I have a few questions, so in order to hopefully have them answered I'm stuffing a bunch of them in here at once, so I'm sorry if this topic seems a bit cluttered. Most of it is just logic/experience based ... not so much help for controls. Basically, I've spent 15 hours on this one part of fortress mode creating a labyrinth that invaders have to go through in order to get to the opening of my underground fortress. It didn't interfere with my forest industry (I LOVE cutting wood for some reason - finding metals other than domilith [think that's you spell?] when billions of layers of damp clay/soil beneath you sits there is annoying ... especially if you have to keep pressing space in order to unpause every little spot of damn soil you find). The labyrinth was small in volume in terms of x*y but it had a lot of surface area. Kinda looked like a small intestine now that I think about it. I set up stone traps around each corner literally every 4 squares. I read through some sort of Dwarf Fortress wiki and found that goblins walking by it should in fact get hurt by it.
1) Why did the goblins waltz on in so easily?! WITH ALLIGATORS AND TROLLS! I know that the stones probably wouldn't have hurt the trolls, but I was honestly hoping that the stone traps would remove all of the goblins. My 30 dwarf army armed with wooden axes and crossbows with wooden bolts didn't stand a chance...
2) Did I need to leave room in for some sort of pressure plate? I swear stone fell traps could work easily once set down...
3) How do you people pick and choose who to draft into the military without mistakes? What I've experienced with randomly drafting is that you pick from a list where suitable candidates are, but when you select a dwarf from another squad, that dwarf is removed from the last squad and placed into the new one. Is there a way to easily pick and choose without having to write down names on a separate sheet of paper? I've been trying to find the names of said dwarves, but a lot of the time my eyes keep straining from looking and I end up only finding 2 of the dwarves. That inevitably makes me want to rely on traps alone, but I know I can't do that with only some stone and thousands of units of wood...
4) I lied about the controls-how-to questions, but this only just crossed my mind. I heard that you could create pits in Dwarf Fortress, but I could never figure out how to do it. I would have done this and had a draw bridge to keep invasions out and my crossbowmen shooting across from it if I knew about this. The only problem is that most of the tutorials I've found in video form have been in an unfamiliar skin, so I could never differentiate between some of the graphics. I understand that I probably could make a staircase and create tunnels upon tunnels through the Z-axis of this 2D world, but I have no idea how to force a cave-in so that a hole appears.
5) Do elves always get mad and leave when you show wooden products to them? I remember something about beauty, but I haven't gotten a chance to create wood crafts/totems to give to them.
6) In connection with question 4, is there a way to force people down holes?
EDIT: I JUST saw that little questions thread. If a mod wants, I'm fine with this topic somehow getting shoved into that thread ... >.< My bad, I can't seem to delete it.