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[Oddysee]

About the war dogs, setting up a pasture for them by my fortress entrace seems like a good idea to me, I'll do that.

Next worldgen, generate from advanced perameters and set mineral scarcity to a lower number, i tend to set it to 100 meaning my worldgens have the highest possible % of metal to stone tiles.

I'll do this too at my next worldgen. 

While we're on the subject of fortress defence, I feel I have to admit, I don't really have anyway.  My entire defence consists of the aformentioned squad of melee fighters and my 5 war dogs.  Quite frankly, I seem to have grown somewhat complacent when it comes to defences.

This is because I'm a few years into my current game and the only threat I have had so far is a single Goblin Snatcher which I promptly chased off.  Theres been nothing else and I haven't lost a single dwarf either yet.

[FrisianDude]

I can't wait for the inevitable ambush.

[Shinotsa]

I can't wait for the inevitable ambush.

And the wonderful moments following it. A perfectly acceptable tactic might be to build 10 or so cage traps at your entrance loaded with zinc cages. It might take some of the fun out it, but seeing as how you'll be getting training subjects while saving the fort it may be a good idea for the time being. Just make sure to not rely on it. Ten seems like a lot until you've a force of 10 mounted goblins, 20 regular goblins, and a squad of trolls running at your gates.

As a side note can you make zinc pipes, corkscrews, or any zinc trap components? That might be a good balance between having a caged army and having that army lounging in your fort atop your dead dwarves.

[Wannazzaki]

Just of note: I have thousands of bars i won't ever use having steel, candy and black bronze for armouring/weapons. The byproduct of making certain valuable alloys and mining (bins and bins full of bismuth bronze, cobalt etc) can also be just churned out into bolts for a) training marksmen and b) training weapon smiths. You can of course wait until a mooder or migrant comes with legendary and spawn lots of masterwork bolts for the sake of using up the bars too. DFreveal and vdig helps with this if you don't want to follow veins tile by tile or excavating the whole planet.

[hjd_uk]

Dont forget that you can specify ammo on the millitary screen and add a training-only allocation of bone bolts, and set metal bolts to combat only.

There's also a semi-explot that can stop you breaking bolts used in training but if you want to use it i'd ask/search.

[Wannazzaki]

Tried it myself. Marksdorfs don't use the targets with the channel in front. Marksdorf training is so bugged it's not funny

[Akura]

Yeah, they won't shoot at a target unless there's a walkable path to it. You can, however, build a trench behind the target(and a wall behind the trench), so that you can save any bolts that miss.

[khearn]

I've done a couple of embarks where I searched for no-metal locations. My current fort is one. It's not really all that hard. Make stone or clay crafts so that you can buy every scrap of steel/iron/bronze/silver from every caravan. Mark them all for melting (except for bronze and steel armor/weapons). Dig down to magma and make a magma smelter and set it to repeat melting items. Make a stockpile near it that takes steel/iron/bronze/silver finished goods and iron armor. Unfortunately, iron is missing from the metal list for weapons in stockpiles.

Request steel/iron/bronze stuff from your liaison. Including bars, crafts, anvils, and anything else. Also request iron ores.

Take the iron bars that get created from the melted goods and make half as many pig iron bars. Then queue up the same number of "make steel bar" tasks. Each task will use one iron and one pig iron (and one flux) to make 2 steel. Use the steel and bronze bars to make weapons and armor.

Priority for steel is weapons, then helmets, mail shirts and gauntlets. Weapons because steel weapons will cut through anything the goblins will have, but bronze and iron will get deflected more often. Helmets because head shots are often instant kills, and steel will do a great job against most weapons goblins will bring. I've seen a soldier with a steel helmet go unconscious and get page after page of headshots from goblins with silver/copper/bronze spears and swords and they all get deflected. Mail shirts are next because they cover a lot of vital areas. Gauntlets because a dwarf with its hands cut off fights much worse than a dwarf with its feet cut off. Laying on the ground with a weapon is better than standing up without one.

Use any bronze bars to fill in the rest of the armor bits.

Use any silver to make hammers and maces.

Buy wood armor from the elves the first time they show up. It's crappy, but better than nothing. By the second time they come, you probably won't need wood armor any more. Make leather armor to fill in the gaps. Before your first ambush, you should be able to get a few troops decently equipped.

Once the first ambush has been survived, you'll now have goblin armor to equip more troops. From there on it just gets easier.

[AWdeV]

Yeah, just change the uniform. However, I'd place multiple archery targets so multiple Dwarfs can practice their shooting at the same time. Do note however that practice eats through your bolts.

Hmm, that's a concern considering I was planning to use bone for the bolts and that's only 5 bolts per bone according to the wiki, as I don't really want to use up my wood.

Don't worry about that. You'll probably run into plenty of useless animals/plenty of useless animals will run into your fort. Imagine, you have a yak bull. It's pretty useless and is nearly always hungry and you can always use more meat in your fort. What to do? Slaughter it. That's 14 bone, so 60 new bolts. Supplement this with bolts caravans and ambushes bring, make some wooden bolts, butcher more animals and you've got stacks and stacks of bolts. As a matter of fact, my current fort for the longest time only had access to sphalerite and zinc isn't a metal to make bolts with. I have over a thousand bolts and most of those are bone.

I do feel obliged to add that a) I have a legendary bone carver and b) I butcher goblins. (masterful goblin bolts to kill goblins? Priceless.)

[rosareven]

I had a world gen that no matter where I embark, I always run into problem with not finding craftable metal (one embark site had plenty of Zinc which I cannot use to craft straight out of). From now on I've been generating worlds with "Everywhere" resource to fix that.

