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[dwarfhoplite]

I usually run military of 40-50 dwarves which makes about 40% of my population.
I usually lose about 5 troops per siege, sometimes all.

[darkflagrance]

I find that nothing is more deadly than getting outnumbered by blunt-wielding enemies. My soldiers, of which I have 40, can take out full squads of axeminotauroses solo or in pairs without getting more than bumps and bruises, but if less than 3 of my soldiers decide to attack a macetiger squad I usually lose one. Hammer- and maceminotauros squads, and, worse, lashertauros squads, are often grounds for sitting back behind my raising spike/dodger array and letting it do most of the work.

When possible, I prefer to simply dispatch one squad of my guys to every squad of the enemy. That, I find, works reasonably well, in that the enemy squad gets taken out, but unfortunately many times a single dwarf will get to the surface and rush the enemy ahead of the rest of their squad and that can be a recipe for disaster against minotauroses, which are the strongest enemies I've got (I use tigermen, blendecs, warwolves, and minotauros).

I agree. I used to lose a lot of veterans to blunt wielder frogmen and tigermen before I learned to wait for them with overwhelming force (35 melee soldiers and 10 archers). If you wait for them to naturally pass through your gates, usually the enemy army will be divided into manageable chunks for your military.

In my last fort, I ran a total of twenty melee and ranged soldiers, and they held off every siege until war elephants (albeit unarmored) with full superior steel with barely any training. They got overwhelmed by a combined siege of elephants, minotaurossi, and nightwing lashers.

My losses are turning more into swarms.  Apparently FD is light on the bows, because I don't get attacked often by anything ranged, but I'll send my ten dwarves out, who get rushed by 50 stranglers and 30 tigermen.  Even with a full 10 squad, half of them trance.  But with those numbers, eventually someone lands a lucky blow, particularly the macemen.  Those guys don't care about my exceptional armor, they go straight for the bone!  Then someone else cracks the skull.

Tigerman have maces and mauls. Even copper ones will jam the skull through the brain of steel clad dwarves. The main issue here is that they sometimes also bring war animals like grizzly bears. Then you're in the unhappy place of having your dwarves charged and knocked down by the animals, then brained by the tigermen. This won't happen when your dwarves have a decent dodging skill (which let them roll away) but that can take a while to train.

The problem with replacing losses is that you don't get migrants if a bunch of dwarves die. So you can't lose more than a few here or there or else you'll end up in a downward spiral. With a population cap of fifty I was on a knife edge. If I lost ten dwarves in a year, I wouldn't get any migrants for about a year. I got down into the thirties at one stage before I got some more migrants. And that makes it hard to keep a steady flow of bad asses.

Edit bolded.

I've been trying to prevent migrant starvation by offloading massive roast stacks onto the dwarven caravan; I'd been able to avoid having the dwarves intercepted up until I died last game. It had been working right up until the minotaurossi barged down my stairwell, broke down the locked doors, and killed the children huddled in together in the food storage rooms (reached 66 population).

[lanceleoghauni]

Marksdwarves > Blunt Weapons

[darkflagrance]

My tests between fully armored steel elephants and hammer vs crossbow dwarves in the arena showed that the hammer dwarves could actually damage the elephants enough to kill them first, but the marksdwarves, if they possessed no ammo, lacked the ability to penetrate the elephants' steel armor before dying. The purpose of this testing was to compare their melee performance.

I did more testing with bolts, and at even close range, a grandmaster crossbowdwarf can often kill an elephant before he is killed instead. However, they tended to suffer a slightly higher casualty rate in general, in larger battles when they run out of bolts and the war elephants close to melee. They're comparable and both legitimate ways of fighting heavily armored enemies, but I wouldn't say one strictly outclasses the other. Crossbow dwarves have notable problems shooting from protected areas, and you probably shouldn't be relying on them to fill gateways or escort merchants at close range.

[Sarda]

Oddly enough, I believe that a crucial part of having marksdwarfs is giving them ammunition. Without ammunition, marksdwarfs are forced to use their crossbow as a (shitty) blunt weapon.

[Syrup Roast]

Population: ~250 (cap was at 150, go figure)

Melee Army: 50-60

Marksdwarves: I planned to have no more than 10, just for extra security at the inner tower and later on for shooting at FB's. Ended up with close to 40, after tons of  kids turned into adults and I had no jobs to put them.

[kotekzot]

My last fort had 90 dwarves, 50 being in the military. I really went overboard. Right now I'm thinking something along the lines of 50 dwarves/10-15 military.