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[someone12345]

How many cage traps and soldiers do you need for a 20 dwarf fort? Is 150 traps enough?

[ancistrus]

Simple answer, none

[someone12345]

I frequently get sieges of 40+ gobs. Traps are necessary.

[Witty]

Traps? Pah! Only an elf would hide behind a trap, OP thing that it is

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Seriously though, none is the right answer. One drawbridge can stop anything ingame. 5 axelords in iron can destroy anything short of the circus. But a trap corridor of 150 cages is fine. Most defense in DF is a self imposed challenge, so take that what you will.

[Urist McRas]

Nope. You can lock youself with some kind of gates, you can have small but well-trained military, you can use war animals or you can weaponize a lot of stuff.

If you do want to use traps, then their quantity depends on your design. You can manage to kill huge sieges with only one trap.

[Azerax]

When I start a new fortress, I have a long hall, with about 20 cage traps, and a draw bridge near the end of the hall just in case I need to seal off the passage.  I use these cage traps to get my early metal weapons and armor.  After about 5 sieges, I remove the traps.

[ShadowHammer]

Simple answer, none

+1

[BoredVirulence]

If you really want to make an easy military, conscript a few marksdwarves, give them a vantage point above your sealed main entrance, and watch crap die. Even wooden bolts are deadly. You can temporarily forgo the fortifications until they are trained up some (won't need them immediately anyway) or design around it (only 1 tile to stand on). Honestly, if there are no goblin bowmen, then 2 marksdwarves and 1 melee dwarf can destroy most early sieges. The marksdwarves will maim everyone, the melee dwarf will finish them off if released after all goblins are incapacitated.

But none of that matters right now anyway, with only 20 dwarves you aren't in any danger yet. You should consider trying to train a militia, but they aren't necessary now anyway.

[Larix]

At twenty dwarfs, you can get ambushes, and ambushes can range up to five squads i think - about 30 armed goblins. And those thirty goblins will all start out in sneak mode: each squad must be spotted separately before you even know of their location, and without cage traps, practically every spotted ambush means one dead animal or dwarf at the least. Ambushes can contain weaponmasters, if you're unlucky.

Especially for small forts, ambushes can be much more trouble than sieges when playing without traps.

[Garath]

currently I have a long U shaped hallway containing about 40 traps with only 2 weapons a-piece, a serrated disc and a spiked ball and about 10 cage traps mixed through in a 2 tile wide corridor. The funny thing is that I've only used it in the first three years and after that my military has been enough. I've got a more above ground design now and each entrance has 12 weapon traps for one gate (2 weapons a-piece again) that is 4 tiles long, 3 wide and none at another gate so I can decide wether I want them to fight fresh or slightly scratched. Last siege was about 80 enemies, vs 7 marksdwarfs and 8 weaponlords, so they were getting the painful entrance

[someone12345]

I do have two weaponlords, one non weaponlord who is still training, and four legendary miners who can be drafted in a pinch. There is really no one else that I can spare for the military, no cheesemakers or anything. Also, I have a lot of wealth from the 8 artifacts in the fort. I just want to know how many traps are needed to support them.

[ShadowHammer]

I think that 150 is enough to stop virtually everything you'll face vanilla, because even if there are 200 goblins, and all of them are mounted, that's only 400 enemies, and 150 is 38%. The goblins will flee at about half casualties, so that leaves 50 enemies left for your lords to kill before the enemies break and run. Fifty enemies versus 3 weaponlords in a narrow hallway isn't great odds, but definitely doable. Keep in mind, that's the greatest conceivable number of enemies, so any siege will almost certainly have far less than that.

[Garath]

Some things to think off with weapon traps:
they can jam when they kill something. Not stuffing them with 10 traps lets you cover more ground while still being plenty deadly. Goblins that bleed to death won't jam a trap, menacing spikes could be a good friend to you. The most horrific efficient 'trap' I used once was a long field of menacing spikes, not in weapon traps but upright spikes, all linked to a lever. I just had to get the dwarfs far enough inside with a civilian alert and set the lever to be pulled on repeat. Spikes don't jam and nothing that attacks you has metal boots or greaves, at least in vanilla. Glass, copper or iron spikes, everything kills. I usually waited untill sufficient numbers got in before I got things going, because too many enemies ran away and escaped. Every four rows of spikes had a row of cage traps for life training purposes. If a squad hung around a cage where a squad leader was captured, the spikes soon finished them or scared them off.

An artifact cabinet was at the end of a short, spike trapped corridor. It attracted building destroyers and because they couldn't destroy it they just stood there forever and ever, or untill the lever got pulled a few times at least.

It was one of the most boring forts I ever had.

[ShadowHammer]

It was one of the most boring forts I ever had.

Yep. Using ALL the traps tends to make forts rather boring, I generally only use them for catching large dangerous animals so my weaponlords can have large dangerous pets.

[someone12345]

I think that 150 is enough to stop virtually everything you'll face vanilla, because even if there are 200 goblins, and all of them are mounted, that's only 400 enemies, and 150 is 38%. The goblins will flee at about half casualties, so that leaves 50 enemies left for your lords to kill before the enemies break and run. Fifty enemies versus 3 weaponlords in a narrow hallway isn't great odds, but definitely doable. Keep in mind, that's the greatest conceivable number of enemies, so any siege will almost certainly have far less than that.

One of the soldiers is not a lord, and I am using fortress defense and masterwork, so there are 15 hostile civs, not just one. What I am really worried about is two simultaneous attacks.