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[Saladman]

A military takes a little while to get trained up, so if you want to keep this fort more than you want immediate Fun, you may want to start with traps now even while you start a few small squads training.  Cage traps are probably the easiest early defense, and you can use the prisoners for your military to practice on.  Weapon traps with multiple iron serrated discs will shred opponents.  Stone fall traps are easy to put up but not the strongest stand-alone option.  Even for softening up enemies before they get to my military I prefer weapon traps with hammers in them over stone-falls once I have the industry.

Lastly, the drawbridge is good advice.  Especially if you haven't settled on a theme for defense yet, a way to seal yourself in if you get something that outmatches you is a very good idea.

[Leonidas]

All you need against a vile force of darkness is a drawbridge that can seal your dwarves in. The drawbridge can seal your surface entrance, or you can dig a moat on the surface and put a drawbridge over it.  (Though sometimes an invader may ride a flying mount, so the moat isn't 100% effective.)

Be careful in placing your levers for those bridges. Put them deep underground, so that your dwarves can always get to it before the invaders do. And label your levers with 'N'. When the invaders show up, your bridges won't help you much if you can't remember which lever to pull.

Ambushers are trickier. I usually abandon the surface until I have a military adequate to defend it.

[thor82]

Thank you all for your answers, i think i'll start with building a pond with a drawbridge for the outside, and some weapons trap for the inside....

I hope to build it correctly :/


P.S.
i will not make a pond, or i'll be digging an entrance to the first floor of the fortress -.-'

[Triaxx2]

Ensure your drawbridge raises up just inside the entrance, to defeat flying mounts. If the moat is too large, use a second retracting bridge connected to the same lever.

And ROOF OVER YOUR ENTRANCE. Seriously. If you don't, it's just inviting trouble.

[ciadude2]

For a starting defense, a bunch of weapon traps with 1 serrated disc each should do fine(depending on how wide your entrance is, it should be about 5 levels deep at least; I have halls with a width of 3 spaces so I would use 15 traps). I know it says you can put in 10, but putting in 1 will still chop them up very nicely. Besides, if it's year 1 and you don't have any mods you should be fine unless you embarked in some evil hellscape or something.

I usually don't bother with much of a militia until I'm getting magma unless it's an emergency. I play with a combination of Fortress Defense and Legends of Forlorn Realms so I'm pretty much an expert at building fortresses for a combination of defense and aesthetics at this point.

Year 2? A few weapons traps will do fine. If you really get neck deep in poop I'm sure we can all put together some positively dwarfy in scale defensive systems for you.

[Flare]

If you have a single, long hallway into the fort proper, stone fall traps are easy enough.  Just requires a mechanics workshop, a mechanic and two stone per trap.

I would suggest that he use wooden spiked balls, corkscrews, and spikes instead. Not only do they not require reloading, but they also fire more than once.

A popular defense is the dodge this trap. In which you channel out the sides of your entrance tunnel (bridges will be down during times of peace) and place weapon traps filled with the weapon of your choice along the middle. The idea is when enemies come they dodge the weapon traps and fall down the channels  to their death several z- lvls below.

This is a bad idea if you eventually want to have some sort of standing army. It's a common occurance for me that champions that survive all the sieges that have ever taken place, all the dragons, megabeasts, hydras, and ambushes eventually succumb to a fall because they dodged into pit or a murky pool by accident.

In any case, if you don't want to do any of this and want the quickest way to organize a defence, you could always just seal yourself from the world.

[squeakyReaper]

Just suggested Stone Fall due to their ease of use and whatnot.  If you have wood and such, though, then by all means weapon trap it up.  Just a warning if you go with Crossbow Traps: don't use bone bolts with it, those glitch.  (Only 5 per reload instead of more)

[EggFibre]

I'd recomend not filling your moat with water, will stop aquatic beasts from getting across, there are no disadvantages to an empty moat as far as I know of. Ofcourse if you can get hold of some, lava moats are best. If you channel your moats, be sure to remove the ramps too.

[thor82]

First of all thank you all for your answers.

At the moment i'm building tons of iron swords to create weapons traps.

Please correct me if i'm wrong:
if (for example) i need to create 10 traps => i need to create 100 swords to fill the traps ? is this proportion correct?
after that i do not need reloading ,or mantainance, right?

While digging, i found magma. Quite close to the surface, to be honest( i'm only at -30), so i'd like to create a pump stack to surround my fort.

the pumps need a dwarf to be operated, correct? so i'd need 30 dwarves to operate them all to bring the magma in surface? is this correct ? :/

Also...

... be sure to remove the ramps too.

WHAT?! how can i do that ? :|

thank you again

[squeakyReaper]

d->z will remove ramps.  You don't need 10 weapons per trap, that's just the max.

[thor82]

d->z will remove ramps.  You don't need 10 weapons per trap, that's just the max.

and what's the benefit in putting 10 weapons instead of 1? more damage?

do they need reload?

[squeakyReaper]

Ten times as much swinging.  Each weapon gets a go at the same time.  Weapon traps reset themselves after a while, except crossbows that run out of ammo.

[MonkeyHead]

I repeat - 10 serrated blades. They beat the ass of any other trap type, and give lots of limbs which eventually turn into bones. Goblin bone bolts are fun.

[Samoorai]

My military dwarves were fairly crap to begin with, so the drawbridge sealed entrance is a great way to ensure your dwarves live. From there you have plenty of time to train your military properly and get everything else set up. If you're low on metal (or don't want to waste it) and/or your site has sand, 10x green glass spike traps are quite lethal and easy to pump out. Then it's just a matter of linking them all to a single lever (check the hall of death in my first sig link). Pull the lever, set to repeat, laugh maniacally. I was going to line the entire entryway into to Roadhouse with green glass spikes, but my military became invincible.

[Triaxx2]

I've got a fort where my entrance is two, relatively short tunnels. I intend to have two flood gates, which can be operated to alter the entrance path, leaving my enemies two trap filled passages to reach me. Thus when one is full, I can pull two levers and have the first closed and the second open, and dice more enemies.

Were this not a freezing biome, I'd use a flush trap. Essentially two sections of carved fortifications, with pumps behind them. Pressure plates in the entryways engage the gears to engage the pumps, and seal flood gates, drowning them where they stand.