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[Muz]

I made a fortress dedicated to robbing caravans that come by my depot. I did it mainly because I want to kill off this fortress and I think I've been too successful. Lol, my stores are loaded with more cloth and leather than would fit before. My armorers, leatherworkers, and clothiers are working full time on making new stuff... heck, if it goes on like this, there's going to be a steel hammer, buckler, cap and leather armor for every peasant. Hmm... I just realized that greaves are for plate armor and steel caps are for chain, not leather armor. Damn.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun. I can't wait for a horde of humans and elves come to wipe out my bandit camp. I told the humans to bring more gold next time, hope they do

[Axe27]

The humans will wipe you out. Those hippy elves can't even make it past one stonefall trap without dying. Humans on the other hand, will make it past two or three.

[Mystry]

I've found that almost nothing can stand up to a weapon trap made with 10 masterwork steel serrated disks.

[krumlink]

Ive had ettins make it through 6 stonefall traps and 2 weapon traps completely filled with obsidian short swords. He then made it to the front of my fortress but was wiped out by my entire fortress being designated as recruits. the image is on the ettin wiki page.

[Proteus]

Weapon traps seem to be extremly efficient in this game.

I built a Labyrinth of pain that leads from my fortress to the outside and consists of lots of weapon traps with one weapon each.
Its normal purpose is to give caged goblins some kind of chance to escape into freedom (after releasing them from their cage with a lever). By choosing the right path they just be hurt by 3 whiplashes, 1 large dagger and a single stonefall trap on their way to freedom (well, none has chosen the ritght path so far) whereas every other path would have large trap weapons, 2 handed swords or crossbows as trap weapons.

Well, I found out that even traps with single weapons are extremly efficient, not only in killing my former prisoners, but also in erradicating whole suads of ambushers (who obviously find the open entrance to my labyrinth to be some kind of invitation )
Most hostile goblins, humans and elves get killed at their 2nd weapon trap with the only exception being one single former prisoner, who succeeded in passing a whip trap, a spiked steel ball trap and finally got killed at the third trap, which contained a +large serrated green glass disc.

I was rather  surprised by this, after all I had expected that, due to the fact that each trap contained only a single weapon, most prisoners and ambushers would be able to pass 3-4 traps.   

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I don't like having a military, so my fortress defenses are always weapon trap based (wooden spikes as they are easiest and fastest to produce).

Actually, I am currently experimenting in reducing the number of weapons per trap (formerly I did 5 spikes per trap for a definite kill). The thing is, when a weapon trap kills a foe, the corpse may get stuck in the trap. Thus, the ideal weapon trap would be one that mortally wounds the foe but does not instantly kill him so that he may drop dead on a non-trap tile. With goblins, 3 spikes are still deadly more than half of the time, though.

I stopped using stonefall traps a long time ago, but I do remember the one elephant fortress I had in 2D - I was lucky I had all the stonefall traps ready when the elephant rampage came. One of the elephant somehow got past 4 or 5 stonefall traps, I think, before it got finally killed. The trail of blood and depleted stonefall traps in that trap corridor was quite impressive.

Deathworks

[Brian]

I hope one day things change a bit.. Maybe make it so weapon traps regularly fail on elites because elites can see them, and the traps completely destroyed by megabeasts..  In the mean time I just don't make those things.

Oops thread jack. We were talking about Caravans being pussies, right?

[Narmio]

Hi!

I don't like having a military, so my fortress defenses are always weapon trap based (wooden spikes as they are easiest and fastest to produce).

Actually, I am currently experimenting in reducing the number of weapons per trap (formerly I did 5 spikes per trap for a definite kill). The thing is, when a weapon trap kills a foe, the corpse may get stuck in the trap. Thus, the ideal weapon trap would be one that mortally wounds the foe but does not instantly kill him so that he may drop dead on a non-trap tile. With goblins, 3 spikes are still deadly more than half of the time, though.

I stopped using stonefall traps a long time ago, but I do remember the one elephant fortress I had in 2D - I was lucky I had all the stonefall traps ready when the elephant rampage came. One of the elephant somehow got past 4 or 5 stonefall traps, I think, before it got finally killed. The trail of blood and depleted stonefall traps in that trap corridor was quite impressive.

