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[Urist Da Vinci]

I'm a big fan of cave-in dust from various types of repeaters as nothing is immune to it. Knocks enemies off catwalks or against walls/ in the air. Animal watchtowers for intel.

Wait -- you can have repeating cave-in-dust traps? Instead of the ones that either have to be rebuilt (floors held up by a support) or have to be designated each time you want them fired (build a wall "supported" by only a bridge)? If so, I am unaware of how to do that and would love to know.

It is probably a contraption that mixes water and magma in midair.

[tussock]

I quite enjoy the great outdoors, easy logging, plant gathering, fishing while it lasts, hunting. Military, eventually, but a drawbridge works well enough (even with the lever right next to it), and all that outdoor activity is good for physical training anyway.

Kobold thieves and keas don't get far when all your workshops are right next to the trade depot, which is butted up against the drawbridge. Barely room for more than five or six traps, though each pack of dead dorfs justifies another one, so sometimes there's more.

If there's cages, because all the proper military are dead again, things just get pitted back outside in a nice gentle drop that leaves them a bit slower. To train some more archers with. Nerfed bows make for easy training.

Plenty of connected back doors for the outdoors types, well away from the edge with well-stocked pastures around them, just construct a wall behind them when building-destroyers turn up. Single-block stockpile at the ready. When that doesn't work, sometimes it won't, there's always a backup. Or sometimes there's not, but immigration is plentiful with all those magnificent bedrooms. Just hope one of them brings a pick before the folk who walled themselves into the food stockpile at the bottom of a flooded fortress finally starve (only 200 years of supplies left!).

If something really nasty sits outside and won't leave, starts eating all my precious caravans, then it's time to put all those hunters into the military, carve out some elevated fortifications, and clean house (nerfed bows and all, armoured goblins run off with a half dozen arrows in them). Unless there's more interesting methods like rivers up high or a magma pipe or an uninvited guest in the caverns that can have a new exit to the surface dug for it.

Eventually I trench and wall off sections of the top at building time (aka winter), to let the farm animals live a bit longer in sieges. Try to have multiple entries open for the caravans to give them a better chance of getting in, connect up everything that got built into place earlier. Take the cage traps back out, and start building something grand for the King. Maybe a nice multi-walled fortress complex, carved from the gem-filled rock mountain.

Another siege? Archers to the battlements! Get the military onto anything which gets through.

[Urist McShire]

I prefer using a large active military with war beasts (particularly grizzlies and/or lions/tigers) to keep the nasties out, and beyond that I prefer to use a heavily-laden trap corridor. I seal up the main entrance and open up the side entrance with all of the traps and then watch the slaughter commence.

That's in the case that I've dug into the side of the mountain or hill that I've embarked on. If I dig down from the top, then I go with encircling walls and archer towers surrounding my trade depot, while heavily trapping the subterranean entrance.

Ah...I remember my most recent, successful trap field. I had a ballista set up to repeatedly fire at invaders that entered through the opened drawbridge, who had to pass through a 4x3 field of cage traps first, where they then had to get through an 8x3 field of weapon traps while dodging the bolts, only to turn to the north and struggle through another 5x3 field of cages before reaching the 10x3 menacing iron spikes set to be pulled repeatedly by my entombed vampire.

Currently, though, a trap-filled two-space wide corridor that leads towards an arena where my melee dwarves await, with archers on ramparts two z-levels above the arena and the corridor, able to rain death on them as they try dodging traps and my melee dwarves, with a pen filled with war animals near the arena's exit.

[Nr12]

My last few designs have all been aboveground castles (5 z wide hollow walls, 3z forwalking). Usually the inside of the castle is divided up into sections: First we have an empty courtyard (Or as I'd like to call it - A slaughterfield), which is followed by a beautifully paved square with the trade depot in the middle. Lastly there's the section where I have my entrance to the belowground fortress, which includes space for any aboveground activity I  had planned ahead for.

Either as a last resort or because I just like the though of it: My belowgrounds fortress always begin with a centralhub walkway, featuring chasms of death on all sides. I dare the gobbos to enter!

Also - I keep the cage traps to a minimum: 3-6. It's fun to torture some prisoners, but I also want to deal with sieges the fun way.

[Corthalas]

I've built an aboveground 1 story entrance building with fortifications from ~1000 obsidian blocks. It leads into the huge mountain that fills half the map (tried to use the top for grazers... grass didn't regrow -.-).
I'm still training my siege operators so they can soon guard a 1-wide pathway from top of the building to a nearby hill.
In the meantime, I have more caged zombies than I know what to do with. Zombie goblins, trolls, ogres, leopards & other undead wildlife, cave dragons raised in resurrecting western desert, all waiting in a single cage in the middle of the map.
When the goblins are near enough, they are faced with the remains of their former friends and relatives. (I must try this in the new version.)
Usually they are enough to deal with a siege, since I captured the goblin war general so there's no more flying mounts. Otherwise I also have a cages full of 50 war dogs and 50 giant wolverines outside the entrance.
Then there are enough steel-equipped dwarves to deal with the rest and re-kill the zombies.

