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[Rushmik]

I'm curious to know what your fort defenses are? A hallway of sharp slicing things? A lock-and-forget drawbridge? Something incredibly dwarfy, ala Boatmurdered? Extra points for screenshots!

Personally, I lure my attackers in with a fluffy kitten before giving them a shower of sharp, sharp bolts. This fort is a cavern-challenge, so there's not much breathing room for elaborate meat grinders. Also, the best metal I can churn out is bronze, so I tend to avoid melees.

EDIT: While we're at it, what crazy dwarfy defense ideas have you got? My latest is a water cannon at the front gate, looking something like a giant tower (but filled with water and a floodgate at the bottom.). Automated pumps would keep it topped up. Can pressurized water make things airborne?

[SirAaronIII]

Bronze is actually slightly better than iron for a number of things. I forget exactly what, but it's either sharp weapons or armor.
On topic: I use a hall of first cage traps, then weapon traps, then some vertical bars that can be raised with a lever, and at the end there's a drawbridge. I'm not very creative.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Massive hall of cage traps, gladiator arena. I tend to pit a continuous wave of elves and goblins at my military.

[The Scout]

A cage of chickens. Not just a cage full of chickens, a cage full of flesh eating ravenous zombie chickens.

[EveryZig]

A 3 wide spiraling path (shaped like the icon of a NPC dwarf (like the caravan liason)) with the ramp to the surface in the center of the spiral.. The inner wall of the spiral (the shortest rout to the fort entrance) contains repeating spikes and a few weapon traps (weapon traps far apart from each-other so as not to create large safe areas if when they get clogged. The 2 wide remaining space is taken up by retracting bridges (opened when a siege arrives) over a long drop (in my current fort about 16 z levels). Stairs to the bottom of the ramp are near the surface. so any survivors who make it back up still need to re-run most of the trap course. These stairs (covered with a retracting bridge to keep enemies from wandering down into the pit to stand around their fallen squad leaders) also go down to the cavern layers, so the invader trap doubles as a FB (and hopefully eventually HFS) spike corridor. The fact that the spike path is on the inside of the spiral means that flying enemies will move along that path rather than along the un-trapped bridges. The wall along the edge of the whole thing is carved into fortifications so my archers can shoot at stuff. I have one FB kill with it so far.

So in basically, an elaborate spike/dodging trap shaped like a dwarf.

I tried a magma moat once, but the Hellfire Imps (Defense mod) just swam around in it and I couldn't get rid of them.

[noob]

a hole in the ground with a hall of weapon traps and a chained rabbit at the end of the hallway.

[QuantumMenace]

Flammable stone mechanisms installed in a bridge can be set on fire with magma. I intend to make a burning bridge setup with flammable stone artifact mechanisms installed in steel bridges so they never have to be replaced.

[Krelos]

My fortress is defended by 183 upright spear traps.

Or more accurately, by the 24 dwarves who spent 2 years training in the barracks whose floor is covered by them.

[Buttery_Mess]

Apart from my badass military, I've got a large outer keep with four drawbridges to keep invaders at bay. I built a secret entrance lined with vicious weapon traps so that dwarves could get back in the fort if they got locked out. Naturally invaders try to get through it, and many of them are ripped to shreds. By that time, my powerful non-danger room military have time to mobilise, and they defend the entrance to my escape tunnel and can swiftly take down most intruders one at a time. The entrance is also defended by a war jaguar and two war grizzlies chained down with electrum chains. There are also a whole mess of rubbish weapon traps around the drawbridges that can only put down trolls, annoying animals and slow some goblins down slightly. They help a little.

[Ghills]

Cage traps and walled-in aboveground areas.  My maps usually wind up looking like really crazy moths started chewing through the ground.

