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[Frelock]

My current fort is going to have quite a grand entryway (I'm working on it at the moment, but these are the plans).  First, the only way into my fort will be by crossing a bottomless pit.  To do this, entrants need to go across a 9x10 raising drawbridge onto the military tower, constructed in the middle of the pit.  Barracks is one floor above, with food and drink storage for the military a floor above that, and murder holes positioned strategically in the barracks floor (hatch covers that are closed at all times save in case of invasion).  Then, another 9x10 bridge must be crossed to get to the main entryway, which will be lined with golden statues and waterfalls along with being paved with a platinum road.  There will, of course, be guards stationed here.  Then the 9 wide corridor splits into two five-wide corridors headed perpendicular to the original direction, where yet another bridge needs to be crossed.  These go around a central 9x9 pillar of stone, and meet back up again on the other side (to prevent civilians from being hit by ranged fire).  Then we have the trade depot, which will lead to the grand staircase.  This staircase leads to the bio layer (upwards) the abbyssal layer (directly below), and the magma layer (below that)

[Foa]

My current project is a simple Bulkhead set up, simple, yet effective.

Held up by two supports, the fully collapsible 3 bridge set-up, it's recommended to have a Magma Camp, because you need fast builders, and infinite stone. Two bridges go outward, and the middle one retracts, collapsing is a last resort.

In dire situations, I trap five dwarves in a sealed bunker, with water and the necessities, booze, food, farms, and the corresponding shops needed, if developed enough, it'll have a small Magma Camp.

[Coaldiamond]

Hey guys. This is my first post here since I pickep up the game at back at v.38c.

One of my best entrances had a long curving corridor guarded by catapults and z+1 fortifications. The best part was that I could seal up my entrance hall with raised bridges and empy a lake into the sealed entryway. Drowning an entire squad of goblins was the highlight of that fort. Then I met my first bronze colossus...

Anyway, my new is an inspiration: combining drowning chambers and dwarven clockwork automation.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-4406-waterguards
Comments appreciated!

I am still waiting for my first seige, but now that my Clockwork Drowning Chambers are fully operational, I'm going to start producing a lot more wealth.
My next goal is to post a movie of these chambers wiping out a whole seige without having to issue a single 'Pull Lever' command.

[jasonxfri13th]

You guys sure have some nice entrances... maybe when I get more experienced I will add some more... well I plan to add a drawbridge pretty soon...
But later in the game do you need so much stuff?
I have a 3x3 path way that curves into the mountain a few times (a barracks is about 5 tiles into the pathway) and is in total about 25 tiles.
Right outside the entrance (in front of the mountain) is a small fort only accesable through a stair case in my fortress. The fort has walls that are 3 tiles wide and could have about 30 marksmen shooting from it. there is also a path that goes around the fort that you have to go through to get into my fort forcing attackers to walk around my fort. right now I only have 3 sets of weapon traps (all sets are 3 tiles wide, so they cover the whole pathway) 2 sets of cage traps and 2 sets of stone traps.

With those few defenses and 6 marksmen dwarfs and 4 swordsmen dwarfs I easily defended my first siege with 0 losses.
My swords dwarfs were retarted and instead of going to where i told them to go (in the pathway to my fortress) they ran up to my stock piles of 4000 food and 3000 drinks. (a little to much i guess) And 2 marksmen were missing...
So with 5 marksmen dwarfs and my few traps I took them all out. (plus 5 prisoners to gain experince.)
How much people do sieges have later on? there were only 15 or 20. I can't wait to get 20 prisoners or so and then I can have a huge arena fight.

[moghopper]

You guys sure have some nice entrances... maybe when I get more experienced I will add some more... well I plan to add a drawbridge pretty soon...
But later in the game do you need so much stuff?
I have a 3x3 path way that curves into the mountain a few times (a barracks is about 5 tiles into the pathway) and is in total about 25 tiles.
Right outside the entrance (in front of the mountain) is a small fort only accesable through a stair case in my fortress. The fort has walls that are 3 tiles wide and could have about 30 marksmen shooting from it. there is also a path that goes around the fort that you have to go through to get into my fort forcing attackers to walk around my fort. right now I only have 3 sets of weapon traps (all sets are 3 tiles wide, so they cover the whole pathway) 2 sets of cage traps and 2 sets of stone traps.

