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[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

 Greetings fellow players, I started a new fortress a couple weeks ago and at the begging of it's third year, i have yet to receive a non dwarven caravan or be visited by a snatcher and the civ menu only displays a dwarven and a kobold civ, so i'm no too worried about sieges but as my name suggests, I'm not an especially good player so i'd rather be cautious. also my army is tragically under developed due to the scarcity of minerals in the map and the drafting of most dwarves into farming. Welcome to soviet Eldershatchet! Anyways,here's the problem: the lands are unfarmable so i had to dig around ponds to water the ground. To adequately feed the fortress, i had to use maximum sized farms placed all around the ponds and draft about a third of the adult population into farming, Only this left exposed areas in the hillside that i blocked with walls, but that still have exposed roofs. Can someone please help me with this? (along with how to give marxdwarves (see what i did there) quivers (cant see to find any options in the military menu or info on the wiki)).

[Thisfox]

You could uild a [C]onstructed [f]loor over the exposed roofs.

Or you could make a child nursery nice and deep, and lock the kids in with food, clothes, puppies and statues and a well.

[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

 Thanks a lot!

[Pirate Santa]

Or you could just let the children roam free and natural selection will take care of them.

[PatrikLundell]

Or you could use dwarven farming, i.e. underground farms. If you don't have soil underground you'd have to muddy floors to do it, which is a slow, tedious, and non intuitive process, but it is safer.
Having most of the population farming seems strange, as you normally don't need many farmers, nor huge farms?

[GiglameshDespair]

Move down to the caverns. They have their own dangers, but you'll find water and irrigation-able soil aplenty down there.

[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

Or you could just let the children roam free and natural selection will take care of them.

The pure essence of dwarf fortress!

[Headless]

Or you could make a child nursery nice and deep, and lock the kids in with food, clothes, puppies and statues and a well.

Lol!

[lwCoyote]

Max size farms also tend to be inefficient; I usually like to use 5x5 plots.

[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

 Why are max sized farms inefficient?

[pisskop]

Move down to the caverns. They have their own dangers, but you'll find water and irrigation-able soil aplenty down there.

Im going to add a baby-snatcher civ down there now.  Ill be looking at good candidates.

Magma-men
Ant-men
o,o Giant creepy crawlers
elk-birds sound random enough
 . . .

[AlexanderTheIncompetant]

 You scared me I thought you said elf birds. That would be a most malevolent creature!

[Magnumcannon]

They probably won't do anything on your fort other than being beer-sinks. Let them die!

[i2amroy]

AFAIK you could also just put a 1-tile ceiling overhang on the outside edge of all of your border walls and that should stop them from climbing over as well (though I haven't played for a few of the more recent versions, so it might have changed while I wasn't looking).

[Aslandus]

Why are max sized farms inefficient?

Dwarves often won't fill the farms, typically because they hit a tile that can't be farmed (on a non-muddy stone tile or something)

Are you in a mountain biome? Those are the only ones I'm aware of that don't have soil avaliable... Also if it's just a few ponds you broke through, you should be able to just wall off the passage and leave them to fill from the rain.

As for defending the fortress from ambushers (including but not limited to actual ambushes, snatchers, thieves, and werebeasts), a war dog pastured or chained by the entrance should spot any sneaky stabby guys trying to steal away your beardlings/treasure. Just make sure you have an actual way to deal with them, war dogs aren't very strong and the only ones that flee when spotted are kobold thieves...