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[Rowantwig]

I've been reading everything I could find here and on the wiki, and as far as I know, there's basically 3 ways to do it:

• Completely destroy the cage an everything in it with e.g. an atom smasher or an obsidian trap. This is probably the easiest and safest way to do it (especially if you need to kill a lot of things), but since you lose the valuable cage and also don't get any meat/bones/skin, it's not very economical.
  
• Put the cage inside e.g. a shooting gallery or a room filled with traps, hook it up to a lever, then pull the lever. This is also pretty safe, and you get to keep the cage and the meat/etc. But hooking up cages like this will consume a lot of mechanisms, and it takes a lot of time to designate.
  
• Put the cage next to a pit that is very deep and/or has deadly traps at the bottom, and then assign the creature to the pit. This is fast, easy, and economical, but it's very dangerous for whoever has to push the creature into the pit. From my experience the creature will more often than not attack the dwarf and/or flee instead of being pushed down the hole. Also, if you have a lot of creatures, it'll be difficult to know which creatures in the assign-list are the ones in the cages next to the pit. You'll have trouble at your stockpiles if the dwarves go for the wrong ones.

Of course, this all becomes even more problematic if the creature can fly, shoot or destroy buildings.

So, what do you do if you have 30+ caged animals/prisoners that you want to disassemble?

[blue emu]

I use option #2... set up the cages in a secure room (The Arena of Blood!), disarm any armed Prisoners, hook the Cages up to levers and then use the Prisoners and/or wild beasts to train my Military Dwarves. You get the Cages and Mechanisms back, and can strip the bodies of clothes, meat, bones, etc.

It does take up a lot of time, though.

[Repulsion]

 For me, option two. Just dig out a little rectangle, out of any hall, and then build fortifications between the walls nearest to the hall, build a small tunnel to the room, and put a door in the tunnel, build a cage or two, hook them up to a lever, and if you want to kill something, assign some marksdwarves next to the fortifications, assign the creature to the cage, forbid the door, and pull the lever. Good training for your marksdwarves.

[EddyP]

You forgot 'pit them against each other'.

[Hamster Man]

Eddy's idea is good. I actually keep a cage Cyclops next to my hallway, and set it up so that if the enemy breach through my traps, knock down the doors, and are still coming, I throw a switch and release the dogs of war (kept in a room across from the cyclops). And when that inevitable fails, the cyclops!

Of course, if the cyclops wins, he'll get caught in another cage traps. Or I drop lava on him. Everyone wins! (Except the cyclops, he kind of gets it in the eye)

[thijser]

I have a drowning room where I line up tens of goblins at the same time and link them it's slow but a good training course for all the mechanics I need (I have 5 legendaries and it's still not enough!)

[Fleshbits]

How do you move a specific cage to the spot for this option #2?
If I designate a stockpile for animals then they put empty cages along with the cages with animals i want to butcher later, along with the cages containing enemies....

[PatrikLundell]

Firstly, necroing a 10 year old thread isn't the best way of going about things, as a lot happens in 10 years.

In this case, though, those options are still valid (and mass pitting still being dangerous, although possible slightly less so).
To answer your question, you build cages (as buildings) and then hook up levers to them (you can't hook up levers to stockpiled cages).

I use option 4, i.e. use impulse ramps to send a minecart filled with prisoner cages (set up to be loaded as per normal) to crash into a wall with a fortification, have the impact throw most of the prisoners out of their cages (some remain inside, and some cages tend to get stuck in the fortification, requiring periodic "cleaning" rebuilding). On the other side I have a fall and smoothed natural stone walls (to make climbing difficult/impossible), and a pressure plate atom smashing array of 10 tile long drawbridges. An override lever is used to lower the bridges when stuck in the Up position due to a prisoner standing on the pressure plate. Once all prisoners have been eliminated, there's some cleanup to do of those who died on impact. Clothing worn is smashed with their wearers, while those who died leave their junk behind (I strip prisoners of weapons and metal armor first). Once the corpses have been cleaned away, the cages can be recovered.
Doesn't work for ogres, as they're too large to be smashed. For those I build the cage inside a corridor with a minecart repeater menacing spike trap in front of a door (ogres are building destroyers, and so are encouraged to stand on top of the spikes while destroying the door, which has to be replaced once in a while).

[Fleshbits]

In this case, though, those options are still valid (and mass pitting still being dangerous, although possible slightly less so).
To answer your question, you build cages (as buildings) and then hook up levers to them (you can't hook up levers to stockpiled cages).

If I have cages with goblins inside:

* hit b
* select cage
* place cage in my designated kill room with fortifications and door built
* select cage containing goblin

The result is:
* dwarf places empty cage at designated spot
* dwarf leads goblin by the hand and releases him next to cage
* goblin murders dwarf and roams free

Don't ever get to the lever part, because now goblin is running around murdering people.

So, all this talk of "put cage here" and "put cage there" or "put cage on a cart" or "push cage with a fart", make no sense to me at all. How are people putting a cage with a captured enemy anywhere at all, when the cage trap has caught something?

[PatrikLundell]

Hm, wait, if I read your description correctly, you build an EMPTY cage and then haul the prisoner from the cage it was in to the new one? If you do that you're subjecting yourself to the issues of mass pitting, but without any of the benefits...

The cage you should order built is the one in which your prisoner is already. That will cause the dorfs to haul the cage with the prisoner inside to the new location and build it. You CAN stuff more prisoner into it, but each "transport" will run the risk of an escape.
Regardless, it's often a good idea to strip prisoners of weapons if they're to be used for target practice, while you may want to keep their armor to allow them to "serve" a bit longer (especially if you use wooden bolts).

To build a specific cage you'll have to change the display to show the detailed list of available cages, not the overall summary.

[Fleshbits]

Hm, wait, if I read your description correctly, you build an EMPTY cage and then haul the prisoner from the cage it was in to the new one?

No. I did not issue an order to build an empty cage. However, that is what the game did.
Again, I hit 'b', selected my spot, hit x, selected the cage **with the goblin in it** It is listed like a cage when buying an animal (goblin male sign(wood cage)).

The cage you should order built is the one in which your prisoner is already.

Yup.

That will cause the dorfs to haul the cage with the prisoner inside to the new location and build it.

Nope. Want a video? I'll make one after work.

It made an empty cage, then took the goblin by the hand outside of the cage, and led him to it, then set him free.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't watch videos unless I absolutely have to, so making one would be a wasted effort, and I'm not accusing you of lying. I'm just saying that what you report does not match how it should work, but I don't understand why it differs.

Non tame creatures (and items marked as forbidden) are removed from cages before the empty cages are hauled to the trade depot when the cages are marked for trading, but that's about the only case where cage hauling results in release as far as I know.

Explicitly removing creatures from the list marked to be in a cage causes them to be release, of course, and I believe that can only be done for built cages (to get them out of non built cages you'd have to haul them to a built cage, chain, or a pasture, and as far as I've experience, I've had to build cages and hook them up to levers to get citizens out of cages they've gotten trapped in due to dodging or the cages being webbed because you can't normally cage citizens, so they won't show up in any of the lists).

[Loci]

Want a video? I'll make one after work.

A save immediately after you've ordered the cage built would be more helpful. You can upload it to DFFD ( http://dffd.bay12games.com ).

Explicitly removing creatures from the list marked to be in a cage causes them to be release...

And "release" for hostile creatures involves a dwarf hauling up another empty cage and "releasing" the hostile into the new cage.

[DerMeister]

Drowning chamber not work?

[Bumber]

Can't drown in a cage.