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[Arrkhal]

"Doesn't really care about anything anymore" has a very powerful effect on happiness.  One time I locked all my nobles, including the hammerer, into a small room with no beds, a muddy floor, access only to disgusting stagnant water, and a hole in the ceiling through which dead vermin were constantly thrown, along with just enough food (plump helmets only) to keep them alive.

All the nobles gradually tantrummed and insanitied themselves to death, but the hammerer, who "doesn't really care about anything anymore" (he arrived with that already), never went below normal unhappy!  After everyone else in the room died, he went back up to content!  Sleeping on a muddy floor, constant miasma, stagnant water, being regularly slightly injured by tantrums, near starvation for years, and he was able to be content when only one of those problems was removed!  I was tempted to let him out after that.

[assimilateur]

I'm impressed by it working as deeply and strongly as your descriptions suggest.

To Arrkhal:

near starvation for years

So you refrained from dropping them food until they got that brown down arrow? I like your style, but I don't think I could have cared enough to micromanage like that, instead dropping larger numbers of food in advance (assuming there's a way of doing it without spoilage; I'm thinking about making a food stockpile below the hole, but I'm not sure if it would even register as delivered to that stockpile, and hence "conserved" to avoid rotting).

[Arrkhal]

In that game, I micromanaged it quite a lot because tormenting the nobles was the sole purpose of that fort.   I was also keeping a close eye on the refuse piles, so that dead vermin (and anything else that wouldn't produce bones or shell) could be thrown in quickly.  I love the idea of my dwarves pelting the nobility with thrown dead rats and things, while they can do nothing but rage and fight amongst themselves.

IIRC, the philosopher went stark raving mad first, then the count consort went berzerk and attacked the king (he was an adamantium king), but was struck down, then the tax collector went stark raving mad too (I like to think he was babbling about being unable to collect taxes for so long), then the countess went melancholy (yet didn't drown herself in the filthy water supply, possibly because the only accessible tile of water was a downwards ramp), then the king died of dehydration due to his wounds.  All of them but the hammerer were almost constantly tantrumming, near the end.  Also, the philosopher went insane without ever throwing a tantrum.

Next time I should try to become the mountainhome and do the same thing.  The more nobles in the lockup, the better.  Ooh, I could try collecting as many widow/er consorts as possible, too!

I should also see if it's possible to Pit captured live vermin.

This is all pretty much on the original topic, too.  These are the sorts of goals that DF players set for themselves, once they can make a stable fortress about... uh... half the time, in my case.

[bluea]

I'd recommend a dry moat instead of a wall as the first defense. At least, I tend to be able to make a 10x10 moated surface area in nothing-flat, while a wall tends to drag. It might just be an artifact of my embark choices (7x picks but no mining skill), but it works fine for me.