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[folo4]

and that's why sooner or later you have to go and do something about the gobbos.  That and if the gobbos hang outside for long enough, a second siege arrives as reinforcements (or even a replenishment) and the siege continues.*

OH NO!

It happened to me. THRICE. Even before I got my FIRST.MIGRANT.WAVE

it was too difficult, too hardcore for me, so I just put item stealing tags on the goblin civilization with advise from the IRC channel.

[Silver]

Tunneling by itself would still be too easy to defend against, i would just dig channels around the interior of my fortress. Roarsilver (sorry i haven't learn how to do links) would be a good example of an impenetrable moat. Bridge building though.... That would take care of the three second 'dig channel in front of entrance' defense. I would like to see an army camped out front chopping trees for bridges and siege engines. That would build some suspense. Would also force one to act which i would imagine is part of the strategy of sieges.

[Raz]

I like the setup:
Roarsilver

Level 5 and 6 look a bit like swastikas though.

Oh, and for the above display of links you have to formulate it like:
[url =<yourlinkhere>]<Yourdescriptionhere>[/url]

The <yourlinkhere> part would be your regular http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-2312-roarsilver url.

[snelg]

By the way, maybe the magic arc could add some new stuff to sieges too. I'm not really sure what, but there have got to be something.

It's hard to come up with something to make sieges harder without making them too hard for forts that don't have a great number of traps or a moat. Like people already stated the dwarves have nearly perfect defense with only the caravans (trade) being vulnerable. Which might be fixed with the tunnels...

Then again, Tunnels might be a way in for seigers too... And the many chasms they seem to cross could maybe lead to other things lurking down in them. 

edit: Roarsilver looks really neat! I'm always trying to keep to a few z-levels because I wan't to see it all but I like the look of this one very much, and that's a deep moat you've got there. 

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Looking at that, I realised something.
Am I the only person who doesn't like to carve out maps in a great grid to find ores?
I don't like the way it leaves all that messy stone.
Even if I can't see it, I know it's there.
It speaks to me...

[Jamuk]

I have this crazy image in my head of the machine used to call the kraken in pirates of the Caribbean being used over your fortress to collapse sections of it.
Have a bunch of trolls spin the wheel and when the weight gets raised high enough it is released and a massive shock wave is sent into the ground collapsing a section of your fort.

[snelg]

Sounds neat, but it would be one hell to build it up again, and then the next siege would just do the same. 
That is, if you didn't take necessary precautions! 

[Asehujiko]

Mountain halls are pretty much unsiegeable in the traditional way. You can shoot at it for as long as you like but you will only hit the rubble from earlir shots, they can't be starved, they can't be dyhydrated and the only way in is a frontal assault into the place where ALL of the defenses are concentrated.

[Boomer]

Clearly Goblin sieges fit the first though less typically used definition of a siege, being a direct assault on a fortification.

Once mobile siege engines come into play and Goblins figure out how to tunnel, we have our serious threats.

Hopefully this is after civilian dwarves quit running into fire, military dwarves quit taking their children to battle, and all dwarves realize that safety equals good.

Then, there will be a need for Goblins to give it their all.

Along with the downward aimed battering ram a-la the kraken caller of Pirates of the Carribean, there are many creative siege engines that would develop naturally from war with dwarves.

My two cents on mobile siege engines... wagons seem to move just fine. Siege engines were basically built onto their own wagon. Cant fire while moving, but you can load, then move, then fire.

I can see it now, the goblin forces spawn in at the edge of the map, troops and siege operators and a couple trolls. They all begin a charge. As soon as the catapults are in range they stop, lock wheels, and open fire. Trolls in front formation, ready to bust doors, spring traps, and beat in walls they don't like. The troops, whatever kind of soldier they may be, sheathe weapons and beginning digging into wherever their spades can hit. Their lasher commander screaming in mocking tones, "Strike the earth! Strike the earth!". Dwarven units are firing back with their catapults and skirmishing the goblins, avoiding the trolls as best they can to let traps and champions do their job.

