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[joeclark77]

Lately I've been trying to figure out the best design for luring an entire siege into a "holding area", then allowing my military to slaughter them all.  I hate it when half the goblins escape!  I'm thinking it will include a series of chickens behind drawbridges.

[KingBacon]

I just realized that this whole thread has yet to mention Magma. What is wrong with us?

Right now I'm starting to design some magma bilge pumps to flood and drain my entrance...

[MrsStick]

My new design, once I finish this fort and start the next, features a windy 3-wide road lined with traps on all sides. Wagons can get through, everybody else sets off the traps. It takes forever to make though. I've also been working on a 3-z level archery platform over my outdoor pasture/farm area. Oh, and 8 cage traps lining my drawbridge so I can get fighting practice for my militia...

Initially, I stone/cage trap my hallway.

[Crashmaster]

I had what I thought was a near-'perfect' fort entrance;

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

From the map edge invaders faced;
F-the-world (shown)
Interior and exterior magma flush
Cave-in repeater
Bridges over 7z pit - magma fill optional
Collapsible floors over 7z pit - magma fill optional
Underground depot/ battle area
Double barracks

Everything inside was magma-floodable as far down as the barracks.

[Blastbeard]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh sweet Armok, is that red stuff... is that magma!? Over the entire surface? It's better than Boatmurdered. It's... it's... beautiful.

[tuypo1]

I try to go for a combination of security and visual grandeur when building my entrance. My favorite, best entrance was that of Stonehall III, one of my longer-lived and more successful fortresses built into the side of a tall, foreboding mountain whose name has been lost to time.

Basing the entrance partly off of the gates of Ironforge, I wanted something big and recognizable, something my ranged and artillery element could fire from with impunity and looked good doing it. The result was a 8x by 6x by 4z cubbyhole carved into the mountain, ringed with fortifications overlooking a reatracing drawbridge that covered the ramp down into the entrance hall proper.

The walls at ground-level were engraved by my finest(original) engravers, and immediately above that, an unbroken line of fortifications provided an unrestricted killzone against any foe foolish enough to venture so close. The z-level above that was ringed with more engravings, and the cieling level featured a small platform with golden statues and a door leading into the upper level of the fortress. The door was meant to allow any flying adventurer quick access should the fortress fall, and served as a dumping point for prisoners. Anyone that survived the fall was free to limp to freedom.

Later, when I managed to start a dragon breeding program, I set up a flame bunker in the passage underneath the retracting bridge for added defense. After that was an area I called the Hall of Battle, a large, weaponized, 2z high entrance hall littered with traps my melee fighters gathered in to meet anything that got past my defenses. Here dwarven warriors did battle amidst pillars of stone engraved with feats of heroism, terrible beasts, and fine cuisine, capped by carefully selected statues of great figures form dwarven history to watch over them as they did battle. above them at ceiling level was another ring of fortifications, from which a waiting crossbow unit stood by to support my fighters from.
This defenses of this grand entrance never failed, mostly because I was vigiliant about the retracting bridge. The one I didn't activate the bridge in time, the dragon bunker managed to incinerate the attacker, a giant, before any harm was done. As is often the case, the bane of Stonehall III came from below.

This is a rendition of that glorious entrance as I remember it. Sadly, I have lost this fortress to time and file cullings, and cannot provide a more detailed image with one of the various visualizer tools. I try to replicate the design as much as I can, but I rarely find the proper conditions for a perfect copy.

Spoiler:  even dwarfier than I remember it (click to show/hide)

bah filthy alliance although this makes me think it might be interesting to see the undercity made in dwarf fortress (minus the elevators of course (unless somebody knows how to make that work)) I certaintly don't have the skill to build this project and its being a long time since I played I should get back into wow then I can finally live my dream of living under the undercity bank

[Blastbeard]

bah filthy alliance although this makes me think it might be interesting to see the undercity made in dwarf fortress (minus the elevators of course (unless somebody knows how to make that work)) I certaintly don't have the skill to build this project and its being a long time since I played I should get back into wow then I can finally live my dream of living under the undercity bank

Undercity would be completely doable in DF, you rotting horde scum. If you can find an npc fortress close enough to a mountainside, you can use DFhack's embark to settle there and save yourself a little construction, using the existing fort as a base from which to hide in while you expand the surface area and dig out below. If you want to populate it with undead, you could enlist a vanilla necromancer or create a custom interaction that resurrects the dead rather than animates them. I did something similar to that with a vampire curse and it worked just fine, the vampire was raising its victims as more vampires and I hardly knew it, they were working like normal dwarves.
Just don't ask me to include blood elves. Hell naw.

