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[Jerick]

Something I've always wanted to try was the eternal circle.
Siegers path to the nearest way into the fortress so have a pressure plate that closes of one way into the fortress but opens another via floodgates and retractable bridages (and also cuts off their retreat)
More pressure plates close and reveal in a never ending loop forcing the attackers to path through the same dangerours terrain, the same traps and the same halls of seiger porcupine makers.

I've never tried it so I don't know if it works but it might be a good idea to make a retractable bypass to prevent your dwarves getting stuck in times of peace.

[Lummox JR]

If you've ever tried the alternating exits strategy in Desktop Tower Defense, you've seen the downfall of the neverending circle strategy. A long chain of enemies can be pathing in, and if the exit switches, the stragglers become the leaders, pathing to the new exit. However if the newcomers are faster or slower, eventually you're going to end up in a situation where at some point the new forerunners are partway along the circle already. I predict that the same thing will hold in DF: Foes will have a tendency to spillover into the abandoned paths and stay there, making the changing paths less and less effective.

[Leafsnail]

If you've ever tried the alternating exits strategy in Desktop Tower Defense, you've seen the downfall of the neverending circle strategy. A long chain of enemies can be pathing in, and if the exit switches, the stragglers become the leaders, pathing to the new exit. However if the newcomers are faster or slower, eventually you're going to end up in a situation where at some point the new forerunners are partway along the circle already. I predict that the same thing will hold in DF: Foes will have a tendency to spillover into the abandoned paths and stay there, making the changing paths less and less effective.

Well, you can then mop up the survivors using something else.

[Lymojo]

If you've ever tried the alternating exits strategy in Desktop Tower Defense, you've seen the downfall of the neverending circle strategy. A long chain of enemies can be pathing in, and if the exit switches, the stragglers become the leaders, pathing to the new exit. However if the newcomers are faster or slower, eventually you're going to end up in a situation where at some point the new forerunners are partway along the circle already. I predict that the same thing will hold in DF: Foes will have a tendency to spillover into the abandoned paths and stay there, making the changing paths less and less effective.

I'm sure there's some way to use logic gates to prevent this sort of thing.

[Efun]

Spoiler: "Don't Trip" (click to show/hide)

Make the entrance to your fort a long bridge of down-stairs with a tall pit underneath them (doesn't quite work with constructions). Station a bunch of marksdwarves at one end. If a goblin gets shot and goes unconscious, it will fall down the "stairs" and into the pit. Bonus points if you have a refuse pile at the bottom.

Will units fall down stairs if you drop a whole cistern of water on top of them?

I had 4 dwarves get pushed off a walkway by 2/7 or 3/7 water, the best fort ever so far, the only artifact it has is about one of them falling into the chasm...

[Byakugan01]

How on earth did you get FOUR dragons?

My current world genned *six* dragons-three male and three female. I caught a male and female, and managed to breed them by giving them the CHILD tag in their raws. Here are the world gen params:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[WORLD_GEN]
   [TITLE:MEDIUM]
   [SEED:3817762622]
   [HISTORY_SEED:103190434]
   [NAME_SEED:3942062620]
   [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]

On a side note, if you can get both to survive world gen there should also be a male/female pair of hydras. For me, only the female survived. I had the orc mod when I genned this world, and I didn't add in any other creatures. Some stuff was given the trainable tag, but that's about it. I ended world gen in 154 with all six dragons alive, btw. The fort's 20 years old now, so it's had plenty of ops for a megabeast to come. If you let the collossi and titans die off in gen (make them their regular size), you should have a MUCH higher chance of getting many dragons. My fort has seen at least five, maybe six mega beast arrivals.


-Albedo: They work just fine when attached to the chains. Don't know about fortifications, but they do work fine with chains. On a side note, they're also more effective against gobbos than orcs-mainly because gobbos have more clothing to ignite. Four dragons, by the way, can solo an orc siege if they don't have to face more than 2 squads at once-at least, they can at size 60 (which is what I make megabeasts so they might actually SURVIVE world gen). Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to further test this without reverting to an earlier point in my fort.

However, if on chains it seems that sometimes they don't breathe fire until they get attacked-I generally break the chains asap, but that seems to be what happens. So for me, yes, it seems they DO need a path to the target-beyond what the chain lets them. They certaintly don't attempt to fight until the enemy attacks. However, it seems that if ONE gets attacked, even if their chains aren't loose yet they all will start breathing fire if possible. I'm going to continue my mega project in that fort, but I'll do some experimenting if I can get another situation like that (in other words, regen the world/use the history seed).

I can conclude they DO need a definite path before they'll do anything, though, so be ready to support the dragons if you use a dragon defense. And don;t let them near archers if you can help it-those will kill them. They can and WILL murder even orcs in melee (in fact, my dragons kill most of their stuff with their claws, not their breath-that's actually only a small percentage) (at size 60, anyway), so keep them there. While my setup lets them use firebreath at a greater range, it might be more effective to position them around a bend in a corridor and THEN let them loose. They are, and I cannot repeat this enough, infitiely more effective if you let them get into melee-and this is supportable if you mod them to be breedable. Three may be enough, but what kills a dragon is when they get tired and slow down. Before that, they pretty much one hit everything.

