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[Pan]

 I keep starting new fortresses these days, then abandoning them after year 1 or 2 from losing interest. I try not to do that, but my fortress is either a mess, the military sucks, or I get ambushed and lose people (insert another excuse here) etc, and how it'll be better in the next fortress. Of course, it never is. And now, I'm starting to get those thoughts again. I remember how in some of my longest lasting fortresses, once I make it through this whole 'disillusioned' part, the awesome battles, megabeasts slaying, big good looking metropolis begin. But I rarely have the willpower to do that.

What can I do to maintain interest in the fortress to make it through this period? Does anyone have similar problems like this, losing interest and starting fortress over and over?

[Lectorog]

I do this frequently. It's rare to find a fortress of mine to make it to the first siege, or even more than a few migrant waves. I don't have a problem with it, though. The first years of the fortress can be some of the best.

If you want to last longer in a fortress, find something interesting to do with it. Not necessarily a megaproject, just a large goal. Right now, for example, I'm in one of my longest-lived fortresses. (Just defeated the first siege!) I'm carving out a fortress by collapsing entire map layers - removing everything but the fortress. This is going to keep me going for a while. Don't be afraid to try what other players have done, too - it's not original, but it's fun.

Remember that the main point of playing the game is to have fun. If you're having fun with your current playing style, you can stick with it. There's nothing wrong with short-lived fortresses.

[Crossroads Inc.]

For me I keep "interested" by refining fort designs.  I have three I'm working on right now at once.
One of my forts is on a "2.0" version, or the second fort of it;s style, another I just started up a third one. 
Each time I refine the design a bit more and find a bit better location where the stye fits.

Currently My most complete fort is CanyonCastle:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[thegoatgod_pan]

Kobold camp-- I tried it and got hooked after my semi-good military suffered hideous losses to some passing capybara. Not the giant kind either, regular capybara, which as  understand is a friendly south american marsh rodent.  I don't want to know what happens when goblins come, for the moment I am building my first danger room since I was a newb

[BloodBeard]

I'm in my longest ever fortress, 19 years now and I fully contribute it to keeping my population low. When your population booms and there are dwarves walking around that you don't even know existed let alone what they do I find it hard to care enough to keep it going.

With the low population comes higher fps too, which gives you the time to take things more slowly and not burn yourself out trying to do as much as possible before the slow-down. My fort is pretty big and I have dozens of things i'd like to add or work on, but I find it easier to play if I just focus on 1 or 2 things. Of course you can only do this if you have confidence in your military and food production, so i'd probably work on finding ways to solve those problems first.

[jc6036]

When I get bored, I leave the game running and go eat a sandwich, then return to sort out the Fun.

[rangarkash]

For me I keep "interested" by refining fort designs.  I have three I'm working on right now at once.
One of my forts is on a "2.0" version, or the second fort of it;s style, another I just started up a third one. 
Each time I refine the design a bit more and find a bit better location where the stye fits.

Currently My most complete fort is CanyonCastle:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nice castle, is that water on the walls?

[orrey]

For me I keep "interested" by refining fort designs.  I have three I'm working on right now at once.
One of my forts is on a "2.0" version, or the second fort of it;s style, another I just started up a third one. 
Each time I refine the design a bit more and find a bit better location where the stye fits.

This is more or less how my fortresses come about; I'll play one for a while, get some ideas to improve on the original design, and go embark somewhere else.  Granted, I've never actually driven anything to completion this way, but I have more fun designing the things than watching dwarves hall stone blocks until my fps ticks down to zero.

[flieroflight]

ive got the opposite problem. i love making long running forts, but cant be bothered doing the first few years when im setting everything up

[Mimidormi]

Ah, mid game fatigue. I think almost every Dwarf Fortress player felt this way at least once. For some it's a chronic condition, though.
The biggest culprits...

Architecture mishaps: after having built/dug out most of it, you discover you don't like the layout of your fortress.
Defenses not working as intended: ambushes almost intelligently waiting outside in front of your entrance, instead of attempting to cross your fully trapped hall.
Poor stockpile management: you have hoarding tendencies, and at the same time you hate huge open stockpiles. For some reason you hate temporary stockpiles as well. Cue unending quantum stockpiles micromanagement.
The drudgery of trading: even if trading is not that much of an hassle, sometimes it feels like it, and you wish merchants just stopped coming for a year or two.
The 'goblin recycling plant syndrome': killing goblins is awesome and everything, but after some years your whole fort devolves into a goblin processing plant, and not even the free stuff you get is worth anymore the free time you lose cleaning after every ambush and siege. And you can't stop cleaning either, for the sake of you FPS.

Things you can do:

-Be bold! Try new solutions to old problems. Do something you've never done before, something the very thought is alien to you; the forum will gladly supply you with ideas. If you end up not liking it, you were gonna abandon that fort anyway; at least you learned something. It's usually the 'joke fortresses' with nothing to lose that end up being the most interesting and memorable, and sometimes as the most successful as well.

-Kinda the opposite from above: plan the final architecture and appearance from the very beginning of the fortress, even if it means spending an hour assigning digging designations, strategically blocked from time to time to not overwork your miners (if you're gonna build an above ground fort, this is gonna be a bit different).

-Smaller populations are much more manageable. After even as little as 40, dwarves become numbers more than individuals you know and remember. This is gonna be a problem if you like sieges though, unless you play Fortress Defense.

-Experiment with defense design. Sooner or later you'll find your own favorite system.

-Take a sabbatical year from trading, if you find it stressful. Even if you're sorely tempted to just trade them a couple of stacks of masterful roasts and you keep telling yourself it's minimal work for something your dwarves may need one day, and you feel it like a huge waste to let them go away. Merchants are your garbage collectors, not the other way around.

-Fiddle with the advanced world generation parameters. Give yourself 10 z-levels before the first cavern, lower the titan attack wealth and population requirement.

-If you're not averse to mod editing, edit the game to suit your demands. Example: settle in the badlands and start a Giant Desert Scorpion farm. Overpowered? Yes, but damn Fun.

-If you keep losing interest and restarting anyway, don't fight it for a while. Refine your early game techniques and embarking strategies. Before the eighteenth 2 years old fort or so you should get the inspiration, or an idea for a project, to pull through the dreaded mid game.

-Try some succession games, and, if possible, ask for your turn to be on the fourth year. Unless you can't stand succession games, of course.

If all of this fails, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Every fort is a new lesson 

[Fratari]

I think that might be one of the most readable, well thought out, helpful posts I have ever read on this forum.

[Nidokoenig]

One thing I've found helps is giving myself more embark points and setting off with thirty dwarves(well, ponies in my case) with a little hex editing as detailed here. The really big problem for me has always been that I'll start a fort, have a couple of ideas, but get bored in the time it takes for things to get rolling. You'll get bumped up to thirty dwarves in no time with migrants, so why not hit the ground running?

Oh, and if goblinite is bothering you, you can mod goblin clothing and armour to have fewer pieces, or you could make little huts or cellars spread around, filled with finished goods stockpiles full of bins. Wall them up, then when the goblins are dealt with, lock up your main armour/weapon stockpiles and open up the closest one of these stores to the battle, everything's stowed in double quick time. Stick a watchtower with a guineafowl inside on top of it while you're at it and you've got a very useful building.

[MiniMacker]

Currently My most complete fort is CanyonCastle:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quick question, did you make all that with Constructed floors?