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[franti]

So, a while ago I tried to attack the circus. It was actually semi-successful in a sort of epic fashion. I won the battle, but lost the war: I had to savescum quite a bit, my FPS was terrible, and everybody died from syndromes in the end. Yaaaaay Dwarf Fortress.

This time, I'm going to put a base down there. First step was to make Slade diggable. Easily done.

I've embarked on a small, 3x3 map. I turned off temperature and weather. I'm not going to make Dwarves superpowerful or turn off invaders: that's cheap.
The embark screen showed a hilly, cold region with several layers of Sandstone with a gaint igneous volcanic moutain jutting up through the center of the map, with a small stream in the upper left. Now, the igneous volcanic mountain has several layers of Marble immediately after the Basalt ends, and the Basalt is at "surface" level, so I don't have to dig too far for Flux.

Combining the Flux with the massive amount of Coal in the Sandstone and the volcano and I'll have a very functioning Steel industry soon enough.

For the fortress, I plan on walling off my base with a rasing bridge, lowering it only to let in useful migrants and caravans, as I don't plan on producing any food. Any useless migrants will be made into Funrace Operators/Soldiers.

The Soldiers will train half a year, and smelt the other half. I plan on all their armor being masterwork quality, as I melt back down anything that doesn't meet my standards, or sell it to Humans.
I try my best to keep Dwarves sepperated from one another, in the very likely case that many of them die.

As for breaching hell, my current plan is an insanely long hallway filled with Spear Traps made of various metals that I would normaly use, but plan on turning into trinkets to sell for food to the Humans. Mainly, Tin Bronze, Arsenical Bronze, Bismuth Bronze, Brass, and Wrought Iron. At the end of the hallway will be my Dwarf soldiers. I plan on arming them in a mix of Steel Halberds and Steel Picks, to tear limbs off.
All Dwarves will be armored as follows:
Leather Trousers, Leather Tunic, Masterwork Steel Helm, Masterwork Steel Chain Shirt, Masterwork Steel Breastplate, Masterwork Steel Chain Mittens, Masterwork Steel Gauntlets, Masterwork Tin Bronze or Arsenical Bronze Shield, Masterwork Steel Chain Leggings, Masterwork Steel Greavers, Masterwork Steel Low Boots, Masterwork Steel Weapon, Leather Hood, Leather Robe.
Since around 2/3 of my fortress will be military, I don't think I'll have enough funobtainium to give Dwarves more than a candy weapon and perhaps a candy helm.
And, yes, I know how long it'll take to outfit them this way. It's worth it.

My major problems are as follows:
- No surface wood for barrels/beds, and I don't plan on beaching the caverns if I can help it.
- I plan on killing all animals migrants show up with to try and keep my FPS bouyant, so I don't have a long-term source of fat for soap as I can't import that from Humans.
- My Civilization is currently at war with a nearby Civ of a custom race called Hrafnkin.
- There don't seem to be any Prometheans, another custom Civ that dwells in wastelands and badlands, on the world. I was planning on importing all my Arsenic from them, if I couldn't find any.

Any advice? Also, I am playing with a custom realism/diversification mod that's not entirely finished.

[ThatAussieGuy]

Have a LOT of guys danger-room'ed to legendary.  Anything less will get them killed.  I'd suggest holding off training the majority of your militia, instead using them to forge all the armor you'll need for even THINKING of visiting the Circus.  Spear Traps are good, but I suggest a pillar-o'-death over the entry point in the accessible level of the candy pillar.  Drop it when they all cluster into the room level with your fort and it should thin the herd (at least, in theory.  I'm planning to do the same in my incursion, but haven't had a chance to test it yet)

[elf-fondling human]

Try freezing them all in carbonite obsidian.

