I'm sure that having siegers learn your defenses and take steps to counter them in future attacks has been suggested, but I thought a specific implementation could be counts of how many died and in what way. So it would not just count deaths, but count deaths by way of: melee combat; ranged combat; siege engine fire; kill-traps; cage traps; falling or other bridge-related actions; drowning; and burning by magma. Then the next time, bring along some sort of counter to that defense.
For instance, if a lot of attackers are lost to traps, they might eventually start herding cannon fodder into them to set them off without "real" losses. If a lot of attackers fell to Marksdwarves in a few sieges, they could bring along catapults that would fire projectiles that could splash through fortifications, or marksgoblins with Pavises. If a lot of attackers drowned, they might bring an amphibious unit that could destroy underwater buildings. And if there's a trend of attackers being chopped up by axedwarves, a few adventurers in =steel plate mail= would work them over but good.
Excellent ideas. Also, the game could use civ-specific "traffic designations" so that invaders could try to avoid spots where their comrades died to traps earlier.
Excellent ideas or not, I am not sure that it's possible to create an advanced AI like that. Toady is a magician, so maybe he could code in an AI like that, but to be honest, I will be very happy if we gonna have a "working" tunneler system even.
I imagine adventurers of all people would know how to find and disable traps. Or at least have trap avoid
I don't think anything will ever be able to fight a drowning chamber, atom smasher or a sheer 15 z level drop below a disappearing bridge without outright cheating itself
Yeah, they should be able to spot/disable traps, if they have the "appropriate" unit in their party...but yeah, like I've said [+ you too], it would be still very easy to kill them all. I fear that this adventurer feature would turn into an "item farming" event.