[agatharchides]

I have been making some drowning traps of various sorts and I generally have a repeating spike trap at the front of my defenses, a few cage traps in the middle to grab some prisoners for target practice or megabeasts for the zoo. Then some weapons traps to kill anything that forces its way through while it is drowning, since there is no such thing as overkill. I usually have a drawbridge to cut off access which nowadays doubles as a way to seal things in the drowning chamber.  My military is rather small and mostly used to for killing the odd thing which gets through or insane dwarves and skirmishes in the caverns or other sundry things rather than finishing off sieges.

I actually just posted screenshots of my latest contraption here.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=79517.msg2078917#msg2078917

[wuphonsreach]

I'm a firm believer of defense in depth, even if it precludes certain types of fun.  During the 1st year it looks like:

[tunnel] - [bait animal] - [1Z deep pit] - [retracting drawbridge over pit] - [tunnel] - [2nd bridge/pit] - [trade depot]

The 1Z deep pit is to prevent non-flying bridge destroyers (if there is such a thing) from beating on the closed drawbridge.  The entrance tunnel is only 1Z high, so when the bridge closes, it's a solid wall.  If something shows up, I force the dwarves into the burrow with a military alert and a burrow that only covers the trade depot and slam both gates shut.  The entrance tunnel is 5-tiles wide and there's at least 20 tiles between the two bridges.

After the 1st year it ends up looking more like:

[tunnel entrance]
[5x5 area with the nastiest weapon traps I can make]
[first bridge door]
[5x5 area with more really nasty weapon traps, multiple weapons in each]
[3x15 to 3x30 path filled with training spears as weapon traps, combined with a 10Z pit on both sides of the path]
[3x3 section of cage traps]
[bait animals, behind fortifications]
[2nd bridge door]
[more weapon traps, moderately nasty]
[stairs down to bottom of pits]
[retracting bridge, 3x3 tiles]
[second section of 3x15 to 3x30 path filled with weapon trap training spears, middle of this section is filled with upright spears hooked to a lever in an unreachable observation room]
[3x3 section of cage traps]
[drawbridge]

Not much makes it past the first section of path with the pits on both sides.  The "dodge-this" type traps are extremely effective.  And if they survive the fall into the pits, when they come back up the stairs they still have to figure out how to get back across without falling again to leave the fortress.

The upright spears in the middle of the second dodge-this section are to take care of anything really nasty that seems to be "trap-avoid".  I haven't tested that out yet.

I do have a short-cut to the entrance, guarded only by war animals, cage traps and a few weapon traps, it bypasses the two dodge-this sections to cut 60-80 tiles off the journey to the surface.

I keep building outwards too on the surface.  Right now, before you can even get to the entrance tunnel, you have to cross a section of 3x15, with a 2Z pit on both sides that is populated with a combination of training spear weapon traps and a few of maximum damage weapon traps.  I've had an ambush completely fail on that part because the leader dodged off the path, fell 2-3Z and died.  My goal for the surface defense is that it will draw you in like a pitcher plant and that escape will be extremely difficult if you fall off the path at the outer edges.

Major issues at the moment are:
- dealing with trap-avoid (FBs and thieves)
- dealing with flying enemies (but the low roof inside combined with cage traps should take care of that)

Things I wish I'd add:
- Fortifications to let dwarves shoot at anyone trying to cross the "dodge-this" sections
- Magma
- Dwarven Atom Smashers
- Water flow to knock things off the dodge-this section and into the 10Z pits
- More bends at key spots to allow stationing of war animals that can spot thieves

[obeliab]

Move commands.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I'm going to be turning invasions off for my current fort, both because I have pop cap set to 0 and because I have to channel out 5 z-levels of about 2/5 of the (4x5) map before I can even think about defensibility.

[Baron Baconeer]

Traps, more traps, even more traps, followed by several hundred war gorillas, elephants, dogs, hydras, bronze colossi, (I tame everything.) elk birds, voracious cave crawlers, blind cave ogres or anything that I have captured with the aforementioned traps. There's a reason why my militia almost never gets kills.