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[Kogan Onulsodel]

Well, when speaking of realism, the reason why attacks were usually done at gate, by catapults flinging over walls or maybe by climbing towers is that even a fat oaken gate is a defensive weakspot compared to the several meters thick walls that can still be walked on to this day - and each df tile is like a dozen cubic meters.

Wasn't sure how thick a tile is, and if we're thinking it's several meters on a side... then there's no hope of beating through that (well, it would take a very long time, you'd be chipping away at it for ages... you could imagine knocking out a loose-ish rock once a week or so)... but really, even a wholly underground fort shouldn't be totally safe (e.g., battering rams and sappers). But more than that, it's been a while since a siege is actually FUN, where I don't have a safe way of beating it, except artificially imposed challenges.

I suppose I can have a challenge when I'M going to invade. But I want a real challenge from a siege.

[Fleeting Frames]

...If you're not going to make it harder by handicapping yourself or purposefully seeking/creating stronger enemies....Then your siegers will probably stay the same. What other variables are there other than you and your enemies in such conditions?

Also I note again that you aren't totally safe underground - caravan ghosts can still kill you, be unmemorizable, and on evil biomes those dead may rise. That said, once fort is defended from the inside it becomes a challenge of matchmaking well enough to outdo the death rate, which is not what I imagine you had in mind, given all your ideas were about subverting buildings/constructions rather than military, births or production.

...Instead of spending years to create a castle and then seeing if it stands up to clown car - after which point not much more challenge comes, how about trying something with immediate challenge such as reclaiming Failcannon or monster island embark with perhaps reanimating biome.

That is something I have attempted a couple of times, but the monsters left behind have always overwhelmed my forces. Nevertheless, I shall consider that challange for the future. But as for now:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New record high! Actually closer to 3625, but some of the monsers just couldn't stand to wait for the map to finish loading before they dug their claws into their fellow fiends!

Both come with pre-built castles, even :p

[Halnoth]

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Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Grimlocke]

This is how I built my new and fledgling fortress' outside bits:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The strip of land between the moat and the wall is a floor overhang, which seems to be the only thing short of a magma moat or being underground that stops nasties from climbing over my wall. The west area is for production and housing, the east one will house the tavern, guest rooms, temples and barracks. Since visitors have been a bit flaky and kept joining enemy sieges for no reason, I saw fit to make the visitor area the a 'killbox' for sieges. I found siegers much easier to deal with if they are in smaller, confined area where my soldiers don't go running after random nonsense or get distracted by some rogue merc running through the undefended inside of the fort.

And should things go horribly wrong (not unlikely since I modded in some extra Fun), I can just lock off the whole area and keep all my valuable worker dwarves safe and sound. Unless enemies can climb over the wall after all, or I accidentally dig a hole into the surface again...

For the next fortress I plan to dig a giant moat, all the way down to the caverns and what lies beyond, just to watch the siegers get mauled by whatever is down there.

[Urist McShire]

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Now that is a dwarf citadel!

[Linkxsc]

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Now that is a dwarf citadel!

Mmmmmmmaaaaaaagggggnificent

[ManaUser]

I've heard that fortifications are generally unclimbable, so I've been using walls topped with them. Admittedly I've only had a couple invasions yet, but it seems to be working.

[deepspaceprobe9]

I've heard that fortifications are generally unclimbable, so I've been using walls topped with them. Admittedly I've only had a couple invasions yet, but it seems to be working.

Yeah, tested in adventure mode, you can climb up to the level of the fortification, but not over it, because they have no floor tile above them. Unless the fortification was carved out of a wall. In that case, goblins and trolls can just climb over them, into high traffic areas, and kill most of your civilian dwarves until your military can wake up and clear them out with heavy losses. Not that I know anything about that.

[Fleeting Frames]

Did you try jumping through them? wiki suggests this might be possible:
z    +    2    _ _ _
z    +    1    →╬↘
z    +    0    →↖█→g

[k33n]

I just build the walls higher than the trees and make a 3 wide entrance completely packed with traps. Drawbridges with redundancies on every possible entrance, and a full melee and ranged squad each with a barracks above ground.

[Montieth]

I like having an above ground fortress for the initial phases of getting the lower level workshops sorted out. Since I alway seem to need wood from the surface at least initially, I work out a decent quantity of a outer wall built upon a raised bit of ground 1-2 z levels above the plains or what not. That carved and smooth makes for a perfect place to put a fortress which then has the outer walls fine tuned to the terrain as is reasonable. I always build a deep entrance tunnel that the caravans can go to and which provides a place for large sieges to attack and be trapped by when I raise the gates in front of and behind them. Then I can have my crossbow dwarves kill them at leisure.

Bauxite embarks are nice in that you get a nice crimson structure.