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[Jurph]

So I've got a pretty sweet starting location.  It's a bald patch of obsidian in the southeast corner, surrounded by thick forest on mostly flat land.  Two z-levels down, the magma pipe sits, waiting to be tapped.  A two-level tall bump of obsidian -- perhaps a cooled volcano? -- juts out of the ground.  Naturally my dwarves dug right in, laying down a wide channel and carving the obsidian blemish into a gorgeous bunker with fortifications overlooking the sunken channel.  I've gone deep enough that I'm building a territorial wall of alunite nearby to keep the immediate surroundings safe...

My problem is the ambushes.  Holy Armok, the ambushes!  Three or four ambushes every year: elves on unicorns and horses, goblins with elvish weaponmasters leading the charge, kobold and goblin thieves trying to sneak in amidst the confusion... it's nuts.  It's the fourth year now and I've got my operations pretty streamlined: I almost always have archers in the bunker, and I've got swordsmen/wrestlers waiting in the wings inside the trap chute.  But I'm starting to feel like the US forces in Vietnam. 

AMBUSH!  Peasant who was hauling bloody GCS clothes from the traps discovers that he is cut off from the bunker and runs around aimlessly... he dies.  My archers decimate the enemies, who are routed and flee through obsidian sword traps, where there bodies are finely minced.  Hooray!  Our kill ratio is a fantastic 30:1, and we all celebrate.  Except for Urist McRedshirt's buddies, who are demoralized by the constant poaching.  Now, other than that, life in the Green Zone is lovely.  We've got great R&R (rooftop statue garden with a view, epic dining hall, obsidian furniture everywhere, delicious roasts, surfing, Playmates helicoptered in for a stage show, etc.) so it's not too bad, but I'm beginning to worry about the inevitable day when Urist McPopular is the canary outside the coal mine during the initial strike.  The troops are going to take it pretty hard, and I worry about tantrum spirals.  We need to gather up the GCS clothes to sustain our conspicuous consumption lifestyle, but one of my engravers recently carved "NO BLOOD FOR GOLDEN SALVE" in a hallway.

In short: what tactics can I adopt that give my dwarves the liberty to walk about on the surface without having to sacrifice a dwarf every time I get ambushed?  Can I force civilians to wear (elf-bone) armor and carry a (formerly goblin-owned) iron buckler?  Can I give the ambushed dwarf orders to flee somehow?  Help me out of this all-too-familiar situation!

[Ivefan]

Dig channels or build walls and make chokepoints, ambushers always comes from the borders so if you keep that in mind you can make predictable passages for them. For early spotting, build a chain by the chokepoints and assign an animal to it, prefably puppys and kittens, as the ambushers will attack it.

[Magua]

If you don't mind being exploity, dig a channel around the map.  Literally around the map.  Have a squad of military follow them around, but chances are you've got quite a few legendary miners, so this won't take that long at all.

From a less exploity point of view, build a wall.  Still exploity in that nothing can breach a wall, but actually requires some work, so feels less cheap than going "Ha ha!  A ten foot deep moat is inpenetrable!  Ha ha!"

You could also do it in phases, taking over a bit of the map at a time in manageable chunks.

Option #3 is to give your military patrol routes across the map, since ambushers do actually "exist", they can be rooted out by your military instead of your peasants.  This may result in military deaths.

[Pilsu]

Might want to install floodgates on your trap corridor and close it whenever you go clean & loot. Post several guards during the installment and make sure the path to the depot isn't blocked during trader season

[monzill]

This probably won't work in your map but in my mostly desert one I built a lava moat around a large chunk of the surface area. And now that I've managed to build an artificial lake inside the moat the only guys who have to leave the gate are fisherdwarves and woodchoppers. The lava moat may take some time to fill up though (I think it took close to a year and change for mine to get up to 4/7 lava)

[Javis]

I'd assign war dogs to all the dwarves that regularly go outside for jobs.

[kurisukun]

SEED!!!  Please!!!

I've been looking for a world where Elves send ambushes for a long while now!  I was told they didn't exist.   So I'd like to grab that seed for a Future fun Fortress.   If it's not too much trouble.