Meanwhile, goblin ambushers are also elsewhere on the map, unspotted as of yet and digging furiously as well. They'll be spotted just from getting near dwarves, but that doesn't change the mission. Make a safe hole for dwarf death.

This siege is typical, still defended against, at the loss of troops, the loss of nearly all the siege engines, the springing of many traps, the loss of walls, doors, and the addition of entrances not meant to be. If these things are not fixed before the next siege, they may all pour in...

"BARON! Shut up about the damn bronze crown! We're in a damn war here!"

...oh, and the noble oblivious to the tantrum spiral he may start at any moment.

[Puck]

I guess the best way to actually siege a dwarfen fortress would probably be flooding it...

so..
1) drill hole(s)
2) pump water into them
3) watch where the little buggers are trying to pump it out again
4) seal that off
5) wait

and im not going to do the questionmark and profit part, since i heard that comes from a credit card companies advertisement and therefore sucks.

If they have a chasm or aquifer youre screwed, but i guess it wont be too cozy on the inside either.

[McDoomhammer]

Looking at that, I realised something.
Am I the only person who doesn't like to carve out maps in a great grid to find ores?
I don't like the way it leaves all that messy stone.
Even if I can't see it, I know it's there.
It speaks to me...

Nope.  You're not the only one.  I tend to prospect by digging random shafts and winding tunnels, separate from the rest of my fortess.  I will forbid and leave stone lying around in the mines, but not in populated areas.

[Boomer]

I guess the best way to actually siege a dwarfen fortress would probably be flooding it...

so..
1) drill hole(s)
2) pump water into them
3) watch where the little buggers are trying to pump it out again
4) seal that off
5) wait

and im not going to do the questionmark and profit part, since i heard that comes from a credit card companies advertisement and therefore sucks.

If they have a chasm or aquifer youre screwed, but i guess it wont be too cozy on the inside either.

It comes from the underpants gnomes in an episode of south park.

"Why are you guys stealing underpants?"
"It's all part of our business plan!"
"What business plan?"
"It's simple... stealing underpants gains us profit. Here is how it works.
Step 1: Steal underpants.
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!"

[LeoLeonardoIII]

It's reasonable to assume that goblins would be able to dig eventually. It's unreasonable to think they would have anything but novice miners. After all, goblins don't live underground, they live in towers, right? So they'd have better masonry/carpentry/architecture if anything.

This verges on DF competitive multiplayer, if the AI gains the ability to do whatever you can. Note that there is no defense if the goblins just walk over and deconstruct your locked doors the same way any dwarf can deconstruct them. And your walls, and floodgates, and windmills.

I think of seiges as keeping dwarves underground, until the attackers can find some secret entrance or tunnel in. But remember, for them tunneling in is going to be a shot in the dark like trying to find a cave river when you know only that it's on your map somewhere. Sure they know where the entrance is, but unless the AI is really good it's not going to be able to tunnel in past where your trap defenses likely are.

I imagine goblins scaling a cliff wall to get down to a side door, deconstructing it, and sneaking in. Or swimming from the river through your farm aqueduct, deconstructing your floodgate, and riding the wave into the upper halls of your fortress sabotaging stuff along the way.

But if it gets that good, the game will become a lot more hectic, like a typical Warcraft style RTS.

[DJ]

The traditional method of getting something out of it's burrow is to smoke it out.
So I'd say that the best bet for goblins would be to pour some flammable, hard-to-extinguish substance that produces a lot of smoke down the fort's entrance. This would also consume much of the oxygen in the fortress. And as an added bonus, the fire should destroy most traps. That way they could clear the fortress bit by bit.

[Boomer]

The traditional method of getting something out of it's burrow is to smoke it out.
So I'd say that the best bet for goblins would be to pour some flammable, hard-to-extinguish substance that produces a lot of smoke down the fort's entrance. This would also consume much of the oxygen in the fortress. And as an added bonus, the fire should destroy most traps. That way they could clear the fortress bit by bit.

I'd say a 'burning stuff pump' or 'anything pump' would count as a siege engine. And it can't destroy anything with non-flammable components, like stone fall traps made only with rock mechanisms.