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[MoonLightBird]

As stated above I want to make an above ground fort with no army. My basic defense will be war dogs and whatever cool things the elves bring me. Shutting my fort off is not an option because that is boring as hell. I am no good with magma but I have had many successful traps made with water including a steam trap using a burning bin of charcoal. Anytime I try to use magma it overflows and destroys a good chunk of my forts. Any good, over elaborate traps would be great. Also any tips on using magma would be helpful.

[Cydonian Monk]

I don't usually build above-ground, not being much of an elf, but there's no reason you couldn't force your enemies through a flood-trap tunnel to get under your walls and into the, ah, weird above-ground stuff.  That would be my second line of defense behind a long line of weapon traps.  As for magma, I'm not a fan of pump-stacks, so unless you can find a source of it on the surface, I've got no advice.  (But you could always make the flood-trap a magma-flood-trap for added !!FUN!!.)

Can't help you with the flying critters, though.  I figure they'll just zip over the wall and eat your "no-army" mamby-pamby tree-hugging surface-dwelling dwarves elves.

Anytime I try to use magma it overflows and destroys a good chunk of my forts.

I guess that explains your avatar. 

[rephikul]

cage traps everywhere. Make sure all paths are only 1z-high. Later on, lace the place with upright spikes to combat trap avoiders. Optionally mod in lots of trainable creatures to let them fight for you.

[The Dog Delusion]

Perhaps a retracting drawbridge that drops intruders into the caverns? It'd be fun to watch them splat. Or for bonus points, you can drop them in a way that just cripples them (into water? have a vertical cascade of drawbridges?), and then have them try to path out of the caverns by placing a stairway on the opposite side or something...break their legs and then have them try to escape by dragging themselves through a subterranean cavern. And then have some wardogs stationed around the exit anyhow, just so that after a horrific ordeal of shattered legs, cavern monsters, and dragging themselves to escape through the pitch black, they get mauled just as they reach the light at the end of the tunnel. And then have your body stockpile placed at the entrance to your fort, so that any entering or leaving can see what that mysterious drawbridge is for.

[MoonLightBird]

Now that sounds like fun fish!

[Brandstone]

Goblin skydiving, build a one tile wide floor several z-levels above the ground and line it with upright spikes linked to a lever or repeater system. Grade the skydivers based on how far apart their body parts land. Bonus points for using glass flooring and spikes. If any masons deem these brave skydivers worthy of statuary, you should place the resulting art next to the entrance ramp/stairs.

[twilightdusk]

Long, winding trap corridors seems to be your best option. One way you can implement it is to have a 1-tile wide path with empty space to either side, so if an enemy dodges at your traps they'll fall into the pit. If it's deep enough, it could kill them, otherwise it will force them to return to the start of the path if they still want to invade.

[Hans Lemurson]

"Goblin Grinders"

Put a pressure-plate next to a hatch covering a pit.  When the goblin walks on the pressure-plate, the hatch will instantly open leaving only an impassible pit beneath it.  The goblin will now be forced to find a new path into your fortress.  If you have 2 of these, then the goblin will continuously walk back and forth between them.  Place some traps in the corridor and even the toughest enemies will eventually die a death by a thousand cuts.

[Conrad]

Don't even let the goblins see your walls. I like to make elaborate traps out near the edges of the fort using bait animals and pressure plates. Right before they get to the tame groundhog at the end, they step on a pressure plate and plunge 15 z levels. Then you can get elaborate, making entire goblin-motels with bait animals and whatever means you want. With some levers and pumps, I once managed to make a goblin-motel/obsidian-caster for 10 squads at a time. THAT was a useful device.

[CaptRory]

You could put together a long narrow twisty walkway over a large pit. You know the sort we hate navigating in FPS games. Then line it with weapon traps so that the enemies dodge into the pit. You could have a wide, safe, narrow entrace that's blocked off by a drawbridge when enemies arrive forcing the enemy to path over the Swan Dive Path of Splatty Doom. Bonus points for digging down to the cave and letting the beasties down there feast upon the survivors. Hehehe~

[doomdome]

"Goblin Grinders"

Put a pressure-plate next to a hatch covering a pit.  When the goblin walks on the pressure-plate, the hatch will instantly open leaving only an impassible pit beneath it.  The goblin will now be forced to find a new path into your fortress.  If you have 2 of these, then the goblin will continuously walk back and forth between them.  Place some traps in the corridor and even the toughest enemies will eventually die a death by a thousand cuts.

I vote this. But perhaps you could use raising bridges instead of hatches so that flying nasties don't get through either. Perhaps you could, as an exercise in minor logic systems, make the traps spikes with the pressure plates starting a repeater and extra dwarf-detecting plates outside to cancel it. (This would help with trapavoid enemies without the risk of your dwarves impaling themselves.) And you'll definitely need to build a ceiling over your fort ASAP...

[Hans Lemurson]

It only works with hatches, since like doors, they have zero delay.

Bridges have a 100 frame delay.  The average groundspeed velocity of an unladen goblin is around 10 frames per tile, so in theory you could connect a pressure-plate to a really long retracting bridge and have it disappear as they walk across it.

Alternately, there's the "Path of Despair", where they have to walk across a narrow causeway covered in fairly inexpensive traps.  The traps don't kill them...their fate is instead sealed when they attempt to "dodge" and end up in a good ol' "Pit of Doom".

The really nice thing about the "Path of Despair" is that unlike most "trap-lined corridors", itwill almost never jam or become clogged with corpses.  The built-in "Friend or Foe" detection inherent to weapon-traps is nice too.

[Bordellimies]

You need pits filled with war animals. Make a dungeon or something like that, with different "levels", each level gets harder and harder (like first level has 1 wardog, if they kill it they can go to level 2)

[SurfinShroom]

animal bombs.

Or my favourite, a pressure plate tunnel of doom. 10-ish weapon traps but the end of the tunnel a pressure plate closes one door opening the other, which makes the creature turn around and try to go the other way, landing on another pressure plate which... you get the idea. Kills anything.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

Make a drawbridge with a pressure plate at the end. Hook plate to bridge. Watch hilarity ensue as goblins kill their buddies following them. Preferably a 1 tile wide bridge. With a few traps at the end for the goblin(s) that killed their buddies.