Deathworks

I did some experiments with this.  I had a large, colourful-stone-inlaid entrance filled with 3xglass spike traps on a 25% dither pattern.  The intention of spacing out the traps was to allow goblins to bleed to death rather than get stuck.  It worked fairly well, three high quality glass spikes would seriously wound but not kill most goblins, while five tended to knock them off pretty fast.  There was once a legendary macegoblin who made it across the whole field, triggering about six of these traps before finally puncturing a lung.  He had masterworked armour on top of his sweet stats, though. 

I never collected enough data to prove that the piercing weapon traps got stuck more often than slashing or blunt weapons.  I was importing mauls from the human traders for that purpose. 

In the end I found that single masterworked steel razordisc traps were the best blend of lethality and efficiency.  They would routinely kill six or seven goblins each without sticking.

[Muz]

Ahh, the irony.

I didn't lose my bandit fortress to no invaders. No, the problem was that while digging a bigger moat, I forgot that my bedroom expanded so much that it had only one tile between the moat and the bedrooms and I flooded the whole fortress (rather slowly). It was such a slow end to my fortress that I just abandoned it.. most of the deaths were caused by sick dwarves unable to get of bed. Interesting that sparring in a barracks where the water level is up to their knees makes blood splatter all over the place.

Anyway, is there a method to 'plug' channels or anything the dwarves couldn't get into?

[Cavalcadeofcats]

If you have a few z-levels to work with, you might be able to drop a (natural, not constructed) wall from above into it.

Otherwise, no.

[Jude]

How many times do you have to a caravan before that civ starts attacking you?

[Deathworks]

Hello!

Well, in my previous fortress having the human diplomat step into a weapon trap during their first visit was enough to get me sieged the next year - even though I did proper trading with them during their first visit.

However, that diplomat had been a historic figure (tons of animal bone jewelry) who was killed by the weapon trap because he suffered from some serious world gen injuries.

Deathworks

[Proteus]

Hello!

Well, in my previous fortress having the human diplomat step into a weapon trap during their first visit was enough to get me sieged the next year - even though I did proper trading with them during their first visit.

However, that diplomat had been a historic figure (tons of animal bone jewelry) who was killed by the weapon trap because he suffered from some serious world gen injuries.

Deathworks

Similar to me.
One year the human diplomat took the wrong exit during a goblin siege and was killed by them  and the next year in summer instead of a caravan I got 11 humans laying siege on my fortress. The year after that trade had resumd but for some strange reasons I donīt get a human trade liaison anymore and also only human caravans that consist of 2 wagons and a number of mules (before that I usually got around 6 wagons)

[Wolfius]

Anyway, is there a method to 'plug' channels or anything the dwarves couldn't get into?

In the future, you might consider placing doors around your fortress to stop floods, and if they're quality, you'll get a happiness bonus too.

[grukobok]

I made a fortress dedicated to robbing caravans that come by my depot. I did it mainly because I want to kill off this fortress and I think I've been too successful. Lol, my stores are loaded with more cloth and leather than would fit before. My armorers, leatherworkers, and clothiers are working full time on making new stuff... heck, if it goes on like this, there's going to be a steel hammer, buckler, cap and leather armor for every peasant. Hmm... I just realized that greaves are for plate armor and steel caps are for chain, not leather armor. Damn.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun. I can't wait for a horde of humans and elves come to wipe out my bandit camp. I told the humans to bring more gold next time, hope they do

You'll have to wait for the army arc to trully acheive your end. Until then, I think that you either have to edit the standard creature file or you have to start a fortress in a world where you're at war with them. Ideally, they'd start to send squads of military men to take down your walls after you've looted enough caravans or sent out enough war/ambush parties, but right now it's not the case because you can't change the relationships between civs. For instance, if goblins are not at war with you when you start a fortress, they will never be at war with you until you either change the timeline or generate a new world where they're at war with you.

I'm about to start a new fortress, but I'm thinking about changing the standard creature file in order to make hte environment feel mroe hostile. It's too tedious to have to generate random worlds until you have a setup that is hard enough (where there're plenty at war with you). This will be the case until i can form my own conflicts - looking forward to that!

It's in another thread, but.. You have to change "creature_standard.txt" in "DF\raw\objects". Look under "[CREATURE:GOBLIN]" and remove "[INTELLIGENT]". Replace it with "[CAN_LEARN]" and "[CAN_CIV]". That should atleast make the goblins attack you more often. That'll make things more lively. It'll be more interesting when we can provoke them into it tho.