Meph is pretty active on the forums, so he could give you a better idea than me. Also, you can include Fortress Defence inside Masterwork.
Masterwork is basically a big expansion on DF, with extra challenges and expanded late-game material to fight them, as well as a myriad of things to choose from mid-game. Everything is expanded on in the mod, and basically everything important can be improved. There are also new buildings, items and civs, three of which are cave civs (CAUTION: THEY WILL RAPE YOU SIDEWAYS) and one evil-friendly (the Drow, with expensive but valuable and otherwise unobtainable wares).
The others are all enemies, and are basically unique in every. The goblins are changed into kobolds +1, and will only ambush your base (not siege). They also [TRAP_AVOID] and pick locks (I think), just like kobolds. Orcs are basically old-goblins +1, with [ENRAGE], improved weapons, armour and materials. Troops are also way more varied; there's even a shield-tank. The undead are swarms of unarmed, unarmoured pricks that are hard to kill and will pile on your military dwarfs. Best defence is a big trap, like a flooding chamber or a strong military. Warlocks have spells which will (unless you're well prepared) murder the everloving shit out of your melee, but come completely unarmoured. Best defence is crossbows (or guns!). Frost Giants are made out of armour and are as hard to kill as FBs made out of metal. Automatons are robots, so basically ranged versions of Frosties.
There are a bunch of new materials and lot of uses for them, but sometimes it's a bit convoluted. Sometimes it's hard to tell what material is better then what, what their use is, and how to make it. For example, there's cobalt, mithiril, stainless steel, bloodsteel (or something of the like, from the Drow) rose gold and a bunch of others. You probably won't end up using most of them before hitting adamantine though. You can also make slade weapons (and I don't know how that fares for sharp weapons or armour), and a combination of slade+candy which I assume kicks all the ass to ever exist, ever.
The mod overhauls a lot of stuff from vanilla, including various FPS increasing stuff. There's lots of new armours, weapons and trap weapons, all of which can be improved with various plates, runes and mechanisms. You can make more stuff our of rock. A bigger noble system too. Too many stuff to elaborate on, read through the Masterwork manual for everything.
I played Civ Forge a long time ago, and they might've added more since then, but Meph's Masterwork is way bigger. Coupled with the fact that you can customize nearly every option and addition in the mod (and Fortress Defence), I'd go for this mod.
Meph is pretty active on the forums, so he could give you a better idea than me. Also, you can include Fortress Defence inside Masterwork.
Masterwork is basically a big expansion on DF, with extra challenges and expanded late-game material to fight them, as well as a myriad of things to choose from mid-game. Everything is expanded on in the mod, and basically everything important can be improved. There are also new buildings, items and civs, three of which are cave civs (CAUTION: THEY WILL RAPE YOU SIDEWAYS) and one evil-friendly (with expensive but valuable and otherwise unobtainable wares). The others are all enemies, and are basically unique in every. The goblins are changed into kobolds +1, and will only ambush your base (not siege).
More to come pending post edit.
Also, im going to ninja your edit, watch out whit mining coal veins, your miners will basicly suffocate due to fake coal veins that give them lung necrosis >.>
Yeah, I turned that off, plus the arsenic poisoning from smelting. Pissed me off something fierce.