I have a single block of stone-fall traps that's 120x8. Experience tells me that's enough to break most sieges; the point of replacing them with weapon traps is to break the sieges faster.
Never actually used stone-fall traps myself, at least not intentionally. Always stuck with cage traps. I guess that's also why I I felt like I need so many "layers" of traps. But hm, would love to have another 300+ siege again and see how the traps do against that many enemies.
Strange. The only reason I've missed a caravan is because of a siege. Are you sure your civilization is still kicking?
Not sure how to really check, I retired the fortress (in a copied save) and checked, but couldn't find anything really saying "the civ is dead!!!", no big attacks, nothing. Just the few sieges on my fortress. Only thing I think happened was that one of the caravan wagons got scuttled, which would explain the pile of stuff outside, which my dwarves won't put in the stockpiles. Overall the civ is a bit weird though, I mean, it is called "The Roughness of Murdering" - which doesn't really sound dwarfish. But its nobles (etc.) seem to just be dwarves. Didn't check on them specifically though. Going by legends the civ isn't very wide spread, but doesn't look dead either. The map overview was from 8 years ago though.
At one point back at the start of the fortress, it once said "No Outpost Liaison? How curious..." but the next time there was one again. The fortress also didn't attract migrants one year, even though it was doing quite well.
Just strange. Maybe it has to do with the location it resides in, being on a vulcano and all. I mean, there aren't any humans near either.
Another thing is that my dwarves lack the knowledge to produce High Boots ... but that seems to sadly be quite a regular thing, especially in the "short history" worlds I play (year 78 now).
Maybe I was just unlucky a few years in a row, it hasn't been THAAAAT long...mh...
I had plenty of weapon traps that were all large serrated discs back at Wiredchambers, and IIRC not a single goblin made it through one alive regardless of what the discs were made of. I mean, there were a few that made it through without suffering an insta-kill, but they were missing several body parts and often had a major artery in the heart torn open so they were as good as dead. Large serrated discs (and perhaps spiked balls too) seem to embody the concept of "quantity has a quality all its own".
Yeah, masses of traps are always amazingly effective. I really wonder what would happen to a fully armored enemy though. Hm...probably would still bleed to death unless he's wrapped in candy.
I've got 9600 to make if I'm going to replace the entire trapline. Thankfully, I embarked on a volcano so the sand won't be far from the magma glass furnaces.
Well, I thought it wasn't that far to the sand either. Buuut...it's pretty much on the other side of the vulcano, since it is in a different biome. My 3x3 embark has 3 biomes, one to the north-west, one to the north-east and the slightly bigger part is to the south. Only the one in the north-west has sand, at first I thought there was no sand at all, but I got lucky. Even got an aquifer there. Anyway, the dwarves have to run across about one embark tile to get to the sand...for over 1000 green glass items (I build more than just the trap components) it took forever; I wouldn't even want to imagine building almost 10'000 of them. Then again, I highly doubt I'd ever need that many.
At first I considered making the invader entrance 5 wide, but upon seeing how many trap components that would need, I decided it would just take waaaay too long.
I can never decide on what trap components to actually use, that's why I varied it. Feels quite like all have their advantages and disadvantages. Only the menacing spike and the corkscrew are very similar.
If I had to chose one and just one, I'd probably go with the large serrated discs, more attacks equal more chances for bleeding, I'd assume.
Oh, and by the way, the next human just became a noble! I now got a
lord around!
I wonder if he will survive longer than the dear lady that died just weeks after assuming that post.
Hopefully he is a sign that another siege will come!