Playing a fort to learn Gnomes, decided to try and using mechanical animals as defense.
I don't have iron on site, but sources of copper and tin are plentiful. Scrambled to get a couple of lesser copper animals (Bear and Gorilla) and then produced a bronze mechanical dragon at the start of the second year.
The three of them just fought the first goblin ambush (about 8-9 gobbos with rusty weaponry)....a little disappointing to be honest. The Dragon in particular really seemed to have trouble hitting them, the combat reports were just endless "but the goblin jumps away". The gorilla is totally trashed, the bear is leaking oil and missing a few parts, the dragon is battered. Eventually they got 3 kills, and the rest fled.
I can understand the copper animals being a bit useless, they were a stop-gap against thieves, but I expected the dragon to be a bit more killy. Perhaps because it doesn't have any skills?