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[Girlinhat]

What's your population and military size?  I'm running 50 dwarves + 10 children, with a squad of spears, a squad of axes, and a squad of marksmen who are very like going to find themselves holding a melee weapon soon.  I'm thinking something exotic, halberds or daggers or something.

So, for me, currently half my population is active, dedicated military, all clad in steel or working on their steel.  Being Fortress Defense, this is already quite the challenge.  My spearlords are getting in trouble.

[Mechatronic]

I had a fort that had a population cap of fifty that survived seven years of Fortress Defense mayhem. I had nine civilians and the rest, 30-50 depending on how things were going, were soldiers. I'd say that is the lowest population cap that's sustainable without using traps or magma or whatever. It was pretty much just about survival.

[Noir]

I have 6 units of 3 melee dwarves each, and 2 units of 8 marksdwarves - hence 34 soldiers on a 130 dwarves fort.

Works well for me on a vanilla fort - if I had more steel I would probably have more soldiers too.

[Girlinhat]

For that matter, how many casualties will you suffer?  With mine, I've not yet suffered casualties against hellfire imps (about 1.5x harder than goblins), White Tigermen (about goblins), or Dark Stranglers (naked goblins).  But I'm getting to the point that losses are undeniable, and I'm afraid it's a slippery slope from there, as every invasion faces a less trained army than before.

[Erkki]

Population 146, 32 strong military - no traps, no iron or bronze(this fort...), no danger room... I have allowed myself to use a single column of 5 cage traps AFTER my barracks, and a sizeable airlock before that... But atomsmashing isnt allowed either, its used solely to stop the gobbos from running away. 

I have 7 marksdwarves(the airlock has archer bunkers), 4 mace (original military), 4 hammer, 6 spear, 8 sword, 3 axe.

I'd use swords + spears if I had had even bronze since beginning, now I had to use hammers first and use the skills the dwarves already had. Managed to get some goblinite + merchant bronze & iron later, but I just cant bother double training half my dwarves. Their weapons are already named any way. I've suffered just 2 military losses (marksdwarves shot by a goblin masterbowman) and a single military civilian (idiot ran to pick up a dead duck on top of the perimeter wall... I hadnt remembered to auto-forbid all dead items...).

[flieroflight]

for non- fd, id say 25% ish, with challenges in place, 50% or more depending.

[da_nang]

In Towerrocks, there were 4 full squads, composed of three Silver War Hammer Squads and one Crossbow Squad. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the latter squad's training.
In any case, this was a fort of 130 dwarves or so. Nowadays, it's a fort with 80-90 dwarves which is down to 2½ squads, mostly crossbow dwarves, after a bloody siege. Thankfully the least experienced and badly equipped dwarves made up most of the casualties in that siege. That includes civilians who where emergency drafted into the military after they had a brain malfunction and decided to rush into rampaging trolls.

[Noir]

For that matter, how many casualties will you suffer?  With mine, I've not yet suffered casualties against hellfire imps (about 1.5x harder than goblins), White Tigermen (about goblins), or Dark Stranglers (naked goblins).  But I'm getting to the point that losses are undeniable, and I'm afraid it's a slippery slope from there, as every invasion faces a less trained army than before.

I typically suffer casualties for:
-civilians caught outside during sieges/ambushes (woodcutters, hunters, ecc.);
-soldiers going rambo against my orders (not a problem anymore, I have now one-way-only passageways that I can turn on and off at will);
-worst problem: elite crossbowmen/bowmen firing back at my marksdwarves through fortifications; my marksdwarves, in turn, are too busy firing on already crippled melee enemy units to notice the ONLY enemy able to fire back at them.
EDIT: I partially fixed this by building raise-able, 1-tile long drawbridges in front of all fortifications; if I'm taking fire, I close the bridge and stop the exchange of fire.
-occasional lucky shot by enemies.

Yours?

[Erkki]

For that matter, how many casualties will you suffer?  With mine, I've not yet suffered casualties against hellfire imps (about 1.5x harder than goblins), White Tigermen (about goblins), or Dark Stranglers (naked goblins).  But I'm getting to the point that losses are undeniable, and I'm afraid it's a slippery slope from there, as every invasion faces a less trained army than before.

