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[Axe27]

Perhaps the best way to make sure your fort survives is too have stupidly simple defenses. Perhaps the most famous one was Something-Awful's magma vent of doom, which would send magma pouring out from inside of the fortress. I stumbled upon one myself, when I found I could drain a pool of water into my passageway to drown any invaders and/or dwarves unlucky enough to be in the same passage way, which would basically ensure the continued survival of my fort. What have you found in your Dwarf Fort adventures that could qualify as simple but brutally effective defenses?

[unobtaniumman]

My front door is guarded with a weapon trap loaded with ten crossbows... and powered by an artifact mechanisim. good times.

[pavlov]

Sneezing on my keyboard? But seriously, I have to severely handicap myself to the point where the game is nearly impossible. No traps, no ranged weapons, no magma/water traps. But even with melee dwarves it's too easy as champs in iron armor and wooden shields are invincible. My current fort is above ground, all wood - no mining allowed. We'll see if my armor-deficient dorfs will be able to handle the goblin hordes. So far they are taking care of the skeletal grizzly bears and zombie cougars just fine.

[tp12]

marksdwarves + fortifications = simple good defence.

[HungryHobo]

a moat
With a bridge if you want to be fancy.

[the_taken]

a moat
With a bridge if you want to be fancy.

Fancy. smanshy. A real dwarf builds two catapults and launches himself back and forth!

---

I'm a fan of experimentation. I've done Goblin Liquidation. I've done stone/weapon trap hallways. I've done crossbow forts. and I've done Smashinator Bridgitron  My next defence is a steel clad squad of competent wrestlers becoming competent hammerdwarfs, then becoming elite marksdwarfs. Pepper the enemy from afar, then pound them into a pulp.

[Kyselina]

Sneezing on my keyboard? But seriously, I have to severely handicap myself to the point where the game is nearly impossible. No traps, no ranged weapons, no magma/water traps. But even with melee dwarves it's too easy as champs in iron armor and wooden shields are invincible. My current fort is above ground, all wood - no mining allowed. We'll see if my armor-deficient dorfs will be able to handle the goblin hordes. So far they are taking care of the skeletal grizzly bears and zombie cougars just fine.

What about Stozu?

[blakyoshi7]

My entrance is a long single-tile wide hallway with a cage trap at the beginning in hopes of catching any megabeasts that try to attack, a weapon trap composed of nine large, serrated discs and one giant spike, plus tons of stonefall traps. I embarked with one disc just because I could and made the rest as soon as I got my metal industry going. I have no clue where the spike came from, but it appeared on the list of available weapons so I used it.
In front of both all that and my trade depot is the Emergency Lockdown Drawbridge which is connected to the Emergency Lockdown Lever, thus allowing me to completely seal off my fortress should the need arise. And, to take care of any pilfering scum, any useless immigrants go straight to the fortress guard.

Yeah, I think I'm covered.

[Doppel]

Glass traps for me, there's something about having 500 glass traps consisting of 1 weapon each.

[Nonanonymous]

I like narrow bridges with an adjacent water reservoir that is emptied by an enemy creature stepping on a pressure pad.

[Dadamh]

Big pumping systems and flood corridors are not 'simple defenses'.

Just have marksdwarves, a few tiles of fortifications, and a door.  Lock the door and the invaders will stand around out front getting shot until they are all dead.

[LegacyCWAL]

Agreed.  There's nothing simple about pumping lava halfway across the map to deep-fry everything within a thousand tiles of your front door.


The simplest "brutally effective" defense I've used thus far is stuffing a ton of weapon and cage traps in the 3-wide hallway leading to my trade depot.  I had put a ballista at the end to cover it, but never needed to fire it, so I don't think it really counts.  Either way, sieges were rather gory, to say the least, and the fate of those captured in the cage traps wasn't much better.

The measures I took to cut down fleeing enemies before they could escape, on the other hand...

[Fossaman]

I find that building a wall all the way around the map works well.

Granted, it took me twenty in game years...but I was only using one mason, so...

[Neoskel]

Wait, i thought wagons couldn't path over traps? It appears the wiki told a lie. Oh well, having a trade friendly entrance i can close and a 1 tile wide completely caged out entrance raises the effectiveness of the cages by a lot.

I havn't had a single goblin (or brainwashed dwarf) escape after coming to my fort yet, though one or two agile ones led my perfectly agile legendary miners on a merry chase to almost the edge of the map.

Chained up polar bears at the trade entrance are awesome too.

[eerr]

on the topic of traps, how about a goblin auto-flinger, to ensure you fight just 1 at a time
*************+
===========^++
*************+

<----fling direction

optional choice of
pit
moat
magma moat
wall
traps
island
nothing
at the flung-to location

note that artifact mechanisms have the best response time and fling distance,
masterwork for the 2 plate triggers, artifact preferably for the bridge