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[Immacolata]

A good question!

Keep new migrants segregated from old-timers to reduce tantrum spirals.
Don't get upset about "too many idlers" because they are your haulers/lever-pullers/emergency suicide squad.

These two! I've read this before, but what is a good practice for doing this? Usually the migrants scoot right into my dining hall but sleeps in my top-side dorm.

Idlers - don't they get upset because of no job?

[stormyseasons]

They don't get upset from no job... and they make good emergency draftees, and extra furnace operators/sand gatherers/clay gatherers if you want a serious metalworking/glassmaking/pottery industry. But once you get your fort reasonably self-sustaining, the real fort - killer is boredom. The forts I keep the longest are my attempted megaprojects.

[Quietust]

Idlers - don't they get upset because of no job?

That only happens if the Economy is active, and the Economy doesn't activate anymore.

[Mushroo]

Keep new migrants segregated from old-timers to reduce tantrum spirals.

These two! I've read this before, but what is a good practice for doing this? Usually the migrants scoot right into my dining hall but sleeps in my top-side dorm.

I often keep my Legendary craft dwarfs on a separate, secure level with their own dining hall, workshops, kitchen, still, etc. The doors open only when the caravan comes.

[Aussiemon]

If it hasn't been said yet, the secret to a long-lasting fort is to keep it exciting.

The two most dangerous things for a fort are lag and boredom:

For the former, use ramps instead of stairs, increase the priority of the Dwarf Fortress process in task manager or init options, set up a shallow wash-area to clean dwarves and animals, cage unimportant animals, set a population cap early, and possibly a baby cap too, lower your G_FPS in init options, lower your embark size, and avoid locations with running water (especially waterfalls on major rivers), to name a few.

For the latter, the best advice I can give is: set goals for yourself, build a working machine, build a megaproject, roleplay with your Dwarves in a sense (i.e. this Dwarf hates Goblins with a passion because they took his arm/wife/dog/cat, so he will go out and slay them with his bare hands, eventually building a mountain of skulls in his royal bedroom, all personal kills. Get in his head and imagine his thoughts.), don't use traps if you can help it, especially cage traps and retractable bridges, and finally, don't be afraid of a little Fun.

After you've had your adventures, you can keep the fun (and Fun) alive by returning to the forums to write a story about them.

[accoro]

After you've had your adventures, you can keep the fun (and Fun) alive by returning to the forums to write a story about them.

I WAS going to do this. Make a tower, above ground made entirely of marble, but I then abandoned it due to the fact flooring a single level took 3 seasons alone with 3 proficient masons ¬_¬

[Triaxx2]

Hey, down is a line. Thus digging down is linear.

The secret to a long lasting fort? Don't die. Heh.

Seriously, the trick is to find a way to protect yourself while you train your military, or prepare your defenses if you're using traps.

[Qinetix]

Magma

[Rumrusher]

secret to a long lasting fort is once your fort is define and can run on it's own.
grab Dfhack, run Dflair or dfusion's prevent scatter tool also works.
once preserved you hit Esc use DFmode to switch over to adventure mode then in DF go to the new starvation command and boom.
now you got a long lasting fort that you can come back to at any time in any mode.

[Ieb]

If you don't want to build a fort with dozens of z-levels worth of hallways and so on, just plan a fort with a set number of levels.
Dig down far enough first to place the levels, one for living areas/leisure/dining halls, one for workshops, one for stockpiles and one for farming. That's pretty much the basic needs for a fort covered in 4 z-levels. That shouldn't be TOO bad, right?

Anyway.

Easy ways to ensure fort safety huh, a wide and long enough entrance tunnel. Possibly with traps at the start. Cage traps work wonders to reveal ambush squads(except for kobolds and other trap-avoid races), weapon traps can soften up the enemy while your soldiers are still going there.

If you're feeling like challenging yourself, horrible traps of mass-death. With a brook it's quite easy to make a drowning-trap on your entrance tunnel. Just make a raising bridge to seal your fort entry path from the flashflood and drown all who are in the entrance tunnel. If you're feeling insane enough, use magma instead. Another option: Use a flashflood device, but it pushes enemies down a deep pit, breaking them apart once they hit the bottom. About 13-15 z-levels of drop does that.

Make use of your military-skilled migrants! This is important, these days it's a lot harder to train an able military than in 40d. But if you got some dwarf who shows up with previous military ability, use him as a squad leader for your raw recruits who haven't ever held even a pick or a woodcutter's axe. He'll be giving them lessons and eventually they will begin to spar.

If you REALLY want to, you could always construct a Danger Room. Read up on the Wiki on those, but the short explanation is: Put low-quality training wooden spears in your barracks as spike traps, connect 'em to lever, have someone pull the lever on repeat, your soldiers will gain EXP on various military skills fast as FUCK. I got legendary fighters out in a few months thanks to the Danger Room.

The caverns are dangerous, keep 'em sealed and make sure you have some way to seal parts of your fort if you got stuff like a well taking water from the cavern lakes. Flying forgotten beasts can easily fly up from that well. I know, I had two flying monster-birds in a row use the same god damn route. If you must use the caverns for something, build an airlock with a raising bridge.

You can NEVER have too many barrels, only too little booze or food. Keep a lot of barrels on stand-by at all times, and try to stay up-to-date on how many plants you currently have and if they should be brewed to booze already.

Lye-making is a tad borked right now, so bring 1 unit with you on embark for easy soap. You never know when disaster strikes and your important dwarves might be in danger of getting an infection. Just one unit is enough, right now barrels with 10 units of lye(bought from caravans) end up only producing 1 piece of soap. I assume that shouldn't happen.

Build a well ASAP. Possibly a water reservoir as well and empty some pool in it. Alternatively, breach the caverns and place a well above a cave pool. You never know when you might need some water. They also come handy if by some chance you would end up without booze. So you know, your dwarves wouldn't go walking all the way out of the fort to some puddle to get a drink and stumble on a goblin ambush squad.