Hum, I hadn't even thought of the cave-in. If I ever get back to that fortress I shall have to try it.

Okay, time to test my jury rigged flood and de-flood system. In case of Worst Case Scenario, Pull lever.

EDIT: That was weak. Time to add screw pumps.

KILL ALL THE ELVES!
seriously, those ♥♥♥♥ annoy me.
anyway, having a shitton of fun on a 4x4 embark on a haunted beach. My hammerdwarf is running around smashing zombie groundhogs and cougars
Really do need some migrants if i'm going to get my towers up before some real hostiles arrive..

That is the true dwarven spirit!

Also, decided I needed some extra challenge, so I generated a world suffering from severe glaciation: pretty much every place has temperatures below the freezing point, and 75% of the world are covered with glaciers or tundra. To make things even worse, I decided I would build my fortress totally above-ground, except for stuff like underground farming and mining. Also, none of the walls would be natural, I would build them all out of ice blocks. So far, I've got a steady supply of food and booze, 16 very happy dwarves, and zero casualties. Fire imps tried to attack me once, but started taking freezing damage as soon as they left the magma vent, and collapsed right before reaching my front door. Funniest thing I've seen so far.

actually, once elves are at the trade depot, wall it up, disassemble the depot, take the goods, and keep the elves walled up until they die, and tear down the wall. Rebuild the depot, surrounded by dead elves. never clean it, see how many dead elves you get. if you can, use the bodys for something. I don't know if you can do that because I haven't tried yet. im gonna try this.

FOOD.
And how in Armok do you attack the prancing woodland retards while they are still in the depot? War will take too long. Oh god, I just got the best idea.

I love my front drawbridge. It's underground, so it has a ceiling right over it. This makes for lots of fun when goblins are over top of it. See, anything passing gets smushed into the ceiling when the bridge closes. As well, one of the cats that has been in my fortress for years, and was constantly displaying a message that he had "canceled place item in storage: too injured" despite being in perfect condition, was crushed against the ceiling.
It's not too hard to deal with a 20-goblin siege when your whole military is parked in front of said drawbridge and opens and closes it at intervals to let goblins in, wrestle them to death, then squish their remains like some kind of a sick garbage compactor.

This is a problem with the cat trying to use it's mouth, I think. There's a topic in the wiki for it, and since I added the mouth part I haven't gotten the message since.
EDIT: Here

Two mouthed cats.
All the more body parts to fly everywhere in case of a thermonuclear catsplosion.

Some guy added grasp to the default mouth and ended up with dwarves firing crossbows from their mouths. You need to replace the cat's mouth with a new one that has grasp.

Huh-oh. After reaching about 145 dwarves, sieges started getting worse. I installed some traps, which worked pretty well (disemboweling seems to frighten goblins). Unfortunately, they decided to wait in ambush right next to my newly-appointed dump zone. 5 or 6 dwarves were killed and many more were injured. Now a good third of the fortress is unhappy, some of them miserable and starting to throw tantrums. Doors have been broken, chairs have been smashed and people have been beaten to death. One guy killed 4 dwarves before the captain of the guard got him. Another went around smashing things, then went into a state of melancholy, then fell passed out right on top of my large, serrated disks of disembowelment. Needless to say, ♥♥♥♥ is getting real. I doubt this fortress is going to survive much longer.

Derp. Solution: wall off a medium-small area in front of your fortress, and put your refuse dump in that safe zone. Leave a small, easily defended opening 3 squares wide for caravans and peons to chop wood. Fill this opening with traps, and maybe a drawbridge.

No no no no no. Building enough walls for a reasonable area takes way too much stone. Instead, dig channels around an area on the surrface (there is even a way to make that without going over-ground. Just search the wiki for cave-ins.) and sink it a few Z-levels. You'll have a permanent surfaced safe area totally inaccessible from the outside world.

Dude are you seriously ever short of stone in DF? I have literally never wanted for stone.

Yesh. Plus, you can't make guardhouses with fortifications so that you can fire out of them out of channels.
Which reminds me. My first siege happened, I stationed my 6 marksdwarves in one of the guardhouses, and the goblins got a blistering hail of bolts to the face, killing 6 and driving away the rest. It was so awesome.