Get Wood!
I tend to have to completely deforest the local area to create my mini-fort. I know you can take away lethal stone by replacing the raws but...I just can't...so...much...humour...
I just hole up and use hunting rifles. Going toe to toe with the walking dead seems to be suicide for my humans, despite having decent armour and weapons. (Quite realistic I imagine )
Oh, don't get me wrong, I was good and wooded up. With walls and stuff. But the only way for me to get caravans was to leave an opening in my wall, and I never got it closed in time when an ambush or invasion showed up...
I also have the problem of not having enough stuff to trade. Normally, I just make dozens of bins of stonecrafts. But now that I can't, I make a couple of wood, because it's usually at a premium, and then butcher animals. In this game, I almost had cotton production up and running, but then I got owned.
In any case, I'm trying different stuff out for the succession game, and hoping beyond hope that I can find an embark that has both lots of wood AND will let me grow useful crops. Because forests have awful ones.
i for one get the most ore i can, make that into mechanisms and then make cage traps, so that the infected are busy while the caravan happily enters and the doors are sealed. it also helps if you channel out a 3 tile (maybe less) path to the doors, and post your riflemen to help stall the zed-heads additionally.
heres the layout.
ground Z-level: (++)-bridge, +++-road (put those cage traps on it!), =0- wall with a pillar, - Z channel drop, _-tile (ground
=0(++)0=
_-(++)-_
_-+++-_
_-+++-_
_-+++-_
_-+++-_
_-+++-_
1 Z-level up: []-fortifications (i make my fortress out of clay. hey, it's carveable!) +-floor (for the soldiers)
+++
[][]
----
1 Z-level down: ~-ground, - undug ground (prefferably soil), 0-walled off entrance (for the miners to remove the ramps)
~~~~~0
~-----~
~-----~
~-----~
~-----~
~-----~
clear?
of course if you can't build this in time, you can let one enlightened caravan have an "accident" *wink, wink*
plus, embark with 3 stones and 2-3 blocks, for a bridge and mechanisms.
edit: make that 4, so that you can make a kiln for clay collection.