Oof, four dwarves died of old age, I think that's the most I've had, one of the military dwarves even.
You are playing the game wrong.
Then teach me :p
dig deeper. Faster. With fewer supplies or dwarven tricks. Though personally I think you're playing the game absolutely right. LONG games are great.
Onto my fort, we cleaned up one undead siege (large thanks to the goblins), cleaned up the outside pretty quickly, and then immediately experienced a second necromancer siege. Better prepared for cleaning up that siege (cage traps, a puppy decoy, and two raiseaable bridges allowed me to clean up the entire siege over the course of 2 seasons), it was no problem. The necromancers left on their own as well, so I didn't have to capture them.
Now we are experienced an actual siege. I'm not sure really if the necromancers died on the waterfall, as they're not in the civ screen anymore. Anyways now it's a siege of goblins, and they are lead by one who flies a bat. I was a bit worried at first, so primed my decoy for captures. But... they didn't move. So I opened the second part of my fort. They're still not moving. They can path accross the bridge just fine, but they decided not to.
Then 1 of my 2-person military decides he wants to pick something up outside. I wasn't aware of anything to pick up, but I can't call him back. So I follow him. He proceeds to path around, up the hill, over the bridge, and straight to the siege. I was seriously thinking "wtf are you doing! there's nothing there!". His thoughts were somewhere along th lines of "Damn it, I was attacked recently, and I'm tired, thirsty, and was accousted by undead. This day sucks". He then wandered back into the fort and took a nap. I still have no idea what item he was trying to pick up.