Enough stonefall traps do the job. At least in 31_10 it only takes a half dozen or so whacks to severely injure a goblin and send him running. Or at least trying to run, chances are after the first two or three he will have taken enough damage that he will keep passing out. If you're lucky, he will stumble through more untriggered ones on the way out. In 31_10 I've turned away at least three ambushes by nothing but rocks dropping on them, killing enough by suffocation or bleeding out, and causing the rest to run away. Plus they are absurdly easy to get a ton of them set up right away and will help your mechanic train. I usually bring a dwarf with mechanic/mason for this and masonry work.
Don't bother with getting a military up quickly, it's still pretty buggy and filling your entryway with 100 traps, even if they are stonefall traps, will be more effective until you get steel weapons and armor and have your dwarves training for at least a couple seasons.
D-B-D
Mass-dumping designation.
This. Put garbage dump on single-tiles all over the place to minimize the distance your dwarves have to walk to dump stuff. Put dump zones next to the storage areas and put workshops next to the dump zone and periodically reclaim all the stone that gets put in it (D-B-c I think) and your dwarves will have a handy supply of stone.
It wasn't immediately obvious to me at first, but rocks in your storage zone take up tiles so other stuff can't be put there. Once you dig out a storage area you need to clear the rocks out before you can use all the space.
- use the work order manager. Don't waste time by searching your workshops and then selecting stuff manually by scrolling around.
Also this. It took me forever to realize the utility of the work order manager. Get your manager/bookkeeper an office ASAP and use this for everything. The other advantage of the job manager is that jobs will stay in the queue until you have supplies/trained dwarves to fulfill them.
Gather outside plants, set up a couple outside farm plots, grow the stuff you collect. If you have sand and find rope reed, grow some of those and process them into thread, have a weaver/clothier make it into cloth and then make bags out of them. Getting a bag industry up quick makes getting a glassmaking industry up faster. And glassmaking lets you make glass weapon trap components which are good vendor bait and also fill weapon traps.
Grow anything that can be brewed and get a brewer up and running. Booze is the most important item at keeping your fortress running efficiently - if you run out of booze work will slow to a halt, including your brewer, which makes it that much slower at making more booze.
Don't let your chef cook booze. Go into the stocks menu z-kitchen, and disable cooking on booze. When your fort is first starting your chef can cook all your booze before you realize it and your dwarves will get pissed off and stop working. You have to keep going into the kitchen menu and turning off when your brewer makes new types of booze - cooking is enabled by default apparently.
Make sure your ranger has Ambushing as his top ranked skill on embark. If so, he will get free leather armor and a crossbow. Make sure he also has bolts to work with. Although ammo is still buggy even in the latest version it's a lot better about hunters picking up ammo to hunt. A steady incoming supply of meat keeps your cook busy making a wider variety of fancy meals which as mentioned before sell for a lot. They also make your dwarves happy when they eat a fine meal.