Dwarf Fortress: Protecting Dwarves During an Attack

Question

I'm still a bit of a novice with DF and had my first real experience with Fun the other day. I working away building some beds, setting some traps, farming, etc when a horde of undead goblins appeared and lumbered toward my fortress. A few were caught in cage traps, some were chewed up by weapon traps but they were too much and entered my fortress.

As soon as they were inside almost ALL of my dwarves rushed them and started attacking which, as you can imagine, ended poorly.

Next time I'm attacked how can I prevent my worker dwarves from trying to attack? Was is just because I lacked much of a military? How do you keep your dwarves away from the attackers?

Answer 1

The trick is to define a burrow (via w at the main screen) that is away from the combat zone.

You then need to go to the military screen (via m) and set your civilians to use the burrow. This will keep them with in the designated area.

see Burrow (DF Wiki)

Answer 2

Besides restraining your dwarves to a burrow it's also a good idea to keep the invaders away from your general population.

A well placed draw bridge usually does the trick for me. Make sure to keep a back entrance available with another draw bridge which can be used by your military to make a sortie and get those nasty goblins from behind.