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[ShadowBroker]

a good way to stave off boredom is tweak raws just a little bit, give everything [TRAINABLE][PET] or [PRONE_TO_RAGE:1]. or my personal favorite: [LAYS_UNUSUAL_EGGS_(whatever)] lower requirements for invasions and add more creatures that want to perforate you. embark on a glacier and pull your hair out as i have no idea how to farm without a convenient soil layer >.>

[fractalman]

Glacier is pretty easy, actually: just drop a chunk of ice a couple layers down to muddy up some rock.   I got reasonbly efficient at getting at least 4 farming tiles set up in huanted glaciers before the unlockingness of coffins drove me to switch back to easy embarks.
(note: you'll want to drop it to a layer or two below the first stone layer, and it has to be dropped via cave-in; the boulders left by mining are useless for anything except constructions and short-lived workshops. )
Tundra, on the other hand...

[Bihlbo]

You will likely play a lot of forts. The first few you will probably play until it falls, you will learn, and a fort falling will become less common. Eventually you will develop the skills to play a fort until the only thing that can stop it is your boredom, but you won't get there without playing a lot of forts. I'm talking a few dozen. So don't be afraid to try new things, let it go to crap, then start a new fort.

Each little element of the game can be the focus of a whole fort. Keep in mind that items of high trade value are easier to come by than your need for imported goods will ever be (in part because what gets traded by outsiders is so frustratingly limited), so it's easier to make a self-sustaining fort than it is to subsist on trade goods. So, every time you start a fort you can focus on one particular trade item and do it really well.

Examples:
 * Everything is glass! Get some magma and half a dozen glassmakers. Make all your furniture out of glass, build all your walls out of glass blocks, make all your traps filled with glass weapons, and all exports are glass crafts.
 * Go nuts on decorations. Send everything made through a gauntlet of decorating steps. Encrust with gems, add bands of silver, sew on images, and nothing is complete with both bone and horn/hoof. Dwarves will be so pleased at walking through a doorway that you won't need to make a waterfall.
 * Complete tree-based economy. Embark on a place with very deep dirt. Wall off the surface so you can harvest its trees. Completely dig out all but the first layer of the dirt levels (the first layer has to stay un-dug in order for surface trees to grow, so honestly, either wall the surface in or dig out the first layer). You'll have trees growing like mad. Make everything out of wood and run your furnaces on charcoal only. Also go to war with the elves, who deserve it.
 * You don't need farms at all. Embark with some animals and forget about farming. Turn meat, fish, egs, and tallow into all your meals and trade these away for booze, and maybe for plants too (which gives you seeds to cook, not plant). For an extra challenge embark on a high-savagery location with hunters, getting all your meat from wild animals. Trap and tame them in order to establish a sustainable meat industry for the future. You'll probably have to buy some socks though, leather can't keep your feet comfy.
 * The dwarves who don't mine. You really just don't need to ever break the surface at all. Farm, build out of wood, trade for stone and weapons. When you are attacked, you have goblinite to mine, melt, and reforge into what you need (assuming you can kill goblins with wooden bolts).

Anyway, each time you try something new you'll learn about how to do various things really well. That's the fun of the game. There is so much to learn, discover, personalize, and explore that it tends to not be fun for people who expect there to be a "right way to do it."

[MDFification]

I recommend building a single massive fort and just keep playing it. Aim to completely colonize areas for resources. The goal is to remain safe, keep the fort functionally immortal, and just stop playing when you've created a dwarven masterpiece.
Note: You should start on a map with sand.
First, wall off the map/as much of the surface as you want. Then, get yourself a magma smelter and roof your walled section of the map in glass (so you don't get irritated by the sun). Built an entrance trap and marksdwarf towers as your external defenses.
Then, you settle the caverns. Dig tunnels between all entrances to the caverns from the edges of the map, and then seal them off from the rest of that cavern layer. Do this with all cavern layers, then connect the tunnels and dig a shaft to the surface so the cavern creatures can path towards your fort. Use a chained animal and a hallway lines with cage traps to attract them. This way you'll be able to fight forgotten beasts and capture a ton of useful, useful cave animals.
Where to go next is your choice. I recommend building a satellite fort either in hell or under the magma sea, and then connecting them to the main fort in a way that allows rapid transit but can be blocked off in case of inevitable emergency.

If you actually manage to do this all, though, you'll be a king among dorfs.

[TeleDwarf]

Find yourself on this chart

[jcochran]

Find yourself on this chart

Hmm... Looks amazingly similar to the Eve Online learning curve.....

