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[Garfunkel]

I know I cannot train black bears for war but since I have a breeding pair, I was thinking of putting them in a pasture next to my entrance, covered by a drawbridge and once enemies are walking past, unleash the bears on them. Will that work or will the bears try to flee from goblins and trolls and so on?

[PatrikLundell]

It depends on their personality, so some will flee and some will fight. (Giant) Honey Badgers and other creatures that are easily enraged would make much better informal war critters.

That said, a known tactic is to stick a silly number of critters in a cage, build that cage and hook it up to a lever, and then pull the lever as the enemy surrounds it (I think it's been called the doberman bomb).

[Garfunkel]

That's useful to know! I had no idea that animals now had personality. I'll definitely try "black bear bomb" once I have sufficient numbers of them - they can't flee if they are surrounded.

[anewaname]

A problem with using a pasture is that as soon as any bears leave the pasture (fleeing or attacking), dwarfs rush in to re-pasture them. You need to mark the pasture inactive to avoid this.

And, when it comes to fear, there seems to be a body-counting calculation, of both alive and dead bodies, within the line of sight. So, if 10 bears see 50 siegers, the bears are more likely to flee. If 50 bears see 10 siegers, the siegers are more likely to flee, and if there is a pile of dead bodies that look like the dogs or the siegers, that will effect their fear-level also. I suspect this is where war-training and military-training help reduce these two effects. Also, creatures that are fleeing or unconscious seem to not count, so it you have 20 bears and 10 of them are already fleeing, the other 10 will not count the fleeing 10 as nearby allies in the fight (this is my opinion from watching small and large mobs encounter each other, and attempting to understand what events indicate what results).

An example, I had an entry into the fort that was a 10-wide corridor, shaped like an "L", and there was a 15x15 room at the elbow of the  "L", with war dogs in a pasture and the room's gate closed.
f                     X=corridor
X                    f=fort, d=dog room, e=elf mob
X   
XXX e
d
Over 50 elf siegers, including many war animals, entered the L corridor. The dog pasture was set inactive and the room's gate was opened. There were 80+ war dogs in the room. A few dogs entered the corridor as they moved towards the fort's meeting areas, they saw many siegers and ran in terror. As siegers rushed the dogs and moved in front of the dog room, many dogs saw a few siegers and moved into the corridor. But, there were already dead dogs on the floor and many of the new dogs in the corridor saw the many siegers and panicked, and by the end, most of the dogs were butchered while they were in fear and only a few siegers were dead. Being trapped with nowhere to flee to does not seem to caused frightened creatures to fight back. In the end, I assessed that releasing 80 war dogs from a cage would be more effective than releasing them from a room.

[PatrikLundell]

That's useful to know! I had no idea that animals now had personality. I'll definitely try "black bear bomb" once I have sufficient numbers of them - they can't flee if they are surrounded.

They can try, running rather than fighting, but with enough of them some would fight, and the enemy should get rather distracted by the sheer number of targets.

An advantage of a cage bomb is that there's no pasture to forget to deactivate. Also, having all the critters in a cage will stop them from pathing and hurting the FPS, as well as stop them from fighting if the pasture is too small for them.

[Garfunkel]

One final question related to this: can animals see through rock crystal floor and spot sneakers?

[kaijyuu]

Floors of any material are opaque. Grates will work though.

[Moeteru]

All floors and walls are totally opaque, regardless of material. Even clear glass walls and floors are opaque. In fact, material almost never matters when it comes to constructions. You can store magma in a cistern built out of ice and wood if you want.
Also, there's no such thing as a rock crystal floor. If you mine a cluster of rock crystal you'll be left with a normal stone floor.

If you want your guard animals to see through the floor, try using grates or bars. There's a bug which should prevent building destroyers from destroying them from underneath, as long as they don't have an alternate path into the room. You could also use a window and/or fortification on the same z-level.

[Quarque]

While walls and  floors of any material are opaque, windows are not. And fortifications are also see-through.

In fact you might want to combine those. Fortifications can be shot through and don't stop things like poison breath; windows stop projectiles, but can be broken. A window behind a fortification makes a safe observation post.

