Hello, newcomer to the forum here. I've been playing for one week, totally hooked now.
I like how all the animals that killed my forts have been mentioned now.
One embark was destroyed by an alligator.. it attacked one of my dogs about 2 seconds into the game. I had just figured out the basics of militia, so I assigned all my 7 starting dwarves to a squad and ordered them to kill it. What happened next was really funny. They pounced the alligator with their bare hands (I had not yet discovered the equip button, so they were 7 little wrestlers), and overwhelmed it. The alligator was scared and ran off. I would have let him, if he had not wounded a dog. A dog!
So I let my dwarves run after him instead to kill it. What followed was an incredibly long fight, where the dwarves just kept pounding and pounding on the beast without managing to kill it. After a few minutes the alligator vomited out his guts, every part of his body bruised or worse.. but he just didn't die. On the other hand he didn't get in a counterattack, either. I had to laugh a lot as I watched the scene. All of my dwarves gained levels in wrestling as it continued.. and then they suddenly all died to dehydration. Lol!
I wonder though: is there a way I could have ordered one dwarf to get booze or water for the others? Learning how to make your dwarves do what you want is really what makes this game difficult. In other games you click on a guy and tell him what to do. In this game, you have to struggle through a menu jungle and hope it somehow influences what your dwarves are doing.
Elk birds have murdered another one of my fortresses, yeah. Fun times.