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[Milkymalk]

After losing two fortresses to rampaging dwarves that went violent after seeing their friends getting killed by goblins, I tried to make the invulnerable fortress.

In a sandy wasteland, I set up a wall surrounding my entrance. I had wide underground gardens growing 5 kinds of crops, 3 surface gardens inside my walls, fortifications, all different kinds of booze, all rooms smoothed, battleaxes and crossbows for my guard, my dwarves were eating lavish meals of meat and plant and fish, and I had a small muskox herd running my meat industry. I found many gems and ore wherever I dug. The map had only few trees, but I took enough wood with me to get started. My dwarves were happy inside their little castle.

Then goblins attack, kill 5 dwarves who were cutting trees half the map away where I couldn't guard them, killing three of my recruits when one of the goblins managed to sneak inside my walls, and everybody starts throwing tantrums, killing each other.

Do I really need to have the guard patrol wherever any dwarves go?

[Ravenplucker]

Maybe wall off a huge area that would be your tree farm?

[x2yzh9]

Maybe wall off a huge area that would be your tree farm?

That would probably take a few years if you weren't modding your dwarves to insta-teleport[wich is possible, quite easily actually]

[Martin]

Maybe wall off a huge area that would be your tree farm?

That would probably take a few years if you weren't modding your dwarves to insta-teleport[wich is possible, quite easily actually]

If he doesn't have many trees, I'd just time my tree cutting to when it's most likely to be safe out. If enemies can path into the fortress, they'll have revealed themselves by the end of the first month of each season. I'd designate for cutting the middle of the second season, send out one dwarf for each 10 trees, and tell everyone to haul wood. Cut trees every season so nobody is out there for long.

[Blargityblarg]

I don't do treecutting. If I do, it's to clear land, not to create wood. If you're good with barrels and bins, you simply don't need that much wood, and with none in your stockpiles and maximum requests, you can get tonnes of it from caravans.

Treecutting is very  much an optional part of DF.

[Thanshin]

As far as I know, you can:

- Bring enough wood as to survive on that alone until you can buy more.
- Cut trees with mighty and armored axedwarves with lots of wardog pets (my usual option).
- Enclose a huge "tree cutting" area with a 1sq. wide moat (extremely fast for a legendary miner). And build a 3sq. wide drawbridge, guarded by traps and marksdwarves in bunkers with underground access from the fortress.
- Towercaps, if underground river is found.
- Have a small amount of comunal beds for everyone and build all bins and barrels with metal smelted with mineral coal or magma.

And, of course, the really dwarvish way:
- Create a full-map z-1 level of magma pumps that can create large surface magma pools with a single, lever equipped, safe square. When Urist McWoodcutter is attacked, he runs to one of those safespots to pull the lever and be instantly surrounded by magma.

[Grimlocke]

I only have 1 woodcutter at the time, hes allways a recent migrant. Haulers are tasked to carry the wood in. No need to put a valuable axedwarf there, they die anyway when its bowgoblins ambushing. Besides, making an axedwarf cut wood means having to give him the hunting labour, otherwise he tosses off his armour and shield. Which in turn means he will be chopping goats instead of trees.

Goblins occasionally slay my woodcutter, but well migrants aplenty. Never had a tamtrum spriral from one dead migrant.

It works rather well, havnt had a tantrum spiral in quite some time. Though possibly because my dwarves are too slave-driven to care about eachother.

I also find not chopping trees far too undwarven. Someone has to piss off those elves! Besides, soap and clear glass industry means needing lots of wood.

[shadowsofwhite]

I wonder if the elves that bring wood to sell know you are going to "deface" it almost immediately... I only ever have one wood cutter at a time, as well. Wood is not neccessarily that needed to cut, unless you are clear cutting (which I do all the time).

I have not tried this, but is it possible to assign a number of war dogs to your woodcutter?

[PhilbertFlange]

I tend to do the same as Ravenplucker. If you don't have the manpower to mass-designate a bunch of masons and build a decent sized walled-in tree farm, a pair of legendary miners can dig a channel to keep most invaders out.

Have them dig a completely trenched off tree farm, then dig down to join up with your fortress. You can start harvesting, and will only lose someone to a bowgoblin. You can then build the wall around the inside of the trench/moat at your leisure.

[Radivnal]

I can't say that I've ever had major problems in the wood-cutting department...but then in hindsight I've developed a habit of sending out massive woodcutting parties (of about 8 part-time woodcutters plus any idlers I keep on hauling duties) to deforest quadrants of the map directly after goblin sieges when I know for a fact that hostiles won't be super-prolific. I keep a large wood stockpile which I supplement with caravans. So it tends to be two or three years before I have to perform any refills.

Lately though I've been deforesting my map just to piss off the elves, which finally culminated into a laughable Fun elven attack yesterday. 

[JmzLost]

The only dwarves in my forts who don't have axes are my miners.  Work stops when I go to cut wood, but it gets done fast, and any gobbos that harrass my woodcutters have the whole fort right on top of them.  In later years, I don't need as much wood, so caravans usually supply plenty.

JMZ

[Ubiq]

I have not tried this, but is it possible to assign a number of war dogs to your woodcutter?

Sure, but why bother assigning war dogs to the woodcutter? Just enable Animal Training on your woodcutter and nobody else. The dogs he trains will follow him around and he won't get a bad thought if a goblin manages to kill one of them before being mauled to death by the rest. It's especially amusing when you have one dwarf train twenty or thirty dogs as you'll have fifty or more following him around in a few seasons thanks to the puppies, which are quite capable of shredding a goblin themselves.

And goblins sneaking into a fort can easily be remedied by posting guard animals at the entrance. I changed dwarves over to a use any pet race and usually request a couple Giant Cave Spiders from the caravan to watch over the front entrance.

[Radivnal]

I'm trying to imagine a goblin thief looking at the entrance of a fortress, seeing two massive, chained guard-spiders with venom and bits of kittens dripping down their fangs and thinking, "Psh. Easy mark."

...it's just not happening...

[alway]

I suggest using weapon traps. By making ever larger circles of weapon traps around your entrance, you will essentially create a nice safe zone in which you can do just about anything w/o fear of goblins. And place a few just randomly around. The groups of goblins will run over a few traps, be injured/dead, and the rest will likely retreat before even making it to the second layer of traps. The rings dont even have to be solid, just have them solid enough that there should be one or two traps every 5 squares around the circle's circumference.

[Martin]

If you have enough trees on the map and are going to be engaging in a lot of wood use (clear glass, etc) I've waited until I had 6-10 axes, created a small army of woodcutters, waited until I was reasonably certain the map was cleared of hostiles one season and then had 4 or so embark tiles cut down and an outer fence built out of wood. You can build the fence to the size you have have wood for and expand it, using your children to tear down old sections that you want moved. By using wood, the fence goes up much faster due to the lack of hauling. If you're going to be playing the map for a long time, you can always haul stone up there when it's safe and replace sections of the fence at your convenience.

Once things start to get fenced, each successive woodcutting area becomes easier to protect because you have a nearby safe area to work from.