I typically suffer casualties for:
-civilians caught outside during sieges/ambushes (woodcutters, hunters, ecc.);
-soldiers going rambo against my orders (not a problem anymore, I have now one-way-only passageways that I can turn on and off at will);
-worst problem: elite crossbowmen/bowmen firing back at my marksdwarves through fortifications; my marksdwarves, in turn, are too busy firing on already crippled melee enemy units to notice the ONLY enemy able to fire back at them.
-occasional lucky shot by enemies.

Yours?

Bolded. Long run average, maybe 50% of my military losses are to goblin master bowmen/xbowmen...

[Girlinhat]

My losses are turning more into swarms.  Apparently FD is light on the bows, because I don't get attacked often by anything ranged, but I'll send my ten dwarves out, who get rushed by 50 stranglers and 30 tigermen.  Even with a full 10 squad, half of them trance.  But with those numbers, eventually someone lands a lucky blow, particularly the macemen.  Those guys don't care about my exceptional armor, they go straight for the bone!  Then someone else cracks the skull.

[Shook]

47 dorfs or so, with a 2 dorf military. They're doing quite well, having served 3-4 sieges worth of asses on silver platters. I'm playing with basic fort defense mod, so i dare say i'm doing fine so far. I did lose a few dorfs to begin with though. First, a hammerdorf got overwhelmed by beak wolves, and had his throat torn out. Secondly, a talented kicker gave his life while delaying a huge squad of stranglers, which then got cut to pieces by my two-dorf army. An axedorf and a swordsdorf. Best part? Swordsdorf is a highly skilled migrant.
They're both fully clad in steel now, so any invaders will have to work damned hard to get any hits in. And that's not even considering their level 5+ dodging.

But, why only 2 dorfs? Martial trances. Two dorfs are usually massively outnumbered, and thus will regularly fly into these, and thus cause an amazingly bloody mess worthy of Armok himself.

[Mechatronic]

My losses are turning more into swarms.  Apparently FD is light on the bows, because I don't get attacked often by anything ranged, but I'll send my ten dwarves out, who get rushed by 50 stranglers and 30 tigermen.  Even with a full 10 squad, half of them trance.  But with those numbers, eventually someone lands a lucky blow, particularly the macemen.  Those guys don't care about my exceptional armor, they go straight for the bone!  Then someone else cracks the skull.

Tigerman have maces and mauls. Even copper ones will jam the skull through the brain of steel clad dwarves. The main issue here is that they sometimes also bring war animals like grizzly bears. Then you're in the unhappy place of having your dwarves charged and knocked down by the animals, then brained by the tigermen. This won't happen when your dwarves have a decent dodging skill (which let them roll away) but that can take a while to train.

The problem with replacing losses is that you don't get migrants if a bunch of dwarves die. So you can't lose more than a few here or there or else you'll end up in a downward spiral. With a population cap of fifty I was on a knife edge. If I lost ten dwarves in a year, I wouldn't get any migrants for about a year. I got down into the thirties at one stage before I got some more migrants. And that makes it hard to keep a steady flow of bad asses.

Edit bolded.

[lanceleoghauni]

my fort of ~150 including children had a military of 6, all marksdwarves, and all women (wasn't intentional, but was awesome) most were slaughtered by a titan, but they managed well enough.

[Noir]

This is a picture of my current, marksdwarves-enhanced entryway:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And this is the upper floor:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[NecroRebel]

I find that nothing is more deadly than getting outnumbered by blunt-wielding enemies. My soldiers, of which I have 40, can take out full squads of axeminotauroses solo or in pairs without getting more than bumps and bruises, but if less than 3 of my soldiers decide to attack a macetiger squad I usually lose one. Hammer- and maceminotauros squads, and, worse, lashertauros squads, are often grounds for sitting back behind my raising spike/dodger array and letting it do most of the work.

When possible, I prefer to simply dispatch one squad of my guys to every squad of the enemy. That, I find, works reasonably well, in that the enemy squad gets taken out, but unfortunately many times a single dwarf will get to the surface and rush the enemy ahead of the rest of their squad and that can be a recipe for disaster against minotauroses, which are the strongest enemies I've got (I use tigermen, blendecs, warwolves, and minotauros).