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[The Yellow Peril]

Yeah, nothing in the game can get past a raised bridge.

Unless it's a building destroyer, or can fly, or, god help you, a flying building destroyer.

As people have already pointed out, I was right. I didn't mention that the 1-tile bridge needs to have a solid z-level of rock above and below it, which might have been part of the misunderstanding though.

I've actually used this indestructability to capture the entire HFS inside a relatively narrow corridor, which is sealed off with bridges. My plan was to flood the corridor with lava, and then fill the z-level above with water, and channel though, encasing all the HFS in obsidian. It didn't work though, apparently demons can walk through fortifications if they have 1/7 or more magma on them

[Macalano]

This goes along with my lazy embarking strategy. To absolutely ensure you will have no fun at the start in an evil biome, do this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Remove the ramps on the outside edge, leave some room inside the "moat" to carve out your fort. Build a retractable drawbridge when you feel safe.

[Hyndis]

Two options:

Get underground. Fast. Faster. Seal up the entrance with a drawbridge.

Embark with military gear to outfit 1-2 soldiers with axes and have them defend.

[Africa]

How DO you make your civilian woodcutters hold onto their axes when drafted? In my experience there is no correlation between whether I assign them to have axes or not, and whether they drop their axes on the ground or not.

[Shrugging Khan]

The problem with soldiers in an early fortress is that they either need a lot of expensive gear to stay alive, or a working health care industry. Either you sacrifice a lot of embark points to buy armour, or you sacrifice a dwarf to specialise in medicine (and you also lose embark points for buying all the items necessary to run a hospital).

[Hyndis]

Embark with some copper bars, an anvil, and wood. Turn wood into charcoal. Forge copper bars into weapons and armor. Do that before anything else. Sure, its just copper, but that is good enough for zombie elk.

Then you can have those now armed dwarves guard your fortress entrance.

[Shrugging Khan]

Yea...IF you survive long enough for that.

[breadbocks]

Two options:

Get underground. Fast. Faster. Seal up the entrance with a drawbridge.

Embark with military gear to outfit 1-2 soldiers with axes and have them defend.

Or you could just build a wall, and save the stone/time needed to build a mechanics workshop, a db, and three mechanisms. And the time needed to link them.

[melomel]

How DO you make your civilian woodcutters hold onto their axes when drafted? In my experience there is no correlation between whether I assign them to have axes or not, and whether they drop their axes on the ground or not.

Short answer:  You don't.  At least, I haven't figured out how to.  But it's fun to watch a naked woodcutter try to wrestle to death a werewolf that has forsaken its claws in favor of a pigtail glove taken from its first victim.  (They went on and on in a total stalemate for several minutes, until the werewolf eventually used up its migrating-through-the-map time and ambled offscreen.)

It's part of the Fun.

[noodle0117]

So far I'm meeting nothing but harpies.
I don't think my newly dug ditch is doing very well in blocking their paths.

[Shrugging Khan]

I'd never dig a trench on my valuable surface soil. It's where trees grow! It's where I gather sand! It's where I occasionally help myself to some berries!

[I am Leo]

I embarked on a haunted glacier. My dwarves only see the surface on their way in. Job done.

[Shrugging Khan]

I embarked on a haunted glacier. My dwarves only see the surface on their way in. Job done.

And that, kids, is how the north was won 

[monk12]

How DO you make your civilian woodcutters hold onto their axes when drafted? In my experience there is no correlation between whether I assign them to have axes or not, and whether they drop their axes on the ground or not.

Short answer:  You don't.  At least, I haven't figured out how to.  But it's fun to watch a naked woodcutter try to wrestle to death a werewolf that has forsaken its claws in favor of a pigtail glove taken from its first victim.  (They went on and on in a total stalemate for several minutes, until the werewolf eventually used up its migrating-through-the-map time and ambled offscreen.)

It's part of the Fun.

I've found that Axes get claimed for either woodcutting or military, but not both. So if you want to have your woodcutter join the military, you must first disable woodcutting, causing him to drop his axe. Then, draft him, and he'll pick up his axe and go slaughter things. Once that's done, you have to remove axes from his squad so that he'll drop the axe again, then return him to civilian duty and enable woodcutting.

Yeah, its a pain in the butt. I find it helps to either A) avoid this rigmarole by cutting down a bunch of nearby trees at the start and then disable woodcutting/assign squad axes in order to have your military dwarf do his other duties while carrying an axe he won't drop, or to B) make a weapon stockpile near your dwarf when making him drop the axe so he doesn't gallivant off-screen and aggro while his axe is on a random mountainside.

[eclipsetail]

You could just change the amount of points you embark with to get armor/weapons early on.

It sounds like cheating, but if you think it's needed to survive...