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[smeeprocket]

Okay so my fort has now survived two forgotten beasts, a minotaur and a weremoose with inevitable infections all in the same year. Now the elves have warned me that if I chop down more trees, they will go to war with me.

So I'm not quite ready for that, most of my dwarves are in the hospital atm. How long do I have to wait before I can safely chop down more trees?

[Skuggen]

You don't, if you design your defenses so they can't use their archers effectively

[Astrid]

Make a 1 tile wide long hallway with corners sealable by bridges so that you can use it as only entrance at will, then chop down ALL EXISTING TREES ( ) make wooden trapweapons out of them and line the hallway to the brim with them.

Then wait on the unarmored elves to attack you. They're not worth being fought man against man like the goblins. Let them suicide against the wooden traps.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, it depends where you're at. My experience is that the first time the tree hugger just shows up, says it doesn't like your face (and tree chopping), and just leaves, in a rather abrupt (and confusing) fashion. The next time the bugger shows up, it'll demand you curb tree cutting. If you accept then, you have a deal (negotiated somewhat). If you refuse, I assume the'll come back armed and unreasonable (I've made deals with them so far), or possibly you can negotiate further: I haven't  explored that branch. They're just taller goblins, though, but with crap wooden spoils...
If you made a deal, it says the allotment is until it comes back, which should be in a year (spring next year). I chop down most of the quota immediately, and then leave a dozen or so trees for when I need to get rid of a tree that's in the way, finishing off the quota as spring arrives. So far I haven't exceeded the quota, so I don't know what happens then.

I start out chopping down anything at sight to build up a buffer before the tree huggers start making demands. Running any kind of metal industry with the tree hugger tree allotment is going to require a very careful handling of where you use your wood (if you don't have access to coal in some form). Magma will allow you to handle that, but it takes some time to get there in a controlled manner unless you're in an area with easy magma access.

However, Skuggen's advice is sound: build defenses. Also, a construction where you can retreat into your fortress and combine waiting the enemy out and building new killing devices for them is a good thing (My first attacker was a fire breathing titan. While I hid from that one, working to kill it, a forgotten beast entered the cavern. I sealed myself off from that direction as well, and eventually the forgotten beast got killed from fighting all the other wildlife entering the cavern, but the titan I had to deal with myself). If you've got goblin neighbors you don't have to kill tree huggers to get some action...

Well, Astrid's bloodthirstiness is to be admired, and a long sealable corridor with suitable traps is the normal starting point. Personally I'm fond of lever cranked menacing spike traps used on the trapped enemies.

[Quietust]

Unless Toady fixed the formula for tree cutting quotas (or made it so it counts logs), the usual limit is at least 100 trees, which is going to be way more wood than you're likely to use in a year - in the past, 100 trees meant 100 logs, but now they give quite a lot more.

[smeeprocket]

out of curiousity, do the underground trees count?

[Quietust]

out of curiousity, do the underground trees count?

Yes.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, I've build a wooden courtyard with over 5000 logs (before the elves came aknockin'), and it seems I need at least 3 wooden furnces to keep two smelters trying to convert iron to steel going, plus one or two smiths (before using magma). I haven't examined exact consumption, but I've seen my stocks dwindle as time went by.
Another constant wood sink is wooden arrows for training.

[Badger Storm]

I haven't managed to piss off the elves yet, but perhaps you could make some of the wood into blocks?  One log makes 4 blocks IIRC, and that will help stretch out your wood (or stone) supply.  I don't think that will help with fuel or bed needs, though.  Alternatively, ask for logs from the liaison, and they'll bring a ton of them.  The elves may also bring logs, but it sounds like you're not exactly on their good side.

[smeeprocket]

oh the elves still trade with me. I just bought some weird animals from them. They came back back and settled on 120 trees which is so much more than I need.

In that time I've seen two more were attacks, koala and giraffe, and a swamp titan.

Most of my people are dead, the other half are in a depression spiral. I do have quite a bit of wood to spare atm, though.

[Larix]

I haven't managed to piss off the elves yet, but perhaps you could make some of the wood into blocks?  One log makes 4 blocks IIRC,

Nope, that's only for stone. Wood gives one block per log.

[taptap]

Well, I've build a wooden courtyard with over 5000 logs (before the elves came aknockin'), and it seems I need at least 3 wooden furnces to keep two smelters trying to convert iron to steel going, plus one or two smiths (before using magma). I haven't examined exact consumption, but I've seen my stocks dwindle as time went by.
Another constant wood sink is wooden arrows for training.

I run into the problem with training arrows as well. Given I have only one usable cavern on a 2x2 embark... I need approximately 750 arrows = 30 logs to train to talented, 3000 = 120 to legendary. Or 150 and 600 bones respectively. So the obvious question is, can archery training be more resource efficient? Any good results with demonstrations by master archers?

[utunnels]

I think it is quite unlikely. I killed the elven diplomat and their caravans. But they didn't attack.

I wonder if they still warn you even if you don't touch any trees. My last map was a desert and I still got a warning from them. Funny enough, I imported most logs and wood products form them.

[Aslandus]

Most of my people are dead, the other half are in a depression spiral. I do have quite a bit of wood to spare atm, though.

I feel compelled to sig this, but alas my signature is too long

[PatrikLundell]

@taptap:

You can try to stretch the arrow resources marginally by having your archery targets wide apart, surrounded by trenches that run behind the targets as well as up to the archers. That way most arrows that miss the target would fall into the trenches and be recoverable. The targets should be fairly far away to increase the miss chance. However, I think these arrows are doomed to forever remain single, never to be stacked again.