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[Oaktree]

Animal bombs.  Cat bombs, dog bombs, alligator bombs.  Anything that doesn't graze can be tamed and then collected in a cage for release.

If you have the right terrain and do a little raw mod (or luck with elven traders) you can even have a nice cage of giant scorpions awaiting visitors.

[HorridOwn4ge]

Build a huge tower in your courtyard with a one tile wide path to your fort. Put dodge traps along the path and channel a 5x5 hole under the path into hell.

[Ivir_Baggins]

Use a magma mist generator.

[MarcAFK]

I've been trying to weaponize steam with little success. So far the best I've come up with is pushing enemies into burning items with water, which works well enough. Pure steam doesn't seem to cause injuries even when the amount of steam you're making is cranked up to 11.

Steam was nerfed in DF 2010, back in 40d it seared off flesh and boiled internal organs, now it just pushes people around, you could however use magma mist which still retains the temperature of magma, causes knockback, and is freaking awesome, you just need an efficient automated obsidian making cavein generator
EDIT: thx ninja

Use the mighty power of bovine. The entrance to your fort shall bottle-neck to a 1 tile wide section, in which you will keep a 1x1 pasture containing angry bulls. One thing shall lead to another, and every invader will either end up gored or violated by hormonal cattle.

Actually this might be a rather good idea, sure you can't keep them there long since they need to be pastured to feed, but you could make a stack of 1x1 pastures on floor hatches above your intended crowding point. When a siege comes you pasture all your bulls into the temporary holding pens, then starting from the top pasture you drop them one by one untill they're all sitting on the bottom pasture the invaders must path through.
There might be a more efficient way of doing it, perhaps using raising bridges or something to force the bulls off their pastures and onto a meeting area.

[Nan]

Build a Fully Automatic Goblinite Processing Facility. Takes raw goblins and refines into pure iron.

There are various ways which this can be done. One simple way is to have a incineration chamber with a pressure plate near the exit. So the goblins come along "la la la la la it's off to kill the dwarves we go" and descend into a curiously warm chamber. It's curiously warm, because they are walking on iron grates and under the iron grates is magma. They start to feel a bit nervous, but proceed anyway. Then, to their relief, they reach the end of the grates. *CLICK*. The goblins scarcely have time to freeze in fear before the chamber flash-floods with magma. How does this happen? Well the gobbos step on a pressure plate, which opens a door, holding back the output of a battery of magma-pumps sucking magma from the reservoir under the grates. The pumped magma glides over the lower layers of magma, filling the entire chamber (magma sinks rather more slowly than water, you can easily pump magma on top of magma). As the pressure plate resets, the door closes. The magma sinks back down below the grates, into the reservoir. The chamber is sparkling clean, the goblins incinerated, the magma recycled. Only their iron items remain. The next batch can now enter and be processed. (note I think it should also be possible to keep the pressure plate tile(s) free of magma by building pumps as "Vacuum cleaners" above them - otherwise 1 magma remains on the pressure plate for a while and stops anything stepping on it)

[Triaxx2]

Cavern pathing. Dig a long descending ramp that leads to the caverns, and then the only way up into the fort is to cross the hazardous cavern.

Plus you can use a bridge to shortcut around the path for your own dwarfs. Because it's fun.

[Darinford]

I dunno if this'll work but:

Build a bridge leading off to the side of your entrance on a  long path  |=    Attatch it to a lever.

Then build another series of passages in a square

|- |
|- |     

channel out some area's a few tiles way from and adjacent to the tunnel ends so that the sun can reach, and make them pastures; put roofs on top to keep monsters out.  Pasture your kittens, nobles or unwanted pests in the newly green areas.

Place a pressure plate and a bridge in front of each pasture such that the pressure plate raises the bridge and lowers the next bridge in the series.

Watch Goblins run in circles till they die of thirst/hunger.

[T-Mick]

So many ideas...all of them sound fun.  I think I'll try the freezing one, or perhaps Armv's water contraption.

[Duntada Man]

For creatures that like destroying your doors and such, set a series of flood gates along random hallways that hold back water.

Set the floor of these halls to be grates, to keep creatures on this floor, but allow liquid to pass to the floors below.

Several floors below this, place pressure plats that respond to water. When one gets wet they open all the grates, causing the destructive bastard to fall a few z levels into a pool that you fill to a few z levels.

While they swim around/sink, set up a mechanism that will fill the newly submerged hallway with angry aquatic creatures.

Bonus points if you can make the lower part of the hallway out of glass so your dwarves can watch.

Extra bonus if this area is the dining hall.

"Armok is displeased!" bonus if you can find a way of draining the tank so you can recover the goblinite without killing your fishy friends.

[miauw62]

Alternately, set up tetris in your entrance hall.

Sig'd

Those are all epic ideas.
I suggest having all the cats that are born abducted into a few cages and then have them in a cage next to the enterance hall, when the siege comes, just unleash the kittens and observe the fight. also, have a reserve water-flooding system.

[Levi]

One of my favorite fort defenses is you build a deep, longish pit on either side of your fort's entrance.  Then you put a single spear trap(I usually use training spears) on each tile between the two pits.  Then whenever something comes to attack, it always ends up dodging into the pit.   

Bonus points if you set up a butchery and leather maker at the bottom of the pit. 

[terkiey]

Try running a fort with limited no military. Rely entirely on traps, and if things get too hot, just wall yourself in, because there still isn't anything that can destroy walls.
Bonus points: Build an entirely self-sufficient fortress that's fully automated, use dfhack to disable pausing, and leave it to its own devices overnight.

Toooooo  easy.

[krenshala]

terkiey, he asked for creative, not hard, even though the two usually go hand-in-hand.

One of my favorite fort defenses is you build a deep, longish pit on either side of your fort's entrance.  Then you put a single spear trap(I usually use training spears) on each tile between the two pits.  Then whenever something comes to attack, it always ends up dodging into the pit.   

Bonus points if you set up a butchery and leather maker at the bottom of the pit. 

You need it to only be a 3 or 4 z-level drop, just enough to injure or seriously stun, with a bunch of marksdwarves and a craftshop cranking out bone bolts at the bottom.

[Loud Whispers]

Stampede of the wild rhinoceroi. 'Nuff said.

[Dheyjin]

I usually build a star shaped fortress over ground because it's easy to hold with just one or two archers assigned to each spike. The shape eliminates blind spots so the enemy can't hug to a wall withouth beeing in range/sight of a group of archers.
Then I go on and build a couple of small Towers around the edge of the map, with undergrund tunnels to my base, for easy access for migrants and traders. I usually fill them with tamed deadly animals, like Giant Desert Scorpions, to prevent any stealthy intruders.

After that's setup I prepare for larger armies with a selfcleaning drowning labyrinth. A pressure plate right before the final door into my fortress closes both the entry and exit and opens the cistern right above the labyrinth. A couple of z-levels up I build an overflow with a pressure plate reacting on water, closing the cistern and open a drain beneath the lab into a canal with pumps behind grates at the end. The pumps get the bloody water back up into the river, the grates hold of any items and corpses for later use.

There are easier ways to hold it, but this way it actually looks and feels like running a fortress, rather than build a massive deathtrap that covers the entire map.
It can get tricky at some point later in but it's more fun this way than pull a leaver once in while.