With those few defenses and 6 marksmen dwarfs and 4 swordsmen dwarfs I easily defended my first siege with 0 losses.
My swords dwarfs were retarted and instead of going to where i told them to go (in the pathway to my fortress) they ran up to my stock piles of 4000 food and 3000 drinks. (a little to much i guess) And 2 marksmen were missing...
So with 5 marksmen dwarfs and my few traps I took them all out. (plus 5 prisoners to gain experince.)
How much people do sieges have later on? there were only 15 or 20. I can't wait to get 20 prisoners or so and then I can have a huge arena fight.

You don't need it.... it just greases the wheels.
I never do anything elaborate, i just line the walkway ahead of my drawbridge with weapon traps. Tears enemies to pieces, and then i pull up the bridge and fill the survivors with bolts. No one can get in. I'm 100% safe from outside forces. Don't need much at all.

[Martin]

You don't need it.... it just greases the wheels.
I never do anything elaborate, i just line the walkway ahead of my drawbridge with weapon traps. Tears enemies to pieces, and then i pull up the bridge and fill the survivors with bolts. No one can get in. I'm 100% safe from outside forces. Don't need much at all.

Depends on how you play. Get rid of all those weapon traps and you'll need to give your entrances some more thought.

Some of it too depends on how neat you like your maps. A fortress or three back I had a large siege show up right after a large caravan showed up. The caravan and defenders were wiped out far from my fortress, requiring a long haul to mop up. About halfway through cleaning up (and the rest of the siegers that I took out) another siege hit right after a dragon came for a visit, who proceeded to kill almost all the attackers also very far from my entrance. I think it took a year or two to clean up after what was probably 150-200 kills on the battlefield plus all the cargo the caravan was hauling. Having to wait for everything to stop burning didn't help...

And sieges do get larger than 15 or 20. You get 3 squads of 20+ siegers, plus 2 squads of 8-10 trolls all at once, that'll keep you fairly busy if you go with minimal traps. And if you get human siegers, they have a habit on my maps of not coming to the fortress but hanging way back from the entrance so I always need to send some perfectly agile sucker to go taunt them toward the crossbows, pick off a bunch, and repeat until I can go jump on them all.

[pushy]

My forts rarely have just the one entrance. There'll be one path for merchants to follow, which goes over one drawbridge and stops at the trade depot which has another drawbridge nearby - one goes up, and the other goes down, so there's never access through this entrance to the fort (in the unlikely event that the merchants are followed by a goblin or two that made it past the outer bridge before it was raised, either the merchants' guards will deal with them or the merchants are elves, in which case nobody cares ).

Main access to the fortress initially looks perfectly safe for intruders, but they'll come across a one-tile-wide section (the path is usually five-wide), which serves as both a spot to place a mule or some other surplus creature to spot tricksy kobolds, and also to place a pressure plate that raises a drawbridge that was right at the very entrance (blocking their escape). Military will make short work of them, and any that chicken out will find their only escape route to be a windy one-tile-wide path lined with traps that'll end up just on the other side of the drawbridge they raised on their way in; should there be goblins that were still outside the fort when the bridge went up, they'll also be forced to use this path to get inside This can also prove useful if I suffer casualties during battle and my military ranks are diminished - I can raise the bridge myself and goblins will be taken out by the traps while I train some fresh meat for the grinder.

Only thing I don't like about it is that it takes so damn long to get set up properly, though the trap corridor doesn't really need to be complete to be devastatingly effective

[jasonxfri13th]

I have important questions! (I am making a moat with no water and filling it with animals
1. Do my dwarfs have to go down and feed them?
2. If I lock a door, does a dwarf have to come and lock it or is it automatic?
3. Will enemies fall into a moat? or do I have to make them fall in? (because my dwarfs always fall into rivers...)
4. If I turn my small fort into a 3 story tower, will marksmen be able to shoot at enemies from 3 levels up? and will it increase their range?

Well I think I will start a new game with the mod that adds 5 races which means more sieges...

Have any of you lost because of sieges? I want my game to be more focused on military... I guess I will kill a few caravans... (if that helps...)

[Foa]

I have important questions! (I am making a moat with no water and filling it with animals
1. Do my dwarfs have to go down and feed them?
2. If I lock a door, does a dwarf have to come and lock it or is it automatic?
3. Will enemies fall into a moat? or do I have to make them fall in? (because my dwarfs always fall into rivers...)
4. If I turn my small fort into a 3 story tower, will marksmen be able to shoot at enemies from 3 levels up? and will it increase their range?

Well I think I will start a new game with the mod that adds 5 races which means more sieges...

Have any of you lost because of sieges? I want my game to be more focused on military... I guess I will kill a few caravans... (if that helps...)