To keep them alive, you have to make sure that they don't get exhausted-one dragon simply cannot solo a siege. I only lost two dragons, and the first was when I let it solo an orc siege; it got swamped and couldn't handle all the orcs, even when I belatedly rush my Urist McNorris champions to help out. The other was a hatchling that wandered around. If you can have them support each other, dying is not an issue so much. They may get some injuries, but generally nothing major unless you get unlucky. Incidentally, unlucky accidents are why I let them breed-the veteran dragons can retire to furnished rooms for their services, while the fresh replacements get named. By the way, dragon names are not random-they relate to fire and treasure without exception. That is, if they gain their names through combat. One adopted will have any old random name.

Dragon hatchlings are not a viable defense-they will not breathe fire  nor will they attack-and if attacked, then they run like any normal baby animal would.

I let my three champions handle archer squads, and let the dragons take care of melee. For me, however, this murders my framerate horribly (since I turn temp on). A 5 minute battle in the game works as a 1-minute movie-might be due to having over 20 caged skeletal stuff and uncountable gobbo clutter. As a side note, this originally wasn;t designed as a DEFENSE, but as way to use my dragons to ignite the world so all the gobbo clothes would burn off. Which, by the way, didn;t work-the map might have been too arid, but it just seems that the fact that dragon fire reduces stuff to ashes makes it harder for it to ignite grass. By the way, give them the fire imp's heat dam blocks for everything. It keeps them alive. I give this seed so you can give the dragon defense a try, since to be honest this is the first time I have seen a world with so MANY dragons. Just keep your champions from doing anything stupid around the dragons, and there shouldn't be a problem

P.S. If this post seems somewhat disorganized, it's probably because I went back and modified some parts after i finished writing it.

[Elvin]

Just thought of another idea:

Spoiler: "Death by a hundred thousand cuts" (click to show/hide)

Near your entrance have a two leveled tower, with an external staircase. The top floor is empty, and is designated as a pit. Throw the animals of your choice into the pit, so they end up on the ground floor of the tower. This lower floor only has one exit: a door attached to a lever somewhere safe. Once the enemies are close to the tower, open the door(s) and watch the animals spill out.

NOTE: If your animals start overflowing the pit, it's time to add a level to the tower.

[zchris13]

Won't that just murder your production capabilities when you ask everyone to pit the animals, and murder your framerate when you let them out?

[Shima]

I personally use a miniaturized castle and holdfast defensive structure.  Some kind of moat, with an outer wall and either one or multiple drawbridges (If multiple, the main bridge is left open with a guard post while the others remain shut until needed), then in the center, a small tower, with it's own drawbridge, to over up the hole where we dug in, and at least one tier where we can station crossbowmen to fight back in the event of enemies taking the primary above ground fortress.  The most important part is two levers in the holdfast, one for the holdfast bridge, and another for the outer bridge to lock up after we clean out the first few waves, to keep them from flooding in when we open up to retake the town.

A secondary modification to this that I've been working on, is the use of pillbox turrets and the barracks above ground, but with no way in from above, to allow us to hit any area of the above ground fort.

[ein]

How can anybody forget the hall of whips.

You've got a single-file hall filled with traps full of whips.
The enemies go through and are slowly whipped to death.
Then there's a trap at the end full of the huge trap comps.

[Efun]

Water Park

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Have a bridge that retracts that is connected to a lever that is also connected to a large cistern of water above the bridge. The path underneath the bridge leads into a small tunnel that, when filled with water will push the thing that triggered it outside or into your arena, or where ever you see fit.

[Dorten]

not mine:

http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1368-magmadefense3
http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1315-magmabombsinaction

Also:

Spoiler: rockfalls (click to show/hide)

a huge device above the entrance, featuring water and magma separated by bridges. One pull of a level, and freshly created TILE of obsidian drops on the enemy heads... There was a thread about this defence somewhere...

[Lymojo]

So floodgates perhaps would be lined around the finished tile to sever the obsidian from any connective rock on the same z-level, while a retracting bridge would serve to remove the floor.
That's pretty clever; you don't have to reset those supports to get cave-ins anymore.

[catapult_fodder]

I just posted this in another topic, but it makes sense here:


The killing fields defense prevents line-of-sight, making ranged attackers useless.  You can build it in a long hallway, or simply in a large field around your fortress:

xx x x x x x x x x  x
x x x x x x x x x x x
xx x x x x x x x x  x
x x x x x x x x x x x
x  x x x x x x x x xx
xx x x x x x x x x  x
xxxxxxxEEExxxxxxxx
       xxxxxxx


Where x are rock walls and E is the entrance.  This allows you to release your melee fighters without fear of ranged attackers swarming and killing them.

Also, if you have a merchants entryway but make it long and winding, then the distance will prevent siegers from using it to gain entrance.

[Leafsnail]

I just posted this in another topic, but it makes sense here:


The killing fields defense prevents line-of-sight, making ranged attackers useless.  You can build it in a long hallway, or simply in a large field around your fortress:

xx x x x x x x x x  x
x x x x x x x x x x x
xx x x x x x x x x  x
x x x x x x x x x x x
x  x x x x x x x x xx
xx x x x x x x x x  x
xxxxxxxEEExxxxxxxx
       xxxxxxx


Where x are rock walls and E is the entrance.  This allows you to release your melee fighters without fear of ranged attackers swarming and killing them.

Also, if you have a merchants entryway but make it long and winding, then the distance will prevent siegers from using it to gain entrance.

My merchant's entryway just has a drawbridge, but a good idea nonetheless.