[nanomage]

I'm a bit surpresed that noone seems to be using minecart shotguns. They are highly reliable and devastating and have found myself using them quite often

[Skuggen]

I usually have a main entrance with a drawbridge and a narrow back entrance full of traps. I like putting the trap corridor on the side of a cliff, so invaders dodging the traps take a dive, preferably into lava. As I become more confident in my small militia I'll slowly start sending them out earlier rather than just use them to mop up the few enemies that make it through the traps.

[Mr Space Cat]

I'm a bit surpresed that noone seems to be using minecart shotguns. They are highly reliable and devastating and have found myself using them quite often

Minecart shotguns are awesome, but to use one, you first have to build one. To build one, you first have to work out how to use minecarts. It's a more complex process than weaponizing drawbridges or throwing steelclad axe-dwarves at everything, so it makes sense that less people would mention using them.

Personally I want to build one sometime, but I need to learn how to first. That's demotivating.

[puke]

I abuse entry halls for sieges, and use military for the caverns.  I do try to airlock the caverns a bit and do some trapping down there, but I basically dont use military against sieges at all, except for cleanup.

in the old days, my entry hall would be a combo water / magma flooder.  Could drown, cook, or encase.  I usually went with drowning since it was faster and let me get the goblinite.

These days, I do the split entrance thing.  The caravans take a long straight ramp from the edge of the map down to the base of the volcano.  When a siege comes, bridges cover the top of the ramp and gobbos cross the long bridge.  And then rain down many z-levels.

I intend to also carve out some mine cart tracks on the ramp.  Have not fully worked out the impulse ramp system needed to reload it, yet.

[roughedge]

Obsidian Camp (A simple square with a door)
20x20 obsidian walls with fortifications
1 bronze door
15 cage traps in front of door 3 rows of 5 (not just a single line)
3 traps(2 bronze spike each) united by obsidian walls in front of cages

t- weapon trap
w- wall
c-cage trap
d- bronze door

wwwtwww
wcccccw
wcccccw
tccccct
wwwdwww

Troops:
4 full steel hero, 1 spear, 1 sword, 1 axe, 1 hammer
5 iron hammerer recruit in full armor kit
10 infantry recruits, bronze spear only, stationed on the walls as lookouts

This fort is dedicated to the protection of the surrounding tropical forest. Woodcutting is permissible only along the edge of the map and the 2 cross shaped roads so it makes 4 quadrants of woodlands. Still waiting for the first invaders!

[Dunamisdeos]

I have a 20-long one tile wide bridge that spans a 12 deep chasm. Marksdwarves are on either side with blinds so that nothing can outrange them. At the end of the bridge, there is a ballista battery for emergencies.

Nothing really makes it past that.

[thefish1992]

a mix of military with choke points, and trap hallways. generally 4 squads of 4, 1 axe squad, 1 hammer squad, 1 sword squad ,and  1 spear squad. 1 squad of 6 crossbows, not sure why i keep this squad at 6, maybe because it less heavy then ten on bolts or something. sometimes with one extra squad of 4 mixed infantry that acts as the guard(one time they were lashers). i then set their barracks at the end of a choke or trap hallway that i also make as the only entrance to the fortress. (trade depot being in a airlock that leads to the barracks). Keeps me pretty safe. the biggest weakness to this i see is me, but that is also the biggest weakness to all my forts so i don't plan for that.

[Di]

I'm a bit surpresed that noone seems to be using minecart shotguns. They are highly reliable and devastating and have found myself using them quite often

Shotguns are obsolete. They can be fired only a fixed amount of times before needing to be reloaded. This enforces carefully aimed and well-timed shots. Which require either direct attention of overseer or luring targets into specially designed enclosed areas which can hardly be used as effective main entrance. Not to mention they double the clutter to clean up.

The future belongs to waterguns. You can place those wherever you want and not to worry that it will waste all its ammo of just a couple of goblins. Thus you can even guard normal entrance to the fort with them without having to complicate it in a roleplay-breaking way.

[Blastbeard]

I never start with a militia. I always start with an angry mob.
Before the third year, I usually have more weapons than people and nobody with sufficient armor skills to move quickly. When threats arise at that point, I have to militarize everyone and send them off to fight with no armor and a random weapon. It's actually not as suicidal as it sounds, even without armor it's rare to see deaths or even injuries. This works because they have numbers going for them, when one fighter stuns or knocks down an enemy there's anywhere from nine to twenty allies right there to follow up. It's the same principle that makes large peasant swarms a threat to adventurers. It's good for the participants because they get combat experience and a happy thought for killing things. Participants who do well typically end up in the actual military when I get to setting it up.
I'm not stupid enough to try this with something like a dragon or respectable siege force, but the angry mob strategy is good against anything quantity can provide an advantage against. It's repelled zombie attacks, large animals, and even a giant once. It's going to get a few people killed, yes, but this way the replacement is already there and fighting. In the end, I Have Reserves.

[joeclark77]

In my current fortress, I found stone-fall traps to be quite devastating.  Normally i do the "two entrances" thing, with a safe entry for caravans and a short route for the goblins.  In my next fort, I'm going to change it up a bit so that there will be one twisty, safe entrance only... safe for goblins as well as for caravans.  Goblins will attack through my central courtyard where I can do various things to them.  Then when they get ready to leave, I'll pull a lever that opens up a short "exit" way full of traps.  That is, I want to trap them on the exit instead of on the approach.

I get so tired of goblins failing to approach my killing zone because their leader gets caged on the approach!