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[jsm]

I have 44 dwarves. I have a military of 10 dwarves. I also have 2 war dogs, a drawbridge, and a floodgate holding back water that I can use to flood my halls. (contained hallways.) I know it won't happen anytime soon, but migrants are arriving more frequently, and I realized that my fort is seriously lacking defense. I have a wall, but no traps. So to protect me and my dwarves, I have a couple questions:

1.) Are there cheaper crossbows, ammunition, and quivers that i can use for training ranged units?

2.) How can I use siege engines to protect hallways?

3.) How do I put dwarves and things on top of my walls? (How do i reach the top?)

4.) Do invaders and siege armies (excluding thieves.) unlock doors, knock them down, or path around it?

5.) If they don't path around it, is it possible to re-seal a place I mined?

[Jacob/Lee]

1) You can use wooden or, in case you slaughter or hunt a lot, bone bolts and crossbows. Crossbows are made at bowyer's workshops and bolts are made at craftsdwarve's workshops. Quivers can only be made of leather and are made at leather works.

2) The siege engine page on the wiki gives a couple different setups for defending a hallway, which is typically where you want them to be. Catapults are pieces of crap, don't even bother with them.

3) You need to either build a ramp against a wall (b -> C -> r) or up stairs on the ground level (b -> C -> u) and go up a level and build down stairs right above them (b -> C -> d). When that is completed, you can order soldiers up there, task building jobs (fortifications (b -> C -> F) are a good place to start. Build them on the outer part of your wall and depending on the distance and skill of the shooter it will make it harder to hit something on the other side. Hopefully, your archers will be the ones behind the fortifications), and do whatever else you could do on any other surface.

4) No, but goblin sieges sometimes bring trolls which are capable of knocking down doors, lowered drawbridges (which ironically usually helps you in that case, since they can block out anyone not inside already), and floodgates, which will probably be your main concern. Be warned that if a hostile walks through a door you will be incapable of locking that door until one of your dwarves walks through it.

5) Yes. Build a wall there. Walls are totally indestructible, even against units with the building destroyer 2 tag (which destroy the things listed above), since invaders don't have siege weapons or any advanced tactics aside from "charge the nearest dwarf."

Traps are probably the best defense you can have early on, especially cage traps. They cost 1 mechanism and 1 cage and will catch anything that can't avoid traps, which luckily for us includes all goblin siegers and ambushers. You might need a lot of them for the larger sieges, though, and they can't compare with good soldiers.

[jsm]

Thank you for all the help!

[Myshaak]

Regarding the floodgates, I always build a wall in front of it from the outer side and carve fortifications in it - water can flow through it. This way building destroyers can't reach it (as far as I know) and nothing will climb out of your well. Same thing works for magma furnaces, you want to keep the crabs out. For anything else use walls, traps and drawbridges to keep you perfectly sealed... until some flying !!FUN!! appears 

[Jacob/Lee]

I've watched a GCS destroy a door from a tile away, so you might want 2 fortifications in front. Carving 2 fortifications is a lot easier than building some kind of panic mode obsidianizer right above your water tunnels or having some kind of massive dump-pit made of hatches that goes down to the caverns when something breaks and water starts pouring in. I usually count the fort as lost if something breaks a floodgate or other device holding back water on the upper levels of the fort, which is rarely considering I now block my farm irrigation floodgates with walls to prevent such a thing.

[jsm]

Well, the point of the floodgate is a last ditch effort. If they activate it early i can lock doors and contain the water while they all drown.

[SixOfSpades]

As far as I know, all building destroyers (not just GCS) have a range of 2 tiles, meaning they can reach over a 1-tile-wide moat and batter down a door on the other side of it. I can't imagine a troll sticking his arm through an arrow slit & breaking the floodgate on the other side--but that doesn't mean it can't happen, so you might want to protect your floodgate with an empty tile between it & the fortification.

Also--you say you have 2 war dogs. I remember being there once myself. Trained up some dogs, the only entrance to the fort is through a small room, A snatcher! Hide the children! "Great," I thought, "a goblin thief trapped in an enclosed area with 10 fully trained war dogs. This ought to be good." Couple of minutes later, the thief walks out, leaving 10 dead war dogs behind. Her left hand was cut open. That was it.

[Bigheaded]

indeed, war dogs can be very unimpressive.