[franti]

That would just murder my FPS. I think a cave-in would too. My hope is that after 50 tiles of 10x Spear Traps, all the bullshit ones like Lye Wasps or fire spirits are dead, and the rest actually need to be hacked apart.
I accidentally opened a while ago, and 5 Adept Swordsdwarves in partial Iron killed 5 demons before dying, despite being outnumbered 20-1, so I think if I can get 50 Legendary Speardwarves in full Steel, I'll win.

[ThatAussieGuy]

Try freezing them all in carbonite obsidian.

Have you been looking at my backup plans? *shuffles and hides blueprints*

[Girlinhat]

It depends on the demons.  Sometimes you get 20 varieties of salt fiends, sometimes you get solid steel monsters, other times it's a steam demon that breaths fire.  Even as you kill it with one punch, that one breath of fire hotter than the sun will char your dwarves to the bone in an instant.  Cue tantrum.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I would say that quantity is far more important than quality.  After any significant skirmish, you're looking at all your dwarves dying of syndromes or fire (maybe fire explosions).  Quality is good and all, it's just that legendaries in adamantine won't really survive any more than novices.

It sounds like your dead-set against using traps-- that is an effective way to deal with demons, if you feel like it.  Separating them into chunks via bridges is also very useful.

Animals are awesome.  So are winding corridors.  I've had good luck with fortifications, too, although I know some people have reported clowns moving through them.

If you're going to wall up, with no caverns, then I don't see why you need beds or soap.  Injuries pre-circus should be rare.  No deaths means no friends dying means no tantrums.  No idlers means no friends as well.  Barrels, of course, can be replaced by stone pots.

I don't know if "no food" is part of the challenge-- I think that a single food producing dwarf can feed a whole fortress (I'm using a cook with geese right now), and leaves you much safer than relying on caravans.

[Frogwarrior]

Long, winding fortification corridors with lots of ballistae firing constantly? I always wanted to try that.

[franti]

I don't know how I came off as against traps. I said that I was building a giant trapped hallway.
I like the idea of balistae, but they can't hit crap, fire slowly, opperators run if anything gets close, and they're expensive to train.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I don't know how I came off as against traps. I said that I was building a giant trapped hallway.

It's just that you focused on military when traps are much more effective.  I'm not sure where exactly the line making it "too easy" is for you-- animals behind doors as bait, with blue retracting spikes (including blue mechanism), separated from your fort with blue airlock drawbridges (controlled by high speed switches ala goblin grinder thread to trap the demons before they make it through the door), is pretty much a win button against the main wave.  Might not even need the animals behind the doors.

I've noticed that there always seem to be some main-wavers that get stuck in the tubes.  Forts+marksdwarves took care of them for me.

If the goal is not just defeating the baddies but colonizing their home, keep in mind that what you do to deal with the main wave won't necessarily work against the later "wildlife" clowns.  Beating the first wave is as easy as you're willing to let it be, but the wildlife pops don't act the same way, and so they're really hard to trap (bait doesn't work well).  To actually colonize the circus, you're going to have to face several smaller groups after the main wave when you're down there building.

[elf-fondling human]

Didn't clowns have [TRAPAVOID] by default?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Yes, but upright spikes ignore that.

[Musashi]

It's best to remember upright spikes aren't traps. They're pure, vertical death, that depend on your ability to build a perfect perpetual repeater... of whether the dwarf pulling the lever has a good union or not.
The quality of said union only influences the frequency of Urist's break, that being said. Over here, only two things are certain: death and breaks. Unless you've somehow enabled the economy, in which case you poor fools get taxes on top of that.

[franti]

A goblin grinder sounds like a lot of work.
And I understand that dividing the main wave up makes it easier, but so does having more troops. I think that if I can get 50x1 hallway with 10x spear traps, every demon has to go through 500 spears before it gets to the military, which reduces their numbers to near-even levels.

And the reason I'm focused on military is that when I do get down into hell, I can't have everything be trapped: I need a way to manually kill the demons.

[Satarus]

Can't you link the same spike to two different levers.  That way if one breaks the other is still pulling.