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[Marcosagostos]

I've started playing DF recently, and I got all the basics down. Now it's time for me to move on to defense, but nothing I've done thus far has worked out. I've used siege engines, a hall of death, even a moat! What defensive constructs do you use, and what would be that best (And preferably easiest) to set up?

[Lectorog]

A hallway full of traps. A really long hallway.
Use bridges a lot. They're great, easy defense, if used correctly.
There's no substitute for a great military.
If you have spare animals laying around, heap them into a cage and put it outside your fortress. When the invaders come, unleash the bomb. Note: Not actually that effective.
You can always just wall your fortress off - no invaders are getting in, if you do that.

[Bloxace]

I personally use weapon traps, as they yield good results to any thing they can hit provided they can hit it and your using good quality materials. Enemies will also dodge them often, which can be fatal on one tile cat-walks above large pits/water/magma/more creative use. Certain enemies will simply walk past them, such as FBs and kobolds. In such areas, a military is your best option.

If you have spare animals laying around, heap them into a cage and put it outside your fortress. When the invaders come, unleash the bomb. Note: Not actually that effective.

Unless you use Grizzly Bears   

[Patchy]

I find the simple dodge this trap over a deep pit to be quick and easy to setup and extremely effective, with minimal maintenance.

[moki]

Against all the regular stuff (except FBs, megabeasts and titans) a hallway of traps is the easiest. Just block of every entrance to your fort except one 3 tiles wide and at least (more is better) 10 tiles long corridor filled with traps. Cage traps work fine, but they'll only catch one enemy per tile. Weapon traps (loaded with 10 serrated disks each) will send gore flying everywhere and can destroy quite a few enemies per tile if you use high quality mechanisms. Chain a puppy (or whatever animal you can spare) before the traps to detect ambushes and thieves and you're pretty much safe.
Stone fall traps are another possibility, but they're not as deadly as weapon traps and can't strike multiple times. They're the worst you can get, but cheap to build. If you want to use those, have at least 90 (3x30 tiles) of them.

It's much more fun to use a trained military, though. Get some weapons and armor for your useless peasants and put them in a danger room for a season or two and there's almost nothing that'll stop them. A squad of 10 legendary weapon users with decent armor can kill 100 goblins without taking a scratch.

Both these methods are considered exploits by some, as they make defense very easy, but they're great to keep your civilians safe if you aren't that experienced yet.

Also use burrows and alerts to keep your civilians out of harm's way during sieges. All the legendary axedwarves in the world won't help if your workers run right into the goblin's arms.
And you should always keep a method to completely seal the fort until the enemy goes away. A drawbridge over a moat and connected to a lever is the preffered way.

Of course, there are much more elegant ways like mechanical traps that resemble a Rube Goldberg Machine, only much more gory, but those are probably to complicated for a beginner.

[Marcosagostos]

Thanks guys.  That is awesome.  I read a few things in different places, but you all have added and reinforced some of the better points.

[Excedion]

I find that a long exposed corridor covered in traps and with archers firing from behind from the floor above is very very effective. Particularly against sieges and FBs

[Mechatronic]

My forts tend to evolve over time, adding more defenses to them as time goes by. This is my current one viewed from one z-level above the surface.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the centre in an archer tower with fortifications looking out over the north and east. There are bridges in front of the fortifications that can be raised to stop the archers being shot if necessary. Below the archer tower there is a walled and roofed area where the melee dwarves are. To the north of the tower is another tower with a turkey in it, with green glass windows looking to the west. This overlooks the entrance to the fort and the turkey spots ambushes, which then get shot up by the marksdwarves. There is a long winding corridor to the east and a shorter one to the west. Raising bridges where these corridors allow me to completely seal the fortress. I can just open the access to eastern corridor to delay sieges if necessary.

[(name here)]

I like to embark with a swordsdwarf/teacher to train up my military to something vaugly resembling effectiveness and deck them out in full-body metal armor. Armor is incredibly effective in this version against sharp weapons, and blunt weapons aren't nearly as deadly. Make some steel swords and the Knights Dwarfus are ready for action.

[Oaktree]

I'm currently working with a weapon-trap linked hatch combination referred to as a "grinder".

Basic Set-up:

Hp TTT pH

H (Floor hatch over open space)
p (Pressure pad linked to Hatch) - minimum weight creature trigger, and resets
T (weapon trap)

Creature passes over the hatch, hits traps, then hits pad that opens the far hatch and can't pass.  Traces back through the traps and hits the pad on the exit side and that hatch opens and they cannot leave.  Meanwhile, first hatch closes again and they trace back. etc. etc.     Some goblins and such will get clear eventually - they meet some cage traps and my military.   

I have sets of these in parallel on both sides of my access tunnel.  When the goblins attack the access tunnel drawbridge goes up and they route through these*.  And of the 3-4 of these in the tunnel one is generally always "open" as a trace path into the fortress.  So the attacker doesn't quit and look for another way.

*- My set-up is modified also by having a spike trap outside the first set that is linked to a lever.  When the trolls stop to destroy/displace the hatch they get spiked/speared to dissuade them.  I also often have fortifications for the marksdwarves nearby to facilitate the process.  One thing I hate is a set of sieging goblins "camping out" in the tunnels doing nothing.

Caveat: I did not invent this particular trap combination.  Goes to someone here on the forum.

Good things about this set-up:
1. Made from simple components (pressure pads, weapon traps, floor hatches)
2. Your dwarves don't trigger the pads, so they can walk right over it if they want
3. Not a lot of digging, just the spaces under the hatch locations (and I connect them up back into the middle of the trap) and the depth is just that additional Z-level.  And non-fatal if one of your dwarves falls one level (as compared to the risk of a deep pit or dodge-me trap.)

Cons:
1. Can take a while for your mechanics to build since there are pads, linkages, and stocking all the weapons in all the weapon traps.
2. You need the weapons to stock.  Excess goblin weapons work, but you also probably want some nice trap component weapons as well.  These might take a period of time to accumulate.
3. The traps can clog with goblin bits.  At that point the efficiency drops. (but this holds for weapon traps in general)

[andyman564]

and when the goblins bring their troll friends to play, your grinder gets busted up and is useless. (trolls will destroy hatches)

i found that out the hard way, now i just use a  trap hallway that leads into my barracks, anything that makes it to the end has to deal with 20 steel clad warriors.

[Oaktree]

and when the goblins bring their troll friends to play, your grinder gets busted up and is useless. (trolls will destroy hatches)

i found that out the hard way, now i just use a  trap hallway that leads into my barracks, anything that makes it to the end has to deal with 20 steel clad warriors.

Which is why I put upright spears/spikes out in front of the outer hatch of the set-up.  The trolls stop to pound on the hatch and a dwarf uses the lever action to spike the trolls.

[zx.pr0jk#]

Hall of Atomizers. 1x2 long draw bridges connected to a lever in the barracks. Put the lever on repeat during a siege.

[Khenal]

I use a combination of bridges, weapon traps and a pit with more traps.  After building it in a succession fort, I've come to call it the Langgud Gate defense. 



This shows the gate when there are no hostiles around.  Gives a nice wide entrance and the dwarves can come and go as they please quite easily.



And this shows the gate after the lever has been pushed.  The pit below the gate can be filled with whatever forges your iron: more weapon traps, cage traps, vicious animals, magma pumps, etc.  I usually take the lazy option of more weapon traps.

It's also quite easy to add archer and/or siege weapon emplacements to enhance the killing effect.

[Benedict Hardy]

A