like all constructed traps, they trigger when any creature not native to your map or friendly to your civilization crosses the tile they occupy. Migrating animals are not native.

Some creatures have a [trAP_AVOID] tag, but those are rare and spoiler-ish except in mods. Even a great, fiendish dragon will fall prey to your lowly cage traps. Friendly creatures will trigger traps if they happen to fall unconscious on them.

[JamPet]

The simple traps are, in a word, OP, especially versus goblins.  Try not to trap the fun out of the game, its pretty easy to do.

Just enough to set up gladiatorial deathmatchs

[The Architect]

He's right about overpowered traps sucking some of the fun out of the game if you misuse them. They're mostly training wheels for new players like yourself, so the sooner you move on the better.

[Zambaku]

Okay, was just wondering, never used traps before =)
Thanks for all the help.

And how do I move around the cage with the creature inside it?

[The Architect]

You need an Animal Stockpile. Cages, both full and empty, will go there. Until they are built with b>j, your options will be limited. There are a lot of wiki articles to help you out. They will be much more informative than we are, and it will be less tedious for forum users who want to spend time answering the difficult questions