Bay 12 Games Forum

1: Not that I know of.
2: Loam is not sand, you need a map with a Sand layer. There is no cheat for making sand either, unless you're into memory hacking.
3: Build cages and assign the cats to them. Then dispose of them as you please. BE WARNED: the dwarf owner will definitely not like this and most likely throw a tantrum.
4: Yes, other civilizations can retaliate, though I haven't experienced an elven siege. They'll send a diplomat beforehand to inform you of the situation first.
5: I'm surprised your fort has held for so long and not been burned to ashes by a dragon, smashed to pieces by a colossus, and trampled by a hydra yet.
6: I'd just dispose of the entire cage somehow. You can assign a pit zone, and have the goblin thrown into the pit, but that involves releasing him and possibly scaring some surrounding dwarves, including the one that's supposed to lead him by the collar to his doom.
7: Both sound like bugs/glitches. For the first one, see if you can remove the floor (remove constructions). For the second, try removing the floor and replacing it. Beware, dwarves like to remove floors from beneath their feet with foreseeable consequences involving gravity.
8: Funny as hell. And unfortunately not much you can do about it, other than removing Mr. Sheriff from his noble position. I'm sure you can leave that noble vacant and not build jails until you're ready for the justice system.

Short answer: no.

The sieges and immigrants are randomized, as are movements of dwarves, artifacts, the goods merchants bring (except for what you ordered), the list goes on. You may  make a backup of your save game before some events happen, then restore it, and get a different result.

The items may have been assigned to a task (marked by the [TSK] flag), meaning somebody is going there to haul them to a stockpile. The moody dwarf won't just grab it from under their noses unless these jobs are completed or cancelled.

The spikes may have failed to all retract in time.

In addition to what the others said, you can smooth and engrave the floor littered with stones (it's just not visible until you clean them up) and you can assign a stockpile there, but it won't have any usable space unless you get rid of the stones somehow.

Edit: Oh, beaten to it.

[ January 13, 2008: Message edited by: MyBeardIsOnFire ]

Don't bother waiting and start making those pumps. Some things don't stop burning for years to come and it's unknown if they ever do. Even flooding your entire fortress then pumping the water out will take you less time than waiting for every small thing to burn out. Not to mention all that time you risk dwarves dying from heat if they get any stupid ideas.

You can link one lever to many different objects, but can't link those objects together. One thing to remember though, is that you can't have the same lever open one door and close another door - things have a default mechanism-operated state and will return to it even when you're doing weird things to prevent that. So it's either raise all drawbridges or lower them all.

All I know is that it happens. May not be entirely intended, but they're maybe... human mercenaries?