Portalrasped might be on its long slow way out. a militarty initially of 40 was increased to 60 after the first cavern decided to be less empty and throw dozens of elk birds at me - they were turned to ammo easily enough. then 3 FBs rock up, 2 were pretty weak, but the fire breathing lobster killed a few civs, and the snail with a hunger for blood got a few animals. the cave crocodile that followed these ate 2 miners. warned by this i increased my military to 80. this fell back to 30 after a series of gobbo sieges and ambushes, where thier bowgobbos proved annoyingly effectve. on the plus side, my war gorilla broke a lot of heads. my hospital was a thing of beauty, cleaning and suturing and dressing, and returning troops to action... granted some had less hands than before, but at least they can hold a weapon again, and it saves on gauntlets. however, this wasnt the beggining of the end...
what is bringing the fort to its knees was a few dozen troglodytes. seeing this as an opportunity to train my squad of recruits (led by a skilled speardwarf equiped with a flail that killed 2 of the FB's), off they go. and fail. despite bronze equipment as a min and some steel items, they suffer 6 casualties (for varied reasons - one of the trogs ended up named (am now waiting for engravings of moldath beating the head of urist mccrapsoldier in with a steel high boot or some such), so i suspect he got a lucky hit on one then used one of the metal items he had on him when he was killed as an impromptu weapon) , causing much vexation amongst my civs as i chose perennial idlers who had lots of chums, and my militia commander loses all 13 of his war dogs. he goes absolutley mad and starts killing any dogs he can find - i have around 80 war dogs. well, i used to. now i have about 20. his actions cause many other dwarves to tantrum and go bezerk. i now have about half my depleted military in jail for assualt offences. might have to restrict all my civs to the jail and use it as a last stand if the gobbos show up.
my own fault for starting on a flatland really - hard to defend wide open spaces with traps, and the constant gobbo mbushes have made making a signifigant above ground fort costly...
next time i think somewhere with natural chokepoints might be a good idea.
TLDR: fort of 120 reduced to 80 by military shenangigans.