And yea, what I normally do is build a wall around the forest I plan on cutting down trees for (accessible from underground only)  And then dogs at the main accessible entrance to my fortress to find the ambushes/snatchers/thieves.

[LegacyCWAL]

After a battle, before and during the collection of the GCS stuff, have your soldiers out there.  Preferably in many small squads so there's less chance of the area finding itself defenseless when somebody decides to go take a nap.  If it's a long ways away, leave squads of soldiers all along the route.

[Jurph]

SEED!!!  Please!!!
I've been looking for a world where Elves send ambushes for a long while now!  I was told they didn't exist.   So I'd like to grab that seed for a Future fun Fortress.   If it's not too much trouble.

If you can show me a link that explains how to extract and share the seed of my current world/location, I'll be happy to paste it here.  The starting location is fantastic, and lacks only running water.  I have reason to believe that there are "additional features" -- aka HFS -- because I used the built-in site selector to find this starting loc.  I'll look for the link on my own as well.

Hadn't even considered guard animals, but I do have a curtain wall around most of my nearby surface area already.  Guess I ought to close it off and finish adding traps.

[E-mouse]

Yeah, I'd enclose a a "tree farm" around the military bunker with walls or trenches. Just leave a three-block entryway for the caravan, preferably right near the entrance to the bunker (so that entering ambushers encounter the military first). Note that walls do have a little advantage over channels - while they both block entry, walls also protect your dwarves from bolts, arrows, and panicking at the sight of the goblin on the other side. For that matter, make a trip through the barracks the only way to get into the rest of the fort - individual sneakers might get past (and will die after someone inside notices them and they try to run), but not finding an ambush with a modest military force is unlikely.

'course, this also means military casualties when you get archers, which can also cause tantrums from military dorfs spending time chatting when they aren't sparring. Avoiding combat on the whole would work best even if it isn't very Fun. A long trap corridor leading into the fort accomplishes this beautifully, and they can hit ambushers before they're even revealed - if you see a sudden corpse appear in the entryway, start forbidding the traps and other loot, bring everyone inside, and put the army on alert.

Also exploity but nice: chain an excess stray animal in a trapped corridor that leads to the animal and nothing else. (1-block line of traps all walled/channeled off.) Sometimes goblins will path to the critter and get slaughtered along the way rather than heading for the main fort, and dorfs tend to not particularly care if a stray creature dies if they DO reach it.

You can also "trap" enemies by closing floodgates or the like around them, or in blocking off the entrance to the fort. A raising drawbridge over a channel works great. This makes it easy to keep enemies out, but then you need to actually kill them... fortifications and marksdwarf snipers work, or you can set up a way to dump water or magma on them. A bit more entertaining than watching them get slaughtered by the traps.


-----

Civilians with the "Hunt" job will don armor and grab weapons (if they're set to do so - set them to something higher than "clothes" and an appropriate weapon if it can be spared), but they'll also spend most of their time outdoors trying to kill the local wildlife. This depopulates the stuff outside eventually due to a flaw in the animal population code, but until it runs out (or if everything on the map is undead or unfit for food) you're going to have a lot of semi-armored civilians running around outside with minimal combat experience. But at least they'll be armed.

On the other hand, I've heard that hunters are somewhat suicidal when encountering enemies. They might fight the ambush squad on their own and will probably die doing so. But they'll help soften 'em up for the military. The only real problem might be the extra junk items to haul back if they die.

I think hunters spend less time socializing since they tend to like going out to hunt rather than going idle. (Also rather than doing most other sorts of work, so it's a bit of a double-edged sword.) This makes them less of a loss going out but limits their usefulness to hunting and an early warning system - assuming they get ambushed instead of the other civilians doing treecutting and wood hauling and looting and whatever.

Also if you try to armor up your entire population you're simply not going to have the materials to do so. Putting it on particularly popular people (if you can find 'em) or those that are likely to venture outside (disable wood hauling or other outside activities for everyone that isn't armored and have them mostly specialize) might be a good compromise.