Then again, the best role for animals in your defenses is as a specific anti-werebeast guard. Werebeasts are the only threat to which animals are truly of benefit: animals are immune to their infection, can detect them when they're sneaking and they stand a chance in combat. Plus they're expendable.
But: against werebeast, you're best off putting your guard animals on a leash. That way your animal is forced to do its job and fight.

[PatrikLundell]

My guard cats are placed in dog boxes above the entrance they're set to guard. The boxes have a grate as the floor so the cats can see down into the entrance, and the above ground ones have drawbridges for doors (the below ground ones have doors, as they can't be reached by invaders without getting inside).
The observation posts are placed a bit inside the beginning of the cage traps, so sneaking kobolds, baby snatchers, and necros are caught in the traps before they can be scared off by the horrible guard monster.

Note that saplings can mature through a grate, so you need a non tree supporting floor underneath the grate (found that out when the humie caravan wagons suddenly bypassed my inaccessible site).

A problem with fortification+window is that the guard critter is placed at least 3 tiles from the passage guarded. If the passage is a single tile wide there's a good chance a critter is detected (it may be below 100%, though), and I'm reasonably sure it's possible for critters to pass undetected at a distance of 4 and larger.

[muldrake]

It depends on their personality, so some will flee and some will fight. (Giant) Honey Badgers and other creatures that are easily enraged would make much better informal war critters.

That said, a known tactic is to stick a silly number of critters in a cage, build that cage and hook it up to a lever, and then pull the lever as the enemy surrounds it (I think it's been called the doberman bomb).

Even if they don't attack, they delay the enemy, which for some reason always seems to take some time just to murder animals.  It actually makes me mad, why do they do that?

[PatrikLundell]

It depends on their personality, so some will flee and some will fight. (Giant) Honey Badgers and other creatures that are easily enraged would make much better informal war critters.

That said, a known tactic is to stick a silly number of critters in a cage, build that cage and hook it up to a lever, and then pull the lever as the enemy surrounds it (I think it's been called the doberman bomb).

Even if they don't attack, they delay the enemy, which for some reason always seems to take some time just to murder animals.  It actually makes me mad, why do they do that?

Because the AI doesn't evaluate enemies and prioritize between them, so every member of the enemy civ is an enemy to be killed (and animals are members). The animals are the closest targets, and so are to be killed first.

[muldrake]

It depends on their personality, so some will flee and some will fight. (Giant) Honey Badgers and other creatures that are easily enraged would make much better informal war critters.

That said, a known tactic is to stick a silly number of critters in a cage, build that cage and hook it up to a lever, and then pull the lever as the enemy surrounds it (I think it's been called the doberman bomb).

Even if they don't attack, they delay the enemy, which for some reason always seems to take some time just to murder animals.  It actually makes me mad, why do they do that?

Because the AI doesn't evaluate enemies and prioritize between them, so every member of the enemy civ is an enemy to be killed (and animals are members). The animals are the closest targets, and so are to be killed first.

It seems needlessly cruel and the sort of thing only gobbos should do.

[PatrikLundell]

As usual, it's not an intended effect but just the result of how the AI works. It can also be noted that the vast majority of invasion for the vast majority of players are made by goblins and undead. A "See living. Kill" AI fits undead lack of intelligence perfectly well, and you just explained why the current behavior (where civvie visitors are spared) might fit gobbos.
If you're an optimist you can hope the "better sieges" phase (after the Premium release and finishing of Villains, but before the Big Wait) would include more varied invader behavior. Unfortunately, I expect that to result in overpowered invaders that can only be countered by avoiding invasions for a very long time (by keeping the pop below the civ invasion threshold) so you've got time to build the extensive counter measures required to stand a chance.

[Garfunkel]

Also, there's no such thing as a rock crystal floor. If you mine a cluster of rock crystal you'll be left with a normal stone floor.

Oh sorry, I wasn't clear. I made a rock crystal block and then used that block to make a floor.

I've now replaced it with bullion bars on the floor instead. The dog hasn't spotted any thieves yet but nothing has been stolen either.