[BoredVirulence]

Hmm... Looks amazingly similar to the Eve Online learning curve.....

Yes, there are stories of its origin from Eve, there are also stories that suggest it originated from Dwarf Fortress.

Honestly though, both are wrong. Neither game requires much "skill." Dwarf fortress, and arguably Eve Online require dedication and a resistance to pain more than skill. At the same time though, Starcraft is much less skill, and more of a tolerance for micromanagement (which we could argue there is skill in the process of micromanagement in this case).

Also of course, the line for Dwarf Fortress isn't a function, so it is clearly garbage, albeit funny garbage. For this reason I can't argue its better suited for Dwarf Fortress (which I think is the more difficult game). I like to imagine more people here would have protested at this issue.

[BanjoSnake]

I don't know, as an avid player of both Eve and DF I have to say they are both challenging in different ways. in DF you have to puzzle your way through endless, counter-intuitive menus, overcome occasionally baffling game mechanics, and deal with the myriad problems and issues that arise with attempting to control 200 drunken, insane baby-killers. But you can happily just click away, see what happens and laugh at the incredible combat reports that ensue. Eve is very different, you can join a large coalition and be told what to fly, where to fly and who to shoot and get kills and be "successful". It's easy and a lot of people like it. But if you really dig into the underlying mechanics, how different ships and modules interact, spend some time out in solo or small gang pvp it's a very different animal.

I guess my point is that I've known a lot of people who couldn't figure out one game or the other (or both) and called them too challenging and quit. Personally I love both games because they are so challenging. It forces you to explore the world you've been given and think outside the box in order to conquer it. I think of both as worlds rather than true video games, literal sandboxes for me to play in and utilize imagination and often sheer bloody-mindedness to forcefully extract fun from them.

I guess the only real difference is in eve you're inflicting misery on real people instead of elves. Yay misery!

[Getix Kain]

Find yourself on this chart

Hmm... Looks amazingly similar to the Eve Online learning curve.....

That's why it was familiar..

(ex Coalition of Antipirates Comms Officer and FC here..)

[TeleDwarf]

I see I have caused a great derailment of the thread. That was not my original intention though.
The image shows my view of the DF gameplay in a nice functional form:
You start your fort, climb steadily uphill, and then hit some straight cliff(first ambush, first siege, berserk miner from previous fort, first lasher squad, first catsplosion, etc...  ). Sometimes you overcome the cliff, sometimes you fall from that cliff too brave it again next season/year/etc..., but you always lose some of your best dwarves(those hanging) and have even more dwarves crippled and slowly dying(those crucified). After eventually overcoming the cliff you see a nice straight path to glory, so you clear up your dead and tread lightly onward, oblivious of the next deadly cliff hidden beyond right border of the image.

now, back to the OP questions:
1. you do not HAVE to employ any or all of the migrants. you can aas well leave them dying outside. Letting them in is marginal in the terms of food and booze they will consume, but can greatly expand your options if anything goes south.
With dozens of miners you will be hollowing out great loads of minerals, with dozens of haulers you will not feel any transportation problems, with dozens of farmers you will export food like air, etc... you can just plug any hole in your fortress with migrant brute force, or just let them party and be happy.
If you start thinking if it a good time to start military - you are probably already late a few seasons. I tend to start military from embark, assining at least two of my starting 7 to train 24x7.

2. you can do it any way you want. no single cure for all ills. value designs are different from efficiency designs. efficiency designs differ from security designs. And beauty designs are quite different altogether, as are themed designs.
As you may have guessed - overall design strategy will greatly impact stockpile layout, sometimes even utilizing "gatling stockpiles" - storing raw materials on the central tile of workshop, ensuring that dwarf des not need to perform a single step to produce something.
You can also assign hotkeys to locations of your choice. This way you will never forget where your farms are.

3. you can butcher turkeys for valuable leather and less valuable meat, bones and skulls. Purchasing wardogs at embark is a marginal thing to do. If you do not have strong reasons to do it - do not do it.
No matter what wiki says - war dogs are never a sufficient protection to your fort. even kobold thieves with copper knives will cut your warhaunds in two with ease. War dogs are usefull as meatshields though, giving you valuable ticks in combat. Even if they often die after a single slash.

4. you should just last through another season. maybe explore how big is your embark? how deep can you dig? how tall can your buildings be? If that is done - try to put reality to the test:if you are a good reader - build everything you read about. If you are bad reader - see what can you design on your own with the tools DF gives you and make a post in the forums describing your findings. For inspiration - check out the sky fort