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[Chewykittens]

Ok so here's the situation,  I'm in the 3rd year of my first fort that shows signs of greatness. I have orcs and primitive civilization mods, 5 or 6 civs are at war with me.  I have been in near constant siege since late the first summer.  In three almost 4 game years I have gotten 2 elf caravans and 1 dwarf caravan and 2 migrant waves (8 then 20 something)

And for some reason the primitive peoples don't go away over time, they stay put till I kill enough for the siege to break.  Problem is I don't have a military set up and I'm not really able to spare any more. (lost several dwarfs while applying magma to previous siege)

I'm considering abandoning, swarming is not much of an option, and waiting things out is not possible.

[MisterLich]

Collapse the ground beneath them and kill them with a cave in.

[Chewykittens]

How do I do that without exposing my 2 miners to the enemy? The risk of death is high as it is with the cave-in.

[MisterLich]

It's high risk, but if you are willing to abandon then perhaps you're ready to try a high risk option.  If the invaders are in a consistent area, have your miners dig out several sections of earth below them in large caverns.  Hold up each of the lower sections with supports and then channel them out completely so that they are held up by the supports.  Place hatches on either side of the top layer so that it makes a bridge.

Finally send your miner a little ways away from the main force and have them build up and to the surface, then lure the invaders down after attaching the supports and hatches to a level. (To make sure that you get all of them make the area carved out rather large).  Find a way to lure them onto the top segment them toss the lever and that should kill them in the cave in.

[NecroRebel]

How do I do that without exposing my 2 miners to the enemy? The risk of death is high as it is with the cave-in.

Dig up stairs in a ring around the place you want to collapse, build a support inside that area, then designate the tiles directly above the ring of up stairs for channeling. Miners can channel out squares from below if there if an up stair there. Then, just link the support to a lever and pull once all your people are out of the death zone.

If there are archers in the siege, however, there is still some danger of your people getting shot at. It is simply less risky than the alternatives.

[jocan2003]

Or simply dig under them ( you may loose a digguer if he is stupid enough to wander outside after the ramp stage )

1. Dig a nice tunnel under them dont breach up.
2. Build a bunch of stone fall trap maybe 40 or so in a narrow corridor ( 2 wide ) and once all trap are set. Set some restricted area around the furtur breach ( ground level not in tunnel to avoid miner to go out to go back to fortress )
3. Finaly breach the celling with a ramp and watch them all get insde and killed with stonefall trap. Long tedious but simple.

[jocan2003]

How do I do that without exposing my 2 miners to the enemy? The risk of death is high as it is with the cave-in.

Dig up stairs in a ring around the place you want to collapse, build a support inside that area, then designate the tiles directly above the ring of up stairs for channeling. Miners can channel out squares from below if there if an up stair there. Then, just link the support to a lever and pull once all your people are out of the death zone.

If there are archers in the siege, however, there is still some danger of your people getting shot at. It is simply less risky than the alternatives.

Hmm didnt know that, good to know, it open up some ideas i didnt know possible

[Chewykittens]

I'm going with the first plan stated, simply because it's somewhat resettable.  While having pot holes dotted across my map sounds fun I want something that can take care of sieges without to much danger. 

And I must add that this current siege came before the end of the season that the previous siege was killed in.

[Leonidas]

Cave-ins are messy, difficult to repeat, and often destroy valuable loot.  I say drown 'em or drop 'em. 

Dropping them requires a little extra digging.  A drop of five z-levels will usually kill or maim normal invaders.  But there's quite a bit of randomness to the damage, so it's best to have some war dogs or a soldier or two to finish off any survivors.

Drowning them requires water, of course, and a little extra engineering.  But there's no randomness.  It'll kill anything that breathes (which does not include the undead).

Either way, the basic plan is to lure them down a long zigzag tunnel with the promise of dwarf-killing.  Then flip some levers, lock 'em in, and then drown 'em or drop 'em.  If you design it right, all the loot will land somewhere close to your depot or smelters.

[Murphy]

Make a large airlock behind your entrance and fill it with spike traps. Connect them all to a single lever inside your fortress. Chain an expendable animal (or station an expendable recruit) in the airlock. Close inner doors, open outer doors. They go in to kill the victim, you shut the outer door behind them. Then set the lever to be pulled repeatedly. Profit! Repeat as needed.

Preferably the airlock should look like a long, thin passageway, so not too many traps are needed, yet many invaders get caught and impaled.

[MisterLich]

Cave-ins are messy, difficult to repeat, and often destroy valuable loot.  I say drown 'em or drop 'em. 

Dropping them requires a little extra digging.  A drop of five z-levels will usually kill or maim normal invaders.  But there's quite a bit of randomness to the damage, so it's best to have some war dogs or a soldier or two to finish off any survivors.

Drowning them requires water, of course, and a little extra engineering.  But there's no randomness.  It'll kill anything that breathes (which does not include the undead).

Either way, the basic plan is to lure them down a long zigzag tunnel with the promise of dwarf-killing.  Then flip some levers, lock 'em in, and then drown 'em or drop 'em.  If you design it right, all the loot will land somewhere close to your depot or smelters.

