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[SkyRender]

 I'm rather used to Goblins sending a token force, maybe one or two thieves at regular intervals and the occasional ambush of maybe half a dozen early on in a fort's life.  It's easy enough to deal with that.  What I was not expecting was for their first assault on this particular fort to include 11 attackers: 2 lashers, 3 wrestlers, 4 bowmen, and 2 crossbowmen (as well as a coinciding attack of two thieves).  To say it was a bloodbath is generous; the screen was pretty much covered in arrows at one point.  Little bastards caught my workers in mid-construction and murdered two of them (and wounded quite a few more).  It's a damn good thing I set a line of traps leading up to my fort entrance, or my population would have been drastically reduced.  As it was, they murdered most of the human caravan guards (who stupidly charged right into a waiting rain of rapid-fire arrows).

 Anyone else had bum luck like this for their first ambush?

[Nether]

I've had some ambushes that were in total larger as any siege I've had in my first 5 years, but never any bowmen.
I really hate ambushes, I dislike the idea that you cannot see the enemy

[Don Blake]

Forgot to build enough stockpiles or guard my wagon.  Resultingly, kobold's nicked quite a few things, and got together an ambush with a bunch of bowmen.

Of course, after they shot two champion wrestlers, several of them got killed, and they ran off, a kobold thief wandered into the middle of the military dwarves who were working their grief for their comrades off by sparring.  So that ended predictably.

[Radivnal]

Typically the amount of Goblins sent against your fortress is proportional to your culminated Fortress Wealth. So if you busted out a ton of trade goods then you're going to get a ramped up response.

[SkyRender]

My fort's net wealth in the 1.5 year span between founding and the ambush was all of about 150,000.  I made that much on a previous fort and received no ambushes for 2 years on my previous one (and the ambushes there only ever had 4 to 6 Goblins, never more than 2 bowmen).  I suspect it was just my usual bad luck with randomizers at work.  Either that, or Goblins consider a fort more ambush-worthy if it has a magma pipe and chasm.

[ungulateman]

Really, eleven gobs isn't that much. One of my mature forts gets sieges of 50+ gobs every year and a half or so.

[SkyRender]

Aye, there's the rub, though: this was essentially a newborn fort.  Goblins tend to send smaller ambush parties at forts before they've built up their wealth and population.  This force sent against me was a third of my total fort's population.

[Skorpion]

I have a fort where the goblins always always always bring ranged weapons in some form. So many dead champions and elites...

[Aspgren]

I was besieged by goblins. and then elves showed up. and then a SKELETAL DRAGON showed up!

They were all on the map at once. But they were all pushovers. especially the elves.

[Kyronea]

I'm rather used to Goblins sending a token force, maybe one or two thieves at regular intervals and the occasional ambush of maybe half a dozen early on in a fort's life.  It's easy enough to deal with that.  What I was not expecting was for their first assault on this particular fort to include 11 attackers: 2 lashers, 3 wrestlers, 4 bowmen, and 2 crossbowmen (as well as a coinciding attack of two thieves).  To say it was a bloodbath is generous; the screen was pretty much covered in arrows at one point.  Little bastards caught my workers in mid-construction and murdered two of them (and wounded quite a few more).  It's a damn good thing I set a line of traps leading up to my fort entrance, or my population would have been drastically reduced.  As it was, they murdered most of the human caravan guards (who stupidly charged right into a waiting rain of rapid-fire arrows).

 Anyone else had bum luck like this for their first ambush?

Not exactly, but then, regularly in my games, the goblins will send one token ambush and then the first seige will have seventy or more goblins.

[NW_Kohaku]

Lucky... I've got a fortress wealth of over 2 million right now (start of year 6), and I've only had one seige, and it was about 12 goblins that didn't even get past my first two layers of traps before fleeing.  My marksdwarves didn't even get a shot at them, much less my melee military.  (Although I did catch a nice elf lasher slave among the goblins, which I could strip naked and put in my zoo, in case any of my dwarves actually liked elves, or just wanted to throw things at the "hairless monkey".)

[LoneJedi7]

i tend to get years with either absolutely nothing, several massive seiges, or several ambushes. (the next seige or ambush tends to happen literally right after the last one for me.) its kinda neet because if i get one seige or ambush at the beginning of the year, i know its gonna be a good year for fun; and if i get nothing at the beginning, i can expect that its gonna be a good year to get some architectural work done.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, I went into legends mode, and was looking at my history, and it said that the goblins had declared war on me "for reasons that scholars still argue over, and may always remain a mystery", but that the war ended a year ago.  I guess that means that I'll have no more attacks for a while, excepting kobolds, which have so far been able to run away with nothing more than a dead elf's sock, and two wooden arrows, so THEY aren't going to be much of a threat.

[Grendus]

I think if the goblins are actually at war with the dwarves (currently they're hardcoded to attack, but the civs may or may not actually be mad at each other) they start sieging earlier. I had an elf siege show up two seasons in once, not sure why. This was a long time ago, before I learned about legends mode, so I never found out why.

[NW_Kohaku]

Hey, remember how I just said I hadn't seen any real goblin aggression (only one seige with only about 12 goblins, one elf), even though I now have fort with a value of about 2.4 million dbs?

HAHA! Just kidding! 

Three squads of about 16 apiece, each led by elites have just showed up on my doorstep...

And I'd even deactivated my entire military, since it had been so long...  Fortunately, my fort's enterance is such an elaborate deathtrap that it's actually fairly inconvenient for my dwarves.

Oh, the forges will be warm with the glow of melting goblinite tonight!  (Well, OK, and with the magma that always sits under it...)

edit: pfft! HA! The elite lasher just walked up to the bridge across my well channel for no apparent reason (was already on the right side of the channel), and got caught in my wildlife-trapping cages.  The rest of his squad is just looking around like, "... umm... what now?" before a few of the others also start stepping on the handful of remaining cage traps that aren't even close to my gates.

Ahhh, this is what I was missing.  Encroaching forces of darkness that pose less threat to me than a couple groundhogs.

edit 2: Holy crap! I thought fortifications were supposed to protect your dwarves from ranged attacks! Their elite bowman just fired every single shot straight through the second-story fortifications from a dozen tiles away, killed a dog, killed my second-best marksdwarf, and crippled my best one before he simply ran out of ammo. 

edit 3: Fortunately, unlike my other guy, my top marksdwarf has been kept rotating in and out of the military with pump duty and record keeping, so she's Superdwarvenly Tough.  She's got both legs and both arms in the red, has lost a knee, a hand, a finger, and a couple toes, and is extreme pain, but is actually still firing crossbow bolts down at the attackers (unfortunately, not at the elite, just at the random goblin noobs).  If she actually lives through this, I'm making her a statue... and ensuring that I never put marksdwarves in my sniper's tower again until the archers are dead or fleeing.