No
No, but yes for the floodgate, just connect it to a lever.
You need to force them in, as in drownery, HOOOOO!!!
Yes, and no on the range, it is recommended to not have the archers on the ground floor.


Coaldiamond made a great drownery, it is very self manageable!

And for the Mount Trail, make sure the fortifications aren't on the same level as the trail.

[Martin]

I have important questions! (I am making a moat with no water and filling it with animals
1. Do my dwarfs have to go down and feed them?

No. Animals don't need to be fed.

2. If I lock a door, does a dwarf have to come and lock it or is it automatic?

Automatic.

3. Will enemies fall into a moat? or do I have to make them fall in? (because my dwarfs always fall into rivers...)

They'll generally need to be pushed, or you can cover them with a retractable bridge and drop them in. If you have a problem with dwarves falling into rivers, you can restrict one tile around water and they'll generally not get close enough to fall in unless in combat. Takes a little time if you have a lot of water, but it really helps. Good if your biome freezes. My dwarves have a habit of ice skating at the very moment spring arrives.

4. If I turn my small fort into a 3 story tower, will marksmen be able to shoot at enemies from 3 levels up? and will it increase their range?

They can shoot, but it won't increase the range that they target. Range is a sphere around the dwarf, so if you go high, you lose target range. 2-3 levels is good because it lets them shoot over trees that they'd hit only one level up, and you lose at most one tile range. They seem to shoot further but they won't target enemies quite as far out, so it helps for enemies running away, but not really toward you, from what I've seen.

Well I think I will start a new game with the mod that adds 5 races which means more sieges...

Have any of you lost because of sieges? I want my game to be more focused on military... I guess I will kill a few caravans... (if that helps...)

Killing caravans has never really had that much difference for me. Increase your wealth, wipe out a lot of gobbos, grow a nice big fortress and the sieges will come.

And yes, I pretty much only lose due to sieges.

[Foa]

Well I think I will start a new game with the mod that adds 5 races which means more sieges...

Have any of you lost because of sieges? I want my game to be more focused on military... I guess I will kill a few caravans... (if that helps...)

Killing caravans has never really had that much difference for me. Increase your wealth, wipe out a lot of gobbos, grow a nice big fortress and the sieges will come.

And yes, I pretty much only lose due to sieges.

Dude, if you want to steal from the caravans, just destroy the Depot that they have unloaded unto, they'll complain, and their products will be on the floor that used to be the Depot, then kidnap the Liaisons before he meets with the Trader, then kill the Caravan.

• Destroy the Depot they unloaded onto.
  
• Kidnap and trap the Liaisons before they meet the Trader.
• Trap the Caravan
  
• Eventually kill the Caravan.
• Eventually let the Liaisons free, and not allow them their meeting.
  

[jasonxfri13th]

Right now my fortress is worth 400,000.
If I get it up to 1,000,000 will sieges have 60-80?

[ElChad]

New Design (Found playing the Zombie Mod)

I lucked out and got a magma pipe in the perfect spot one z level below my enterance. Collapsed the maximum space for a retracting bridge. I intend to put the bridge there, connect it to a lever. When I get mass rushed, I intend to flip the switch making them fall into the lava, hopefully they will be cleansed in the fires of whatever fire god my dwarves worship...

[Theoclymenus]

I have a sizeable spiral ramp that goes down all the way to the bottom of my fortress. It is big enough to allow caravans down whilst still having statues in the corners. It also has a pillar that goes up the middle with a diagonal bridge across it.

It has a ceiling on top of it with a red, yellow and white mosaic (a sort of swirly pattern) that can be accessed by simply going up one final set of ramps.

On the ground floor there is a three tile pathway that extends out into a walled rectangle that contains a well and some farm plots. On the north side of this rectangle is my entrance. A three tile wide path full of weapon traps each with 10 masterwork rock short swords (one hit killed a dragon with one of them). This can be sealed off with floodgates. Finally, you can get on top of this rectangle for a one wide path all the way round the end with fortifications.

Outside of this I have marble roads that travel to each side of the map, also using bridges.
There is a small marksman tower just outside the entrance on the right and dug into a small hillside two bunkers with catapults in them.

I am extending out the rectangle and I am going to make some large towers for a purpose I havn't yet decided.

[detinith]

Stairways going down to a masonry sweatshop and massive stockpile, with a giant castle made completely out of alunite/andesite blocks. I got sieged constantly and it was the first fort of mine that I got so many nobles. They all eventually hit a depression spiral.