How are you proposing to drop the invaders?  They're not in cage traps so the dwarfs can't just pick them up and drop them down a shaft willy nilly.  Provide a bit more information, but I'm just asking because I'm intrigued.  Drowning is practical, a million ways to go about that method, but the only way I can think to intentionally drop invaders without a cave in is by draw bridge or a huge mesh of grates scattered about.

[Chewykittens]

I usually drown enemies, however the brook is frozen year round except for a small section 1 month a year.

[Kraegan]

How are you proposing to drop the invaders?  They're not in cage traps so the dwarfs can't just pick them up and drop them down a shaft willy nilly.  Provide a bit more information, but I'm just asking because I'm intrigued.  Drowning is practical, a million ways to go about that method, but the only way I can think to intentionally drop invaders without a cave in is by draw bridge or a huge mesh of grates scattered about.

Retracting a bridge they were walking on used to work in older versions of DF, perhaps that is what he is talking about.  If it does work then just make a long bridge and trap them on the bridge, flip a lever to retract it and they should all fall down to whatever is below.

[Leonidas]

How are you proposing to drop the invaders?

When the siege hits, I seal up everything except the siege entrance.  As the invaders come through the siege entrance, here's what they see:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1.  Outer Bridge.  Just a one-square retractable bridge over a pit.  It's not for locking invaders out; it's for sealing them in.

2.  The Maze.  A long tunnel, one square wide, that the invaders must walk down before reaching your fortress.  This has several purposes.  It gives you time to see the enemy coming and free up some labor for the lever-pulling to come.  It spreads out the invaders so that your soldiers and dogs can take the survivors in smaller groups.  And it allows you to lock in the siegers so that they can't run away if their leaders die or their siege time runs out.

This tunnel doesn't need to reach very far from your fortress.  It just zigzags back on itself over and over, and wastes the invaders' time.  Bonus ambiance points if you line the maze floor with the decorated skulls of invaders who have come before.

3.  The Pit.  A 10x10 square column running at least 8-10 z-levels high.  I wanted an actual pit (so that I could yell "This is Sparta!" as I pulled the levers), so I dug out all of the center except a support column.  And that didn't work so well.  The better design is just to carve out the outer rim of that square, from where they enter at the top down as deep as you want to dig.

4.  The Bridges.  Then you build a series of 1x10 retractable bridges down your pit in a square spiral.  The invaders start at the top and work their way down.  You build three bridges per z-level to cover three sides of the square, and then use a staircase to drop down to the next.  I only built two z-levels of this because I was desperately short on labor, and it worked surprisingly well.  Four or five z-levels would look better if you have the time and labor for it.  The bridges only go partway down the pit, and then there's a little up/down staircase that allows them to walk down all the way to the bottom.

Each bridge has its own lever.  Put the levers near your meeting area, for quick pull times.  Arrange the levers logically in relation to the bridges, so that you can quickly see which connects to which.

The hardest part of this design is giving your masons and mechanics access points from which to build and connect the bridges.  However you do it, carefully seal the access space back up afterwards, so that invaders don't get stuck on your walls.  A quarter of the creatures on a retracted bridge will be flung sideways before they fall, and you want a smooth chute to the bottom.

5.  The Killing Floor.  At the bottom of the pit you dig out the entire square (but leave a support column!).  This is where your dogs and soldiers finish off any survivors.  This is also where you put your dump pits to clean up the mess.  Bonus points if you arrange it so that stuff dumped from the killing floor ends up close to your magma smelters or depot.

6.  The Execution.  As the siege starts and you see them coming into your maze, free up some labor for quick lever-pulling.  As they start down the pit, pull the bridge at the bottom of the spiral, and they'll usually keep on going for a while before they realize that their path is no longer valid.  You can also pull the bridge at the top of the spiral to securely trap a definite group of invaders.  (Also pull the bridge at the entrance to your maze, so that the invaders who aren't yet in the pit won't wander off and miss all the fun.)  After that, you don't need careful timing for the rest of the bridges.  As long as they're somewhere on that spiral, you'll get them eventually.  (Except the annoying ones who get stuck on the staircases.)

Once they're trapped, you don't have to pull all the other levers at once.  If you have one or two soliders at the bottom, you can position them just below the bridge you're going to pull, so that they can immediately attack any invaders who survive the fall.  Everyone who falls is stunned for a few seconds, so your guys will have the advantage.

Eventually the siegers will decide that they don't like you any more, and they want to go home.  That's when you open your other entrance, the one the caravans come through.  Then the invaders realize that their only path home is down your spiral, past your killing floor, and out the other side of your fortress.  Fleeing invaders can slip past your melee soldiers pretty easily, so it's wise to build a special tunnel just for fleeing invaders, so that they don't meet your civilians on the way out.  Fleeing invaders avoid combat, but they will attack anyone who is directly in their path.

Once the invaders decide to flee, you can drop them, you can attack them, or you can let a few go so that they can go back to their tribes and warn the others of the horror that awaits them---at Deathtrap Fortress!  Bwhahahahaha!