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[DrKillPatient]

What're some good ways to start out a fortress once I've embarked? I'm always puzzled on where in the map to place its entrance, what to look for, etc. Is it better to stay in a flat plain (build stuff), or a mountainous area (carving into the cliffside), and so on?

[tolkafox]

It's best to carve into an area that's going to provide you the best defensive position. Look for places that have natural choke points or walls that you can use to your advantage. Also try to go near a place that has enough grass to feed your animals if you need it, and don't build your fort so close to the edge that you can't build buildings/depot.

I try to look for natural C's in the land:

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Just remove the ramps and place a wall straight across the outside, easily defended.
But in all honesty it comes to preference, digging an entrance tunnel into the side of a soil layer and carving your fort downwards seems to be the easiest thing to do.

[NecroRebel]

This is really a playstyle issue; different people will have very different answers. Myself, I prefer to dig straight down on a flat plain, with my depot directly below the ground and located centrally in my fort proper (which is arranged radially around the trade goods, food, and drink stockpiles in a central pillar), and only later construct proper fortifications above ground. Other people like to build into cliff faces and use the natural terrain to guide their surface fortifications. Both can work.

Building natural terrain into your surface structures has the advantage of allowing you to get those structures built more quickly, since parts of them are already present. They often aren't located in places that are convenient, however, and sometimes aren't in places that can be made convenient. Building things wholesale takes somewhat longer, but you can, obviously, place them however you need them without worry.

[wuphonsreach]

I generally build somewhere in the middle of the embark location.   

If I'm on soil / sand / clay (fast to dig), then a 2-tile wide, 1Z deep trench around my wagon with a drawbridge exit is how I start.  I generally mark out roughly 20x20 up to 30x30 with a 4-tile wide drawbridge over the trench.  Cliffs are interesting, but it really takes forever and a day to get a perimeter line setup compared to just making trenches in soil.

If I can park near a river/brook, that's ideal.  Otherwise, near a cluster of large murky pools.  I generally pick my embarks so that there's a brook running across one side or corner of the map.

My surface designs tend to look like old-style castles.  An inner keep that guards the ramp down into the trade depot, with a moat, walls, and a garrison above all that with fortifications so they can shoot outward.  As I get quiet time 2-3 years in, I start building outwards.

[Darkweave]

Embark on a volcano, dig a tunnel in to the mountainside then construct an artificial pipe that descends 20-30 Z-levels, create a tube down the middle entirely out of glass, fill the pipe with magma up to the brim of the entrance to your glass tube, and there's your fortress entrance. Bonus points if you mine out above the entrance to the tube and add artificial magma-falls. Generally I embark with unskilled dwarves and an anvil, an axe and a pick (my idea of 'running low on supplies') so a decent sized temporary fort is necessary to achieve this.

Even more bonus points if you hollow out a huge area and construct the whole fort out of glass submerged in magma at the bottom of the tube.

[Trekkin]

My way is probably so strange as to be unhelpful, but here goes:

I build my forts to run on magma, and as such I build their lowest layer just above the magma sea, taking advantage of a peculiarity I've noticed where natural rock spires down to the semi-molten rock form where the corners of the map cells meet--I use the bottom of one of those spires as a form of sump, and dump magma waste from the defenses into the top of one of the map cell magma caverns, placing all my inlets down in the spire to ensure an adequate supply as it's refilled from the map edge; an adjacent such spire becomes the lowest point of my fort proper. The rest of the fort grows up from there, with its top at the third cavern layer for easy access to wood, muddied rock, and cave moss; I drop tiles of clay and sand to the fort level for easy access and the shafts dug to allow their fall become reservoirs of magma and water and from then on ignore the surface except to gather animals for use in !!SCIENCE!!.

With that as my goal, I tend to try to find a length of rocky cliff to use as my fort entrance to avoid having to pave over dirt to prevent tree growth in my entry corridor, preferably one on the same cell as my eventual magma trap entrance. From there I just dig/build organically and usually diagonally down through the caverns, digging a short exploratory tunnel where I suspect a spire adjacent to my planned fort location to be in order to properly align the magma trap/entry tunnel. At the end of that, I start constructing the staircase for the fort itself; the magma sump goes in the spire at the beginning of the tunnel. It's worth building a temporary fort in the pre-cavern 1 section of the tunnel and an aboveground farm in order to fuel the digging of what is certainly a needlessly complex entry tunnel.

[ahonek]

Usually I build my initial workshops and stockpiles out in the open. I then deforest the map, and begin industrial-scale soap production. Once I have at least 100 bars of soap, I build an above-ground castle out of it. The only underground work I do is to gather the stones I need to build the wood furnace etc.

[Nameless Archon]

I prefer to embark on flat terrain. I dig a central staircase pillar to magma, securing it with constructed walls if need be. Meanwhile, I dig a spiral ramp some distance away, to use as a gatehouse/entryway, and then explode the wagon. Once the embark goods are indoors, I floor over the temporary direct access to the staircase, and begin excavating the dry moat and walkway-of-death at the gatehouse.

After that the architecture gets more elaborate and more deadly with each step deeper into the fort.

[Dutchling]

Just create the entrance somewhere near the center (if possible) to ensure you have maximum time to get your dwarfs inside when a siege or titan is spotted. The rest is pretty much up to you

[Flare]

Don't build your fort touching the right side of the screen.

[Davichococat]

I build my fort on a flat area. I removed [AQUIFER]s from the raws, because they are so damn annoying. How can a single tile of stone hold the Atlantic and Pacific ocean inside it?

I embark at flat, heavy forested areas with a brook or a stream(streams are too much Fun ) clay and metal(my worldgens always have metal 'Everywhere'. Also I try to find areas with low soil if possible.

Then I go to the most flat area on the center, start channeling a 5x1 and thats the main entrance of the fort. Then my miners starting digging a very large and complex underground fort system, and my mansons get busy doing castle walls aboveground. Generally the space inside castle walls are large. And yes, I start doing all this on the spring.

[Lord Darkstar]

This:

Just create the entrance somewhere near the center (if possible) to ensure you have maximum time to get your dwarfs inside when a siege or titan is spotted. The rest is pretty much up to you

I used to study the embark area for the best place to make a fort, using the surface to maximize my defensive capabilities. But over many generations, I got out of that and got to: build it in the center of the embark, regardless. The reason is: maximizing the time my dwarves have to get to safety.

So, if the area in the center is flat, I dig down and build a small keep to guard the entrance, and slowly expand. If its hilly/cliff, I'll dig into the cliffside as near to the center I can that has a few tiles of flat space for access to the entrance.

[RTiger]

When you first start a fortress, pause the game, and take a good look around. You can generally tell what minerals you have to work with at a glance. I tend to find a good  spot of soil and build my fort there, for easy early farming.