Disclaimer:
Most of this experiment would not be possible within a reasonable human life/attentionspan without the awesome dwarf therapist so mad props to chmod and whoever figured out the new memory locations and all that stuff. So! I decided to try my hand at the new features of 0.31 get in as deep as possible and see what could be done.
First and foremost i created different castes for my dwarves, these are simply pre-configured skill selections (set up in DT) And a small set of rules.
Each dwarf would get one caste, usually based on what skills they were most proficient at when i set it up. In the event of a marriage across castes, the wife and non-working children would be set to the husbands caste unless the wife was already legendary in a skill, at which point the husband would be elevated. Also, if a dwarf were to get legendary in a skill outside his cast, he would be transferred to that caste instead, again bringing his family along.
I set up the castes as follows:
Casteless - No jobs, only hauling and cleaning, the main workforce as most of the other castes don't have hauling active
Soil Caste - All harvesting and processing jobs as well as butchering and tanning
Wood Caste - All Wood related jobs, including potash making and wood burning
Gem Caste - All Crafting Jobs
Stone Caste - All stone related jobs, but i haven't really started engraving the fort yet
Iron Caste - All metalwork and furnace operating
Gold Caste - All administrative workers, (if your name is purple you are DEFINATELY gold caste) some may have other jobs if they feel like it
I set up burrows which pretty much means the different castes mostly keep to themselves, they work and eat together, only when they're off duty, those who have access (Gem -> Gold) will hang out in the main hall.
The casteless use access tunnels which, while they have a higher move cost (thanks to traffic areas), are about as fast as using the main walkways, but since they only have burrow access to the "longer" route, they will use those instead, so the higher ups won't have to deal with the filthy sobs.
The Result of this experiment? So far i've had eight inter-caste marriages and only one out of caste in three years of play. The higher ups are extatic while those forced to wallow in the mud (casteless only get a sleeping dorm, soil caste get small rooms with just a bed) are less happy. but aside from a few job cancellations the fort was running smoothly with well over a hundred dwarves.. that is.. until the goblins came and steamrolled my ill prepared military. Going to try this again tho, might even have some pictures then