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[TolyK]

how do I stay alive on these things, without using traps?
siege engines (95% ballistae, 5% catapults)

[utuki]

I know...

But unless you know there is an ambush the allert is offline. Otherwise you have to change the burrows everytime you expand your fortress. And if there is an ambush the goblins usually appear next to a dwarf or an animal next to a dwarf.

Setting burrows works in z-axis, you can add all underground/aboveground map in one go. Do you expand surface portion so often its a problem ?
Another way is just lock all doors to outside and unlock them only when needed.

[wuphonsreach]

I know...

But unless you know there is an ambush the allert is offline. Otherwise you have to change the burrows everytime you expand your fortress. And if there is an ambush the goblins usually appear next to a dwarf or an animal next to a dwarf.

Which is why you build an early warning system (such as cage traps at regular intervals around the border, beside chained up kittens, or pasture a kitten right on top of the cage trap, or just chain up puppies at intervals).  There are more advanced methods like a 3x3 box with glass windows and a dog or something pitted inside.

Walling off the main surface areas that you want to claim for use is also a good choice.  This allows you to funnel any ambushes that appear around to the front of your fort.

Or dig a trench line and put cage traps in the gaps where you allow passage.

Heck, my two hunters in the last elf ambush pretty much annihilated the elves before I could react.  I barely had time to send out marks squads for mop up duty.

[iyaerP]

On the note of the tantrum spirals, Dwarves will only make friends if they have excess time to laze about socializing.

Ensure that they are NEVER EVER out of work, and they will never make any friends other than the ones they enter the map with. Thus, when Urist McCheesemaker dies during an ambush from having been trying to haul to storage that one lonely sock from last ambush, NOBODY CARES.

[Byakugan01]

I handle this by making them walk into GCS and helmet snakes that provide fire support for my dwavres. The GCS are espeically helpful, what with their webbing the gobbos, trapping them, slowing them down and in general just messing the goblins up. Then again, in order to rely on it like I due requires heavy modding to enable breeding of the giant cave spiders and their abundance and frequency. But seriously, get yourself some weapon traps.

[franti]

My personal favorite is a bridge set to colapse when an enemy steps on it. Sometimes I put spears underneath, sometimes magma, sometimes I dig down 10z levels and plate the floors with Zinc and just let them splatter. Whatevs.
Also, war creatures. I have lots of bears and dogs, so I just let them do their thing by the front gate. Something gets in, realizes it's mistake, takes a step back towards the door, and gets pulled apart.

[vassock]

The magma trap is pretty efficient.

Have your main entrance be a gate that you keep closed. Have another gate lead down to the magma levels. When there are enemies, open it up. Basically, you have the gate open a path to stairs leading all the way down to where the magma level is (a hundred or so Z-levels down). At the last staircase at the magma level, dig a winding path to a staircase on the other end which leads to the rest of your fortress.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
                                X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

You get the idea. Maximize enemy travel time on that Z level. On that level, you need 3 bridges controlled by levers. The first is on the dwarven fort side protecting your dwarves, the second is on the opposite side of the zigzag where the enemies enter that Z-level, and the third is somewhere in the middle leading to the magma sea.

What you do is you use burrows to keep your dwarves from ever venturing out into the zigzag or beyond. Since the way is open into your fortress and it is the only way (regardless of how long it is), enemies will pour into the zigzag. The longer the zigzag, the longer you can wait to fill it with enemies before needing to close the dwarf-side gate to avoid being overrun. Once they are close to the final protective gate, flip the three switches (to be kept far away from the gates, safe inside the fortress, near a meeting area). The enemies inside the zigzag will be trapped. Both the doors leading outside and into the fortress are closed, and the third door to the magma sea is open. The magma fills the zigzag, melts away the corpses, and leaves fresh metals (iron) for you to collect and use.

A fourth door that drains the magma off-map through a carved fortification is a good idea to get rid of the magma once the melting process is done. Then just open the dwarf-side gate and collect the loot. Repeat until all enemies are melted.

[Avo]

Build/raise a bridge. Or just lock your doors. The first ambush isn't even a threat if you use/activate burrows to keep your dwarfs inside. When they bring trolls you need to start looking at other methods.

