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[Vulcanius]

You need to either build a walled in yard or set up burrows. The forbidding approach works as well but it's too time-consuming in my opinion, and it doesn't guarantee that your dwarves won't go fishing in the pond on the other side of the map.

My approach is to build a large yard which encompasses water sources, dense tree areas, and plants. Then I build a 1x4 bridge to act as a door. I place my lever control room next to my meeting hall, and I have a "Lockdown" burrow which covers only the indoor meeting room. As soon as an ambush occurs I activate my lockdown alert and unpause. I allow as much time as I can for any dwarves outside to make it into the safety of the yard and then I activate the bridges. Once all of the exits are sealed I will deactivate the lockdown alert so dwarves can move about almost like normal, just within the confines of the yard and fort. Unless of course there are flying enemies, at which point I seal off access to the yard as well.

[FleshForge]

Yeah I'm becoming a big fan of the Great Wall approach, it saves a lot of trouble in addition to lookin cool.

[Khift]

Marksdwarves are much less buggy now (as of somewhere around .11, I think).  They're still not bug-free, but they're actually useful.  And nothing says "Get off my lawn!" like a bolt through the liver.

My experience has been opposite of this. In .10 I used to be able to get Marksdwarves to at least train; in .12 they will not fire at all for any reason.

YMMV with Marksdwarves.

[Arekis]

I'm playing .12 and they're working out great for me.  They train, they do archery practice (so much that I have to disable the targets occasionally), and they make excellent pincushions of whatever decides to lurk outside my walls.  Very integral to my fortress defense now.

[Lord Darkstar]

Ambushers will eventually leave. They'll leave faster if you harm several of them. And even faster if you kill off most of their number.

To get your dwarves to stay in certain areas, use burrows. You can have burrows linked/active for certain alerts. Very useful. Burrows themselves are easy to set up, since you paint them just like you paint a "(d)esignate (b)ulk (d)ump" or "(d)esignate chop (t)rees". You will need to put it across z levels if you want to make a big "inside" burrow, and occasionally update it as you add new sections.

The interface to pick the symbol, text color, and background color is more confusing than painting the burrow itself.