[Oddysee]

Thank you very much for all the advice everyone.  I was in the process of putting it into action when something disastrous happened.  Something that most people here expected I would imagine.

The following is an account of the day my first proper fortress fell.  I don't want to bore any of you with a massive story so I'll summarize as much as possible. NOTE:  If you don't want to read what happened, I have a few questions at the bottom. 

Ok, everything was going quite well.  I had my miners do some exploratory mining and found a cavern with some nice gems in it.  I started making bone bolts, put my war dogs in a pasture by my fortress entrance outside, built some traps and started making more leather armour.  But alas it was too little, too late.

An Elf caravan arrived and I thought "great, now I can finally get metal".  Just then, a Goblin siege started (my first ever siege I might add).  14 Goblin Crossbowman and a Pikeman all wearing troll fur and copper armour came onto the map right behind the Elf caravan.  The Goblins quickly killed 2 Elf merchants and a Fisherdwarf and Hunter who were outside at the time.  I then stationed my military squad (who were still melee fighters) outside my fortress to try and intercept the Goblins and my war dogs were ready aswell.

But to no avail.  In a hail of crossbow bolts, all 5 of my war dogs, 10 other animals and 2 of my military squad were all dead.  I then tried to attack the Goblins with my remaining squad members.  However, the Goblins armour kept defecting the blows from my squads meager wood weapons.  A further 3 of my squad were killed.  Meanwhile, other dwarves from inside the fortress had started pouring outside to perform their apparently much loved hauling duties.  They were quickly struck down one after the other by the Goblins, it was a bloodbath.  It all happened so fast.

By this time, my squad had killed 4 of the Goblins and one had fallen victim to a cage trap.  However, my squad was now down to a single member, the rest had died gloriously in battle.  At this point, the remaining Goblins retreated and the siege was over.

The final death toll: 25 dwarves, 5 war dogs, 10 assorted animals and 2 Elf merchants.  However, the worst was yet to come and it was something that would ultimately destroy my fortress...

Right after the siege had ended, lots of dwarves became miserable and started canceling their duties to throw tantrums instead.  This was probably due to the hugely traumatic experience my poor dwarves had to endure a few moments before.  What happened next could only be described (according to the wiki) as a "tantrum spiral" and I was powerless to do anything about it.

A few dwarves went stark raving mad and my Expedition Leader decides it would be a good idea to hack a Brewer in the right arm with a Copper Battle Axe (gotten from a trade), opening up an artery.  My Broker then throws a pair of Sheep Leather Trousers at a Milker (lol) and bruises his leg.

It was all downhill from there.  More dwarves start throwing tantrums and start destroying furniture.  A Potter goes berserk and attacks a Wax Worker.  Little did the Potter know that the Wax Worker was somehow wielding a Steel Battle Axe.  The Wax Worker promptly strikes the Potter in the head with it, killing him instantly.

A Brewer goes berserk and attacks the same Wax Worker and quickly shares the same fate as the Potter before him.  A few dwarves become stricken with meloncholy and subsequently die of thirst.  A Mechanic is attacked and bleeds to death from his injuries a few moments later. A few more dwarves are then killed due to more in-fighting.

Then theres a Miasma outbreak in the Dining Room and another near the Tanner's Shop due to all of the rotting dwarf corpses everywhere.  3 more dwarves are killed.

More dwarves throw tantrums, more go insane and 2 more are killed.  The 2-3 seperate Miasma outbreaks continue unabated.  At this point I decide there is no point in watching the total chaos and utter carnage any longer and with a heavy heart I declare my fortress and its people unrecoverable.  To be honest, it was probably doomed as soon as the siege was over.

And that's how my fortress came to a horrible, bloody end.  My apologies if I went on for too long.  But this is the first time I have experienced that aspect of the game and it was very interesting.

Now for a few questions:   

How can I make my dwarves go/stay in the fortress during a siege?

Is there a way to recover from a tantrum spiral?

I looked at my bolts on the Stocks screen and found that some types of bolt were being forbidden seemingly automatically.  Why is this?

Thanks in advance.

[UltraValican]

Smooth and Engrave EVERYTHING POSSIBLE!
Also all maps have a certain "special metal".

[Melissia]

Focus you smoothing/engraving on living areas and dining halls at first.  Then workspaces.  Putting fine statue arrangements in workspacesa nd living areas is an excellen way to keep your dwarves happy, amongst other things.

[Gamerlord]

For the bolts, press 'o' then 'F'. There should be a setting for fired bolts.

[AWdeV]

I've luckily never had a tantrum spiral.

Bolts that get forbidden automatically have been shot. That is, bolts that have been shot and didn't break on impact are automatically forbidden. You'll eventually have to unforbid them if you want them to be picked up. I imagine this is a  security measure to stop dwarves from going outside trying to collect bolts during a siege.

Anything the goblins brought onto the map (including bolts) are also forbidden.

You'll need lots of booze and food to keep dwarves happy, some nice rooms, lots of smoothed and engraved walls and maybe some nice statues here and there to ogle at. A waterfall is hard to set up but does keep dwarves happy. If you have a central dining room, simply make it big with lots of furniture. Quality doesn't matter nearly as much as size in this case and is a good way of keeping dwarves happy.

To avoid dwarves getting upset from their loss of pets/relatives and/or the miasma that issues forth afterwards, set up a few burial halls with the graves at the ready, dwarves will take their loss less hard if there's a proper burial afterwards and that's ignoring the ghastly smell there'd otherwise be.

If this isn't possible, set up a really big refuse pile in either a lockable room or in the open air to atleast keep the miasma away.

Dwarves are frustratingly suicidal, try forbidding everything outside of your walls, don't have farms or pastures outside the walls and lock the doors when nobody needs to get in or out.