[TolyK]

also, steel bridge and magma. 'nuff said.
or just dump them into your pit, to go with your forgotten beasts 

[Damien White]

On the note of the tantrum spirals, Dwarves will only make friends if they have excess time to laze about socializing.

Ensure that they are NEVER EVER out of work, and they will never make any friends other than the ones they enter the map with. Thus, when Urist McCheesemaker dies during an ambush from having been trying to haul to storage that one lonely sock from last ambush, NOBODY CARES.

Great idea, but I run out of ideas to provide my dwarfes with work once they become more than 50 >.<"

Build/raise a bridge. Or just lock your doors. The first ambush isn't even a threat if you use/activate burrows to keep your dwarfs inside. When they bring trolls you need to start looking at other methods.

Already tried that. Once Migrants arrive and get killed I get a crazy tantrum spiral.


Aparently the lever dangerroom is perfect. 110 Dwarfes, 70 of them in military and all of them are Axe- / Hammerlords <3

Now I wait for my elves to send their first forces, after I killed 4 of their caravans ^^

[greycat]

These whip dudes rip me apart

This.  Lashers are the second deadliest goblins the game can throw at you, after elite (cross)bowmen.  Scourges as currently implemented are like short-range lasers.  (Elite bows are the worst, though, because your fortifications do nothing against them.  Nothing at all.  Not even a minor adjustment to accuracy.  Nothing.)

Your best bet against lashers is not to engage them at melee range.  Shoot them with crossbow bolts, or lead them into traps.

Your best bet against elite bows/crossbows is not to engage them at range.  Either drop them straight into the traps, or drop your heavy melee dwarves right on them so they have no chance to fire.

If you expose any dwarf to combat of any kind, ranged or melee, make sure it's got a shield, and knows how to use it.  The best way to train shield use is to poke them in a danger room.  At first you'll see "wooden spear deflected by Urist McNoob's silk panties" a lot.  Then after a while you'll start seeing "Urist McNoob blocks the wooden spear".  When they start to block everything, and never need to deflect the wooden spears with their alpaca wool cravats and cave silk spider scarves any more, then they're ready to face goblins.

To answer another question from this thread: yes, leather will suffice to provide protection in the danger room.  Even silk will deflect a training spear.  Any coverage at all will work.  It doesn't matter what the material is.  But if you go in bare-headed, you will die.  Such is Dwarf Fortress.

[Slugman]

Seriously, you're doing something horribly wrong if a squad of 12 iron/steel clad dwarves gets creamed by 8 leather goblins. I can only imagine you made some weird tactical mistakes, like sending the dwarves over a huge, empty field while tons of goblin arrows rain down on them. Once an arrow or bolt pierces an organ the dwarf becomes almost useless. Under these conditions untrained military dwarves simply turn into a goblin target practice because they don't block bolts with their shields as often as it would be necessary. Also, armor is in general less effective against bolts than it is against sharp melee weapons. Equally blunt weapons may easily cripple/kill a legendary dwarf who is equipped in steel armor, especially if he is overwhelmed or simply lacking in combat experience (dodger skill mainly I guess).
As has been mentioned already you should first gather your squad as well, even if a civilian dwarf or caravan merchant is directly endangered. Chances are good he is a goner at that point anyway.

The first thing you should do is to set up a drinking zone underground if your fortress is located there. That way your dwarves won't run to the next lake / pond on the surface to drink something when the booze runs out. I guess that's the main reason why your dwarves were hanging out there.

And most importantly, just lock your doors when the first baby snatcher shows up if you feel you're not prepared for an ambush yet! It has been mentioned a few times already and it's really a simple and effective method to keep the goblins out. The downside is that they will probably butcher a few caravans while idly sitting at your gates. If you have a caravan inside your fortress I'd also suggest to let them out via the caverns. Seems like a more safe solution unless a forgotten beast is roaming around there.
As a bonus I noticed that goblins don't come back as frequently if they're just locked out. May be a coincidence though.

