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[achamalacha]

My forts always start like this:
- Basic farms, beds and dining furniture on Z-2
- Find magma sea before 1st Summer
- Set up magma industry down by the sea before 1st Autumn
- Dig out individual bedrooms between Caverns 1 and 2
- Distribute fort functions between surface, intra-Cavern layers and above magma sea

I like your style, dude

[Immortal-D]

So in general this settlement is very risky fun to setup, isnt it? So, when broaching the caverns or the magma see there is always the imminent possibility of danger fun?

How much wartrained dorfs does is take to deal with it? I would really like to give it a try.

In my experience, breaching the Caverns is significantly more !FUN! than the Magma Sea.  The latter only spits out a few critters, whereas the former contains all manner of good times.  In any case, simply accessing these areas is easy enough, the real trick is securing your entire Fortress there.  As I said, I have only ever built a few industries in the Cavern after establishing myself around the mineshafts above.  Having all of your key industries in the Caverns proper (as opposed to dug out adjacent) would definitely be a !FUN! challenge.

[Jazzeraint]

Totes gonna do this, sans bricking up everything.

[Psieye]

So in general this settlement is very risky fun to setup, isnt it? So, when broaching the caverns or the magma see there is always the imminent possibility of danger fun?

How much wartrained dorfs does is take to deal with it? I would really like to give it a try.

0. Because I do all my breaching before 1st Summer, if I happen to get unlucky I haven't lost much time. I've never been unlucky.

See, while the rest of my dwarves are setting up temporary facilities on Z-2, one miner is digging a staircase to the bottom of the map. As soon as he finds a cavern, I do some micro to ensure a ceiling gets built immediately. Then I continue digging down after a detour through the nearest pillar to dig through. Once I've charted where every cavern plus the magma sea is, I abandon the entire staircase and dig my fort proper. To be unlucky means a flying critter happens to be near the ceiling where the peek hole opens up.

[PatrikLundell]

Psieye describes the same method as I use to locate caverns and the sea.
Yes, there is always a risk of being unlucky when breaching a cavern or the sea, and there isn't anything you can do about that (well, you can save scum or cheat to view where everything is using DFHack, of course).
Psieye's method of probing is about as safe as you can make probing. You can increase the safety to the fortress by having a drawbridge block off access to the probing tunnel(s) in an emergency, and sacrifice the miner if need be. You have to be quite unlucky to get attacked immediately. Also, be aware of the leaking up/down staircases, where critters can enter an up/down staircase (and probably a down only one as well as roofless obsidian tiles) diagonally from below if the tile beneath the staircase is rock, but one beside it isn't. Detecting magma crabs crawling around in your tunnel when the digging was broken off because it hit semi molten rock and you haven't even discovered the magma sea is an unpleasant surprise. After advice from the forum, I've also changed my breach plugging technique from building a floor to an Up staircase directly in the stairwell to get a floor in as well as a means for the builder to get up, without any need for additional digging.

To actually settle in unprotected caverns is more dangerous than settling unprotected on the surface, because the nasty cavern critters are generally a lot worse than the surface ones, and I don't think FBs adhere to any pop level limits before they start to appear (Titans don't start to appear until your pop is 80, unless you change that world generation parameter). However, undead ignore pop levels as well, so settling on the surface near a black tower might be worse than settling in an unprotected cavern.

As to the actual question of how many soldiers you need to settle in an unprotected cavern, the answer is as many as you can get, and that might not be enough, but you can get lucky and get by with just a few. Also, anything that sets the vegetation on fire is bad news to any dorfs who are close to that vegetation or might get close to it, since they have no sense of self preservation concerning fire (FBs, fire imps, ...). If your settlement is nestled in that vegetation you could be in trouble.

[deathunter]

I once tryed evil surroundingd near a necro tower. the first necrosiege was a reliable source of great fun, because the undead bodys just slam themself into the Fortifications and eventually made it through...

Surviving in the Caverns may be close to that lvl of fun...

[Jazzeraint]

Built a central staircase down through all three cavern layers, and only lost 3 dwarves making sure it was walled off. Now I need to pick which layer I'm going to begin my 'real fortress', though I plan to eventually bridge all 3 layers into each other.

Suggestions for which layer to begin in? I prefer layer 2 or layer 3, since they aren't as easy. I don't need to do 3 for magma, as there's a volcano nearby. I don't have a militia, though, so I'm expecting plenty of fun.

[Immortal-D]

Built a central staircase down through all three cavern layers, and only lost 3 dwarves making sure it was walled off. Now I need to pick which layer I'm going to begin my 'real fortress', though I plan to eventually bridge all 3 layers into each other.

Suggestions for which layer to begin in? I prefer layer 2 or layer 3, since they aren't as easy. I don't need to do 3 for magma, as there's a volcano nearby. I don't have a militia, though, so I'm expecting plenty of fun.

I recommend choosing your Cavern based on the size & population of local trees.  Also look for a water source you can easily secure.  Pumping a lake to muddy your farmland will be crucial, since there tend to be tons of dead vegetation which will disrupt your plots.

[Jazzeraint]

I recommend choosing your Cavern based on the size & population of local trees.  Also look for a water source you can easily secure.  Pumping a lake to muddy your farmland will be crucial, since there tend to be tons of dead vegetation which will disrupt your plots.

The trees? Whyfor? There seems to be plenty on each level, in any event.

I have an aquifer, so I can turn that into a cistern and irrigation line with ease.

[Immortal-D]

Well in that case, choose your Cavern based on which has the most colorful moss

[Iamblichos]

If the caverns are your primary/sole source of wood, go with Cavern 2 or 3.  The tunnel tubes have exponentially more wood in them than the other fungi, not sure why.  One tunnel tube can yield upwards of 30 logs; the others usually give 3-4 logs each.

[celem]

Havent done this in a while, used to be a pretty "fun" ride.  Whether its too easy...  depends what your surface is like whether its actually easier than sitting topside.  Straight to cavern is a default tool for me still in scorching/freezing; glaciers, badlands etc.

People gave some excellent advice here regarding securing the place.  Remember to secure your Loom before opening caverns, i've lost soooo many Weavers. (Collect Silk is an automated job, forbidding the stone you build the workshop from works to lock it down)

For what its worth I aim to hit a cavern in the second week.  I cut some fast storage on the first soil layer then dive to the caverns, crack them and seal them again immediately.  I'll then cut my first dorm/dining in the rock just below cavern 1 and return to z-2 to carve out enormous rooms in the soil.  This bootstraps mining skill in preperation for metal hunting/further expansion and gives you secure (mob-free) access to the cavern plants/trees as well as giving you an indoor grazing zone.  All of my farming, jobs relating to animals and most wood industries take place here.  I usually pumpstack from the magma sea to handle metal industry, im prone to shallow fortresses.

[PatrikLundell]

Badlands are actually quite easy to use to get grazing topside: just channel away the top soil level in an area, and grass starts to grow there (but nothing that can be harvested and no trees. Ordinary topside farming works as well, but you'd obviously need to get your seeds from elsewhere). This requires the soil to be at least two levels deep, of course.

I attack the auto web collection issue by turning off auto collection as part of the post embark preparations (together with enabling outdoor body collection).

I don't see too much use for a built tree farm, since it takes a fair while for trees to mature, and by that time I've mostly secured at least one cavern, and even if you don't secure caverns, there should be a fair number of opportunities to fell trees and collect logs while the cavern critters are on the more benign types. Later on I'll be fighting to keep junglification in check.