The life of my current fortress, Wheelsbasis, (including Fort Defence Mod) goes a little like this:
- Welp. I embarked on a true volcano; it actually went into a mountain instead of a hole in the ground. Cool; I'll dig into the mountain then I'll build around the volcano.
- Oh, I didn't know there was a hole to the third cavern from the surface. I can see a troll down there. Oh well, gotta get those defences!
- First migrant wave, then first siege. My two legendary miners were drafted to fight Stranglers, the one original died. The remaining original 6 are unhappy.
- Year 2 and half. A Forgotten Beast? Now? It's made out of pyrite! It shoots fire!? IT FLIES?!?!?!
- And lo, the beast did smiteth 70 out of 85 of our dwarves. Everything is on fire. He was slewn by white tigermen, who are now in my base.
- My remaining 15, except the 5 of which are legendary crossbow dwarves and don't care about anything, are all unhappy. And are locked in the food and wood storage. The siege is waiting outside of the walls. We have no miners.
- We ran out of drink. I made a carpenters shop, a still (the originals are outside) and three barrels for beer. :C
- Ran out again. 4 died of thirst, one of which was the marksdwarf. The strangler's sieged and are waiting with the tigermen.
- The tigermen dissipated. We opened the walls and the marksdwarfs killed and routed the strangers, but we lost a few. We're down to 2 marksdwarves, 4 civilians who are all