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[herpderp]

I was unsatisfied with how weak and cowardly goblins are, so I installed the orc mod. Holy balls, man. They tear through my military like paper, and traps are totally ineffective against them. How the hell am I expected to survive them this early(third year) short of totally blocking off my entrance?!

Goblins are too weak and orcs are too strong. Isn't there a middle ground?!

[Reese]

you could mod goblins to have a larger size, that will make them more dangerous in combat... I'd say look at the difference between orc raws and goblin raws and add a few of the orc features to your goblins... just [trap avoid] should make goblin ambushes more FUN.

[herpderp]

Actually the real problem is that goblin sieges start too late. By the time they do my champions are so strong that they practially spill the goblins' entrails just by flexing.

[Leonidas]

1.  Use bridges over pits to control the flow of incoming orcs.  Break them up into manageable groups.

2.  Drop them from long bridges.  Two or three z-levels will usually produce some injuries and a nice stun while your dwarves finish them off.

3.  Drown 'em.

[martinuzz]

Your orcs only showed up in (early) year 3?
You have been lucky. They are reported to come as soon as year 1.

Indeed, the orcs are a lot tougher than goblins. Also, they are trapimmune, making conventional hallway trapping useless.

However, a decently trained and arm(or)ed military will have little problems dispatching them, combined with Leonidas' advice.

Also, even though they are trapimmune, there are ways to make traps activate on them:
- knocking them out on top of a trap with a small controlled cave-in.
- webbing over the traps with GCS webs. (Be careful, as your own dwarves will also trigger webbed-over traps. A weaver is key to disarming them)

[Lord Shonus]

Their biggest danger is the number of wrestlers. Make sure you give your trrops wrestling training.

[herpderp]

Your orcs only showed up in (early) year 3?

I got a siege in year 2, back then it was clear I had no choice but to wall my fortress in. This time I thought I could stand a chance... I was wrong. I tried several times but even when I separated them via the drawbridge it was too much. I finally just gave up and walled myself in again. and waited for three seasons for the orcs to leave. sheesh.

[Raphite1]

    If you just want faster-sieging goblins instead of using the orcs, I think all you need to do is remove the [BABYSNATCHER] tag from the goblin entry in the raw/objects/entity_default file. They won't steal your babies anymore, but they'll siege sooner.

[Kietharr]

Fortifications, a moat and marksdwarves are how you survive orcs.

[piesquared]

Orcs are... well, intentionally difficult. Personally I'm in a similar situation - goblins too whimpy, but I'm not a big military guy so orcs are perhaps a bit extreme. They start sieging when your wealth reaches some unspecified level... as early as the first summer in extreme cases, the first winter in more typical skilled player cases. If you take wealth-increase slowly they take longer to arrive.

Version one: non-traditional traps. My most recent fort went a sort of "cheap" way of it - a set of repeating drawbridges over a major river as the only way into the fort. Drawbridges go down, crushing any orcs standing on the lip. Orcs path over drawbridge and start walking. Drawbridges go up, dumping any orcs on them into the water. Rinse and repeat. I think I had one orc get all the way over so far, and that because I had everyone busy when a siege came so it took a while to pull the lever. Orcs are immune to "traditional" traps like cages and weapon traps, but not to drowning, burning, dumping traps, cave-in traps and the like.

Version two: military, hard and strong. Draft a whole bunch of people, then give them crossbows with lots of practice bolts and sufficient high-quality battle bolts. Machine-gun speed death bolts blotting out the sky from behind fortifications is nice, with some melee for mop-up. Throw in a few ballista and catapult as well for good measure.

Version three: edit the creature_orc.txt file. Reduce their SIZE and/or DAMBLOCK. Reduce their litter size. Take away trAPAVOID from them and their mounts. Reduce the damage of their attacks. Edit entity_orc.txt and stop them using bows (and crossbows if they're still in there) or mod bows to deal blunt damage (and less of it).

Version four: lose the orcs, buff the goblins. There are a few "better goblin" mods out there, at least one with several difficulties (from "traditional" to "fire throwing death machines"). Or edit them yourself. SIZE, DAMBLOCK, etc.

[herpderp]

And where would i find the "better goblin" mods? I don't see anything on the wiki's mod list, and googling hasn't given me anything useful

[Derakon]

Better Goblins

Found by using the forum search to look for "better goblins" in the Modding subforum.

[Count Dorku]

2.  Drop them from long bridges.  Two or three z-levels will usually produce some injuries and a nice stun while your dwarves finish them off.

Seven to ten Z-levels will lead to lots of them dying.

Just putting that out there.