But I agree with you that ambushes occur too early to be thoroughly prepared for them. Unless you first develop your defense mechanisms you're always in trouble when the goblins show up unexpected. Unfortunately, at the beginning my attention is often drawn away by other things like setting up a few magma kilns (to produce clay bricks for building purposes), making a dining hall/sleeping quarters, setting up farms, etc. A makeshift militia seems to work for me most of the time, though sometimes I'm just out of luck and things go as wrong as they possibly could when the goblins show up (walls not done, militia sleeping, goblin archers and so on). Such is the curse of an above ground fortress... Simply digging into a mountain side and building a bunch of stonefall traps is probably a hundred times safer.
And I find it extremely annoying that they often show up at the same entrance point (and almost the same time even) as a caravan. All you can do is watch how the caravan/diplomat/outpost liason gets slaughtered and afterwards you've got to clean up the whole mess (which I find even more annoying than the diplomatical issues). It's not like I even want the crap those caravans usually carry with them. Hopefully the whole ambush thing will be reworked along the development of the new trade system.

One last thing. Someone said you should just reduce your trade volume. I don't really think that helps all that much. Ambushes seem to occur even if you don't trade at all (generally after the second year ends unless you're at war with another civ). But you will have to face a reduced number of goblin squads I suppose.

Edit: you should also try some weapon traps loaded with a single large serrated steel disc. I tested those myself after reading about them here in the forums and they're indeed wonderfully efficient. So far six weapon traps stopped every goblin ambush in my latest fortress (3 tiles wide hallway, goblins never even reached the third line of traps). Combat logs of random animals wandering into those also proove the deadly efficiency of those things. Also... there are body parts lying around everywhere which adds to the hilarity. Just don't forget to forbid them or a stupid dwarf will run up and clean them while the ambush is still going on.

[TolyK]

yeah, *without traps*
I guess the best defences are either pressure-plate based or lever-based  (i.e. not requiring a militia).

I like my automatic flooders, which pressure-wash them down into a hole (subsequently drowning them).

[wuphonsreach]

Ambushes do not occur too early - unless you refuse to use 8-12 cage/weapon traps which will either slice-n-dice the offenders, or box them up neatly for disposal.  And if those weapon traps are on a 1-tile wide path with a 1Z or more drop on either side, then they won't even get as far as the cage traps.  Most will fall off the path after 5-6 tiles.  They won't get killed by the 1Z drop, so you'd either have to take care of them or wait for them to get bored and leave.

Plus the half a dozen to a dozen traps take care of other issues, like monkeys, wolves, and other wildlife that wants to get into the fort.

[Lord Darkstar]

The Problem with all these methods, they need time for preparation, sometimes I get the first ambush during summer year 1. If I focus all my dwarfes on building these sort of fancy traps they starve to death etc. Most the time I start with 2 Axedwarfes and some leather armor but unless I train some of the first imigrants I get killed.

I start with a MECHANIC. He makes mechanisms.
I start with a MASON. He makes me some blocks.
I start with a MINER. He carves the fortress (producing stone for the MECHANIC and MASON), and channels out (1 z) where the drawbridge will go.
I set one of the 7 to architect, and designate a drawbridge over the 1 z channel and pick blocks as the construction material.
After the bridge gets built, I build a lever (in my manager's office inside the fortress), and link it to the drawbridge (ALWAYS a drawbridge--- so you can block out flying attackers).
The miner gets assigned the task of building up ramps 1 z level down from the covered/bridged channel (with the miner access from OUTSIDE the protected area). Then miner cleans up the left over ramps.

This is all done in year 1, unless I have a large aquifier between me and my stone.

You cannot be ambushed in year 1. You can be ambushed on day 1, year 2, but year 1 is always safe, even if you are at war with all other civs.

As long as you have stone, you have mechanisms. As long as you have mechanisms, you have traps and drawbridges. Enjoy.

It might seem boring at first, but pausing every few seconds and checking the combat logs can give you a good picture of what's happening in combat, and may or may not give you an indication of what's going wrong.  Goblins in copper and leather beating a larger number of dwarves in iron and steel means something's up... assuming that your first ambush didn't consist of 8 Axe Lords.  And even then, maybe!

Lashers. You can get an ambush squad full of lashers, easy. I have it happened to me often enough in 31.x. Against lashers, the only defense is to HIDE behind your drawbridge, since lashers = light sabers.