Personally, i edited my raws so that rutherer's were a bit more angry. I then went on my merry way in the caverns and caught a few, now when mr snatcher came through he was lunch

[Myshaak]

I've watched a GCS destroy a door from a tile away, so you might want 2 fortifications in front.

As far as I know, all building destroyers (not just GCS) have a range of 2 tiles

Myshaak cancels reading the forums - has run off to improve defences.

And regarding dogs - I use them primarily for quick leather, meat and bones production, they are good fighters only in masses. I edited my raws so that I can train more kinds of animals, I used to be kind of sad to have all those fearsome exotic creatures and not be able to turn them into deathmachines.

[CaptainLambcake]

start now.  take 10 of your dwarves who have had some kills, preferably notable, and look@ their skills.  give them a weapon according to this.  let them train for years.  i had one of my speardwarves recently kill an entire ambush solo, and he got bruised once in the leg.  yeah.  he's trained for a few years, and if you let them kill caged siegers, they'll get names, and get skills.  i've never made an archer range in my life.  i take rangers/hunters and give them crossbows.  i then let them train on the sieges themselves.  my entire military is either master, grand master, or legendary in their respective weapon.

[Myshaak]

start now.  take 10 of your dwarves who have had some kills, preferably notable, and look@ their skills.  give them a weapon according to this.  let them train for years.  i had one of my speardwarves recently kill an entire ambush solo, and he got bruised once in the leg.  yeah.  he's trained for a few years, and if you let them kill caged siegers, they'll get names, and get skills.  i've never made an archer range in my life.  i take rangers/hunters and give them crossbows.  i then let them train on the sieges themselves.  my entire military is either master, grand master, or legendary in their respective weapon.

This. The quickest way to train your soldiers from dabbling up is to set up an execution room - strip the caged prisoners of everything and drop them 2-3 z-levels down to an arena with your soldiers. The prisoners will usually get stunned or break their legs, which will give your formerly lame army enough time before they recover to chop everyone to pieces and gain EXP.

[Tirion]

start now.  take 10 of your dwarves who have had some kills, preferably notable, and look@ their skills.  give them a weapon according to this.  let them train for years.  i had one of my speardwarves recently kill an entire ambush solo, and he got bruised once in the leg.  yeah.  he's trained for a few years, and if you let them kill caged siegers, they'll get names, and get skills.  i've never made an archer range in my life.  i take rangers/hunters and give them crossbows.  i then let them train on the sieges themselves.  my entire military is either master, grand master, or legendary in their respective weapon.

This. The quickest way to train your soldiers from dabbling up is to set up an execution room - strip the caged prisoners of everything and drop them 2-3 z-levels down to an arena with your soldiers. The prisoners will usually get stunned or break their legs, which will give your formerly lame army enough time before they recover to chop everyone to pieces and gain EXP.

Even better, remove only their weapons and shields, so they last longer and give more xp, but stay harmless. You'll need a good bookkeeper for that.

[CaptainLambcake]

i never dropped them.  i chained them in a small room and, at first, let the entire squad go at it, whoever got the kill got the kill.  eventually, i took them one by one to get their kills so they'd get names

[jsm]

I have no idea how to take "prisoners". I understand I have to use cages. Is it possible to use useless dwarves and slaughter them for my amusement?.... Actually, i'm going to go do that right now. What other things can I take prisoner and how?

I have an army of 20 dwarves, but 5 are currently useless marksmendwarves because I have no quivers.

[Jacob/Lee]

Prisoners are only invaders that have been caught in a cage trap. You can build the cage they were caught in, hook it to a lever and open it or manually let it out with the {q} menu, though this will probably get the dwarf opening it stabbed. You can use the q menu to put any other animal or prisoner in it as well. You can strip the prisoners by unforbidding then dumping their clothes and weapons (assuming you have a garbage dump zone) by doing d -> b -> c on the cage tile followed by {d} in the same menu. When they're let out, they'll try to run most likely. If they get into a fight they will probably still run but it won't matter by then. Stripped goblins make good sparring/target practice, but be warned that a mob of naked goblins can easily take down an unskilled, lone dwarf.

If you're using them for target practice, just lock them in a room without stripping them. Make sure there are fortifications and put your dwarves behind them. Just make sure there aren't any archers in there because they'll probably kill somebody.