> What's the best approach to getting the everyday things (cooking, farming, basic crafting and the like) mostly automated?
Therapist is the thing you need. It very much depends on where you are in the game as to what you want doing - when you have 7 dwarves they're likely to have a few labours enabled - but when you have 70 dwarves, you probably want to be very specific. Every time you have new migrants you probably want to assign / deassign labours - a beekeeper is not going to be as much help as say, a farmer early on. The way I personally manage lots of dwarves is to give them all nicknames ("Miller Asen", "Weaver Urist") when I assign them a profession. I can then see any dwarves that haven't been allocated a profession by just looking in therapist in the "has nickname" dropdown. As a general rule of thumb, you should need about 1 farmer for every 15 dwarves. I normally have quite a long re-organising session spring/summer of the second year and then has minor tweaks to it occasionally. Note that having nicknames is very helpful when they die as well - if "Miner Id" dies, he'll disappear from therapist - but I know his profession from his nickname, so it's a short matter of going into therapist and assigning another dwarf to do mining.
If you have idlers, press 'u' to see who's idle. Then go across to therapist and see what labours that dwarf has assigned. Then consider what jobs you need doing (a side note: Some professions (woodcutter, miner, hunter) need tools and without them they can't do the job).
> Just got to the point where I'm checking out what nobles do. Generally how useful are they?
You do need nobles - and the ones you appoint are useful and/or necessary (manager, broker, bookkeeper, chief medical dwarf). The ones that people moan about in the forums are the mayor, the baron/count/duke and the monarch. These nobles are lazy, make constant demands and require fine accomodation. You don't really need any of these nobles - hence various noble disposal methods around here. See how you fare - when the 17th request comes in to make ballista arrows you might snap and send them to try and collect webs whilst a giant cave spider is around. When the outpost liason arrives and asks you to nominate someone to be baron spend a bit of time finding a dwarf who ideally: likes stuff that you're going to make a lot of anyway (e.g. bolts) ; has had a mood (i.e. can't go insane) ;
> - how important are attributes?
With the right attributes a dwarf will level up faster. Meh, they'll get there eventually. The only place I look at attributes when deciding is for professions that take forever to level up (architect I'm looking at you!)
> what are the significant population levels? I remember reading somewhere 80 being the limit after which some events can occur, are there any others?
You need 140 population for the monarch to arrive
You need 50 for semi-megabeast attacks (minotaurs, etc.)
I think werebeasts can attack regardless of population.
> is there any real difference between an iron and steel anvil? A post from around 2010-2011 said there isn't, but that was a long time ago and the craftlords embark contains a steel anvil
I really don't think there's a difference. The speed that your smith will work should depend on his/her skill and not the materials that make up the forge. However, on a slightly different note, if you can make your workshops out of stuff that has a certain quality level, dwarves can get a happy thought from it (e.g. making a dyer's shop with an artifact barrel).