[tuypo1]

bah filthy alliance although this makes me think it might be interesting to see the undercity made in dwarf fortress (minus the elevators of course (unless somebody knows how to make that work)) I certaintly don't have the skill to build this project and its being a long time since I played I should get back into wow then I can finally live my dream of living under the undercity bank

Undercity would be completely doable in DF, you rotting horde scum. If you can find an npc fortress close enough to a mountainside, you can use DFhack's embark to settle there and save yourself a little construction, using the existing fort as a base from which to hide in while you expand the surface area and dig out below. If you want to populate it with undead, you could enlist a vanilla necromancer or create a custom interaction that resurrects the dead rather than animates them. I did something similar to that with a vampire curse and it worked just fine, the vampire was raising its victims as more vampires and I hardly knew it, they were working like normal dwarves.
Just don't ask me to include blood elves. Hell naw.

oh I just had an idea any misbehaving nobels can get reassigned the old lorderon throne room for unfortunate accidents

[Blastbeard]

oh I just had an idea any misbehaving nobels can get reassigned the old lorderon throne room for unfortunate accidents

You mean the chamber leading to the elevators? The one that's totally exposed, completely unguarded and would quickly be overwhelmed from too many angles to defend against during a DF siege? I believe that's the perfect place for the Royal Killing Room Reception Room

brb, building my own Blackrock Mountain and reenacting the history of the Dark Iron Dwarves, substituting Ragnaros with copious amounts of magma and all the HFS.

[tuypo1]

oh I just had an idea any misbehaving nobels can get reassigned the old lorderon throne room for unfortunate accidents

You mean the chamber leading to the elevators? The one that's totally exposed, completely unguarded and would quickly be overwhelmed from too many angles to defend against during a DF siege? I believe that's the perfect place for the Royal Killing Room Reception Room

brb, building my own Blackrock Mountain and reenacting the history of the Dark Iron Dwarves, substituting Ragnaros with copious amounts of magma and all the HFS.

exactly what better unfortunate accident is there then being caught in a siege

[Innocent Dave]

I just realized that this whole thread has yet to mention Magma. What is wrong with us?

I had a lovely magma hallway once, thanks to embarking on a volcano.  The only problem was getting it clear of magma again in time for the next caravan to get through.  I was considering changing things up a bit so I could have multiple such corridors leading to my depot, when a goblin ambush managed to sneak far enough in that I couldn't seal the airlocks in time.

I've also had great success with a water reservoir that swept attackers into a pit to starve, which cleared almost instantly when turned off and didn't require a volcano.  It had the same issue though - not being able to see attackers far enough away to activate the mechanisms reliably.

Next time I try this, I'm considering having the corridor loop around my main barracks, separated by a wall of windows and a single-tile drop to the pit o' doom.  The opposite side of the corridor will be made of bridges, with the reservoir behind them.

[Repseki]

For entrances I usually have a walled in open area where a few squads are always actively training, with fortifications overlooking it for a few archers as backup. The outside will either have doors or some sort of blind to keep my military from sprinting outside one at a time whenever they see a squirrel, and a bridge gate that is only really used if I want to clean up all the garbage between groupings of whatever has decided to attack.

Then I build the Depot inside a separate air-lock connected to tunnels that split off to various edges of the map.

I have built 30-40z drop dodge pits that were pretty funny at first, but got a tad boring after a few years. I even set one up to be flooded from a pressurized chamber that filled it in only a few frames, then brought my FPS painfully low as it drained and reset. But watching entire armies drown at once definitely made me chuckle.

[smurfingtonthethird]

Steel doors, gates and trading depots, and magma. Lots of magma.

[Rakonas]

Dig out one tile channel, create an open space underground, move everyone there, place a wall over the up ramp. No one ever enters, and no one ever leaves.

[Agent_Irons]

Recently I've taken to embarking on volcanoes, and hollowing out the tips of mountains to fill with workshops and things. A winding path switchbacks down the mountain, littered with chained-up poults and the occasional war dog.

Fortifications overlook the switchbacks, and there's a bridge to seal the tip of hte mountain off. There's a floodgate to simply 'rinse' the mountain of any invaders I deem insufficiently delicious.]

(I've been playing the cthulhu mythos mod a lot recently, which removes nearly all armor. The military is a bit trickier then.)