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[GreatWyrmGold]

A few things...

1. Imperfect =/= Crap. Our walls will probably be somewhat resilient.
2. Chokepoints are only useful if we have some way to kill them easily when they get there, otherwise they'll just be overrun and ignored.
3. If we're not using DF!logic, mungoes who see their friends dying when they enter the gate will not go through the gate and will quite possibly go to wall-bashing.
4. All but the rabidest mungoes would probably look for a gate or weak spot before punching down a stone wall.

[Ashsaber]

1. Given time they'll be resilient, yeah. Until then they should be treated with caution.

2. Without a chokepoint the overrun will happen on a greater scale and the one dude we have with military training can't be anywhere at once.
2a. Once he/she/it does get some trainees in having a choke does wonders for their survival.

3. Depends on how low their intellect is: zombies don't care either way, and anything with pack tendencies will probably break and run if the lead is killed/sent running. The odds of something smart-ish trying to find a harder way to get what they want is pretty low, especially when that something can fight back.

4. Yeah. But ramshackle longer-than-person poles/spears and random debris is easier and faster to pile on, and I don't think we can build Slightly-higher than Mungo sized (can they climb?) rock slabs and build it in place fast enough for it to be ...

I seem to be under the impression that we're getting hit in about a few in game hours.

4a. If we have a lot of time on our hands we can make a Mungo-sized rock blocks and erect a stone wall of awesome safety-ness, if we don't we're sort of relying on whatever stuff we can scratch together (namely sticks and debris and general "IT'S INCONVENIENT TO WALK HERE" stuff), thus the whole "let's make the front door inviting so they'll walk in and we can spear 'em."

[GreatWyrmGold]

1. This isn't Gods of Large, we have more than a week.

2. One guy isn't going to do much regardless of a chokepoint. Even if we get enough to go all 300, we still need to deal with exhaustion and attrition, plus #3.

3. So wait. You need them to be both smarter and dumber than DF goblins for your logic to make sense? If they're considered a sentient race, they're smarter than animals, and animals are smart enough not to suicide like that.

4. Perhaps, but a major mungo invasion that soon is lethal no matter what we do.

4a. Isn't this just 2 again?

[Ashsaber]

4a. In a nutshell yeah, more terrain and less people influence though.

3. I was responding to the whole "If they see their friends dying they'll find a different place to attack" thing. What's your take on their smartness?
The OP introduces them as organizing around the unusually smart among them, so I figured if their smart leader guy gets offed the rest would either break and run or attack until destroyed (moral kill for "oh god the captain is dying" versus having nobody to call it off anymore).

2. Agree. One guy can't do much, without a choke he does even less.

1. Probably. I'm operating under the "Let's make a uniform wall really fast and upgrade it piecemeal" logic.

[GreatWyrmGold]

3. That they aren't brainless, for starters. Some basic tactical ability, at least to the extent of dynamically linking cause and effect like many animals can, is pretty much guaranteed. And if one of the smart mungoes is around...

1. It doesn't work like that. A wall can't be "upgraded" except by destroying and replacing it or by using the old wall as a base for the new. A crappy wall makes a crappy foundation, and a half-built good wall is about as good as a bad wall. Why not just start the good wall?

[Ashsaber]

I'm still unsure of if we're following DF logic on constructions or a Real World Logic with copious amounts of Awesome thrown in.

3. Then they what? Go into the filth pit? Bonus intellect? 
(In other words they know a threat when they see it and will tread carefully?)

1. Upgrade in the sense of:

Step 1: Ring the town-to-be with a wall of sharp stake tied together clumsily: because it's ramshackle and requires minimal digging it can be erected at a fast speed.
Step 2: Once the wall is up in its entirety (for the starting area anyways) either a new wall with more staying power is built or sections of the old one is ripped away. This is the original plan: I figured the whole "destroy or replace" deal was a given. In this case the new wall would be, say, a rock slab dug deep and reinforced well.
Step 3: Once the second wall is up in its entirety (and the first wall destroyed via attacks or dismantled) then it is reinforced further one section at a time. To be fair I'm not an architect, but I figured having a wall be un-maintainable would be a bad thing.

The benefit to this is the ramshackle wall can be put up a lot faster than a stone wall, so in the event a hit occurs when we don't see it there is some level of forewarning beyond a sentry, a section of wall, and the open plains.

Again this argument is only valid for Semi-real-world-logic. If we're going with DFLogic then yeah, stone walls all the way.

[GreatWyrmGold]

3. And if they don't recognize a threat at first, they will when several friends die in that one chokepoint.

1. I'm not sure how useful those spike-walls would be, but with proper proof they might be I'm onboard. Also worth noting, that's not what I thought you meant.

[Ashsaber]

1. I figured. Communication isn't what nerd-hermits are known for. 
The spiked wall is less "defense" and more "warning", just there so we're waking up to the sound of shattering wood instead of Mungo saliva dripping onto our head (do they salivate?).


3. Kekekeke~

[RAM]

I suppose you have points on all except why you said we wanted a gate as near to enemy attacks as possible.