---

oh god why am i doing this i know nothing about this

[Magua]

If you can show me a link that explains how to extract and share the seed of my current world/location, I'll be happy to paste it here.

I'm interested in this too, so...

1) Go to <dwarf fortress>\data\save, make a new folder, and copy the contents of your world there (its name is listed on the DF start screen, usually region1, region2, etc, unless you rename them)

2) Start DF, select to continue with your new folder

3) Once it's loaded, hit 'esc', abandon the fortress

4) At the main screen again, start a new game with your new folder.  Choose 'Legends'.

5) From the legends screen, press 'p' -- this will write out the world gen info to a file in your dwarf fortress folder

[Pilsu]

I'd assign war dogs to all the dwarves that regularly go outside for jobs.

Even a moderately experienced dwarf runs faster than the dogs

The stat system is a bit too powerful sometimes

[Foa]

Place cat lures inside the choke points, green skins, and what not go crazy for them.

[Borgin]

I'm completely unsure as to how effective my strategy is in reality, but it always works well for me.

I usually wind up "mazing" with walls or a moat, and then train plenty of Marksdwarves. While the enemy is busy walking the spiral to your fortress, you manage to pick of most of them.

Traps make this strategy even more awesome.

Also, I've found that "walling in" areas you frequent (fishing spots, outdoor farming areas, et cetera) is very effective. Create a wall around the entire area and have it only reachable from a staircase located inside the walled area. Obviously this only works if you have an underground fortress, but there are really no pitfalls to it, especially if you decide to build a roof (glass, if you want to farm there). I've had farmers still picking strawberries while Goblins were literally being smashed against the walls of my "greenhouse". 

[Jurph]

For completeness, the entire seed follows:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Created in DF v0.28.181.40d.

[WORLD_GEN]
   [TITLE:MEDIUM]
   [SEED:2793266224]
   [HISTORY_SEED:2166790488]
   [NAME_SEED:2550391512]
   [DIM:129:129]
   [END_YEAR:1050]
   [BEAST_END_YEAR:200:80]
   [REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:1]
   [CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:0]
   [ELEVATION:1:400:401:401]
   [RAINFALL:0:100:200:200]
   [TEMPERATURE:25:75:200:200]
   [DRAINAGE:0:100:200:200]
   [VOLCANISM:0:100:200:200]
   [SAVAGERY:0:100:200:200]
   [ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [RAIN_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [DRAINAGE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [TEMPERATURE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [VOLCANISM_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:25:251:503]
   [EVIL_SQ_COUNTS:25:251:503]
   [PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:12]
   [OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:1]
   [VOLCANO_MIN:3]
   [REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:260:1:1]
   [REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:260:1:1]
   [REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:1040:3:3]
   [REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS:2080:2:2]
   [REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:2080:1:1]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND:2080:3:3]
   [REGION_COUNTS:HILLS:2080:3:3]
   [EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:250]
   [RIVER_MINS:100:100]
   [PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:1]
   [OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:1]
   [SUBREGION_MAX:2750]
   [CAVE_MIN_SIZE:5]
   [CAVE_MAX_SIZE:25]
   [MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:25]
   [NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:50]
   [ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:0]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_RIVER:2]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_POOL:2]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_M_POOL:2]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_M_PIPE:2]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_CHASM:2]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_PIT:2]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_OTHER:2]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
   [TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:20]
   [TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:20000]
   [PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
   [ELEVATION_RANGES:2080:4160:2080]
   [RAIN_RANGES:2080:4160:2080]
   [DRAINAGE_RANGES:2080:4160:2080]
   [SAVAGERY_RANGES:2080:4160:2080]
   [VOLCANISM_RANGES:2080:4160:2080]

Does anyone know how I can guide someone to the particular site (lat/long) I used?  Otherwise you'll have to look for 3x3 sites with HFS, magma pipes, no river or aquifer... and hope for the best.  It's a great region, and I'm sure the elves will be happy to ambush you anywhere you settle, but I'd hate for you to be disappointed by insufficiently hostile (frolicking?  WHY ARE YOU FROLICKING?) elves.