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[birdman]

Here's my current, and probably most successful, fort. Archers are set on a patrol of the fortifications, with the moat guaranteeing that they are within shooting range (my math might be a little off there but it should at least prevent most enemies from hanging out under their sight range.) The moat is dwarf-made of course, and the bottom section of the river was channeled to allow the moat to flow more reliably. The top part of it is the original brook, simply channeled out to prevent enemies from walking on it.

The aboveground section is sealable with drawbridges, and there is a more complex staging area underground with cage/weapon traps and an emergency drawbridge seal. The plan is to move those traps aboveground in front of the drawbridges and make the aboveground fort the complete staging area.

I've been terribly unlucky with iron and flux for a long time, and this fort was no different, but this time I was resolved to focus on what matters: Candy. I dug down to the magma sea as quickly as possible to offset the complete lack of advanced metals (not even tin to make bronze!) After striking a candy funnel without 15+ z-levels of no hollow section, I was partially set, my weaponsmith was high enough to make quality weapons.

Soon enough I've got 16 soldiers, 8 of them with adamantine weapons and the rest with silver warhammers and copper crossbows. Copper armor does the job for the first few invasions since adamantine is so labor intensive, and more importantly i'm able to buy/loot steel for melting purposes to get my army up to a respectable standard. We're only 5 years in, so the kill count isn't overwhelming or impressive.... but we've got 3 goblin ambushes (one with an elf civ member!) an ettin, and three werebeasts under our belt. Not to mention the one-eyed web-slinging rat titan that managed to break two unlucky necks before going down.

Nothing too fancy, just proud of myself for not messing up. This is the..... 5th? fort in a row where i've tried to do this over the last month, but each has failed before the actual structure stage. The first was lost to a werebeast attack, since I goofed on getting military up early. The second to a werebeast infection that I failed to contain within the allotted month. The third to a necromancer raid who showed up with 70 soldiers well before i had 70 dwarves........ And the fourth to a terrible flooding accident as I goofed up my usual generator/bathhouse wombo combo design.

[KevinM]

Nice! 
I can't tell based on the image, but do you have a surrounding floor on the outside to prevent climbers?  You'll want that at least.  I prefer having ceilings too, due to flying enemies.
The wiki talks about climbing enemies but you'll want to construct your walls in a way to prevent swimmers from going across the moat, then up the walls and meleeing your archers.

[birdman]

I was under the impression that climbers can't climb smoothed walls, and that constructed walls count as smoothed...  But it's not much of an issue to extend the fortifications out one tile to act as a floor if that's the case. I'll have to do some simple !!SCIENCE!! on the next invasion

ALSO, as if fate has told me to prepare for this very eventuality: I've been having my marksdwarves train in melee against captured gobbos, so their melee skills are alright in the event of a fight, complete with copper crossbows for high-ish density blunt damage

[HungThir]

i believe smoothed/constructed walls are climbable with enough climbing skill, but i don't know how much is enough, and i don't know how much invaders are likely to have

[Quarque]

This wiki answers all of your questions about climbing safety:

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Climber

- smoothed walls are impossible to climb
- Walls constructed from blocks can be climbed, though it's difficult
- Walls constructed from whole stones are easy to climb

An overhang can protect you from climbers, but only if it juts out two spaces rather than one, or if the overhang is a floor without a wall. See wiki for a detailed explanation.

PS: be wary of critters jumping from trees. As a decent nature hating dwarf, you want to pave the ground around your fortress for deforestation.

[Gnomedevourer]

What tileset is that? I keep trying to find it but don't know its name.

[birdman]

It's not a tileset, at least as far as I know it's not something you can use to actually play the game, it's just a visualizer called stonesense. It comes bundled with the peridexiserrant LNP, or possibly dfhack itself, i'm not really sure. I have the lazy newb pack and all i have to do is type "stonesense" in the dfhack window itself, and it pops up a quick 3d visual of your fort that you can move around. There are other 3d visualizers too, I just like stonesense because it's quick to take a peek.

[Gnomedevourer]

oh ok thank ya for the help