The gate would be near the attack because our needs and an attacker's needs are the same. We don't want people to have to walk around the whole settlement every time they want to go to the river. I would expect our civilian needs to be more of a factor than an attacker's needs to our long-term survival, so advocate having having a pleasant village rather than an impenetrable fortress.
 We should fortify the cave and move most of our stockpile into it so that we have somewhere to fall back to... The cave should be much easier to fortify than the camp, at least agaist simple folk who won't bring siege-weapons...

1. This isn't Gods of Large, we have more than a week.

2. One guy isn't going to do much regardless of a chokepoint. Even if we get enough to go all 300, we still need to deal with exhaustion and attrition, plus #3.

3. So wait. You need them to be both smarter and dumber than DF goblins for your logic to make sense? If they're considered a sentient race, they're smarter than animals, and animals are smart enough not to suicide like that.

4. Perhaps, but a major mungo invasion that soon is lethal no matter what we do.

4a. Isn't this just 2 again?

This is a game, I would not expect a fight with anything immeasurably powerful unless we incite it ourselves... I would expect one well-trained soldier backed up by a few folk with long spears and enough training not to stab our own people to be able to withstand anything that we have to fight, provided that they only need to defend in one direction, hence the choke-point. Otherwise folk are going to be too busy protecting themselves to support the soldier... But a guaranteed choke-point is not really possible with our current resources, we will want a way to close the gate(s) and need a wall that our folk can fight from with an advantage. A simple ditch with a mound behind it should give our folk an advantage and be pretty easy to build. A line of spears would be similarly advantageous, but would pose more of a risk of young goblins getting impaled while being reckless and probably require more maintenance. Neither option works without someone standing behind it with something pointy, such as a spear or shotgun-ballista, a proper rock wall five metres thick with murder-holes, ramparts, and arrow-slits would likely take too long to assemble...

[Tomcost]

And this is what happens when you mix Bay12 with Starcraft and real life logic.

Having considered all this stuff, I say that we should make a ditch and mound with pointy stick would be enough for now.

Also, to face a Mungo attack, we have to consider the most important point in all this: the intelligent Mungo. This one will be the most important threat, but will probably act as a general, giving orders away from battle. What can we do in this situation? Get a badass archer/crossbowman/spear thrower to kill him and watch the disorganized crowd rush to their deaths/flee.

[Ashsaber]

Smart Mungo-
    I figure if they're smart we just trash the army he/she/it leads hard enough that he/she/it calls a general retreat until next month.
    Assassinations would be cool though.

Wall -
    I suggested the stick fence thing under the belief of "Attacking this wall would be unpleasant and time consuming" as opposed to "Attacking this wall is impossible". The early wall can't stand to determined attack, the later, massive epic stone wall can. The early wall is just meant to make the town look untasty to the Mungos, so the smart ones can look at the massive ring of spikes and go "We're not gonna come back here until later".

By then we'd have goblin Phalanxes so meh.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because you said it. 
A lot of our problems would be solved if we just had Widowmines.

[Tomcost]

We need to use the fear factor in this case. Maybe when we have enough mungo skulls we could put them in the wall.

[Spectr]

ptw
+1 to sending a scout party consisting of the guard and two of the unprofessionals to the temple of life, and to the trench with the dirt piled up behind it as a basic wall.

[Angle]

Notify is being difficult, so PTW.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I suppose you have points on all except why you said we wanted a gate as near to enemy attacks as possible.

The gate would be near the attack because our needs and an attacker's needs are the same. We don't want people to have to walk around the whole settlement every time they want to go to the river. I would expect our civilian needs to be more of a factor than an attacker's needs to our long-term survival, so advocate having having a pleasant village rather than an impenetrable fortress.

I was asking about the phrasing, not the logic.

1. This isn't Gods of Large, we have more than a week.

2. One guy isn't going to do much regardless of a chokepoint. Even if we get enough to go all 300, we still need to deal with exhaustion and attrition, plus #3.

3. So wait. You need them to be both smarter and dumber than DF goblins for your logic to make sense? If they're considered a sentient race, they're smarter than animals, and animals are smart enough not to suicide like that.

4. Perhaps, but a major mungo invasion that soon is lethal no matter what we do.

4a. Isn't this just 2 again?

This is a game, I would not expect a fight with anything immeasurably powerful unless we incite it ourselves... I would expect one well-trained soldier backed up by a few folk with long spears and enough training not to stab our own people to be able to withstand anything that we have to fight, provided that they only need to defend in one direction, hence the choke-point. Otherwise folk are going to be too busy protecting themselves to support the soldier... But a guaranteed choke-point is not really possible with our current resources, we will want a way to close the gate(s) and need a wall that our folk can fight from with an advantage. A simple ditch with a mound behind it should give our folk an advantage and be pretty easy to build. A line of spears would be similarly advantageous, but would pose more of a risk of young goblins getting impaled while being reckless and probably require more maintenance. Neither option works without someone standing behind it with something pointy, such as a spear or shotgun-ballista, a proper rock wall five metres thick with murder-holes, ramparts, and arrow-slits would likely take too long to assemble...

I don't know how much of an effect a chokepoint would have on such a small force, though. A bit, perhaps, but not a lot.

Fear is useful, but actual stopping force is important too.