So I've been playing with this mod for a few days, finally stuck with one fort long enough to get my first Beastman attack which I was most certainly not ready for. Luckily I had started on my gatehouse already, but the rest of my exterior wall was not even under construction yet. Did manage to get my drawbridge completed and triggered, though I had to sacrifice me near-legendary marksdwarf to hold them off long enough. The beastmen then made extremely short work of the war mastiffs guarding my gate and just loitered around, lacking anywhere to path to. Then, while the beastmen were just hanging around, a Thunderbird showed up. I am actually extremely glad the beastmen were still there, as my fortress was still unroofed. The Thunderbird died very quickly, and only managed to slightly damage a few of the invaders. It did, however, manage to move them away from my fort and to the edge of the map, so I figured it was worth the risk to lower the gate and send out my remaining hunter to try to take a few shots at their leader. He managed to get in range and fire off his entire quiver, putting *mammoth tough bone bolts* in quite a few different beastmen, though his lack of focused fire meant that none of them were badly injured enough to be killed (that's one thing I've noticed about this game, nobody dies except to extreme physical trauma or a lucky headshot. I've had pages and pages of ineffectual melee combat between two untrained and poorly armed fighters end suddenly when one of them finally managed to push the other's brain through his skull). It was at this point I noticed that I didn't have any bolts left.
And then I noticed that a new version is out. I'm not too sure on these things, but I have to gen a new world for this one, right? Or is this a small/simple enough update that that wouldn't be necessary? Either way, I probably still will, if only to incorporate the new hauling mechanics and a better defense strategy into my fortress design.
Anyways, this mod is really cool! Thank you everyone who contributed to it.
edit: or maybe I could just read the previous post more clearly? Still gonna make a new world, though. I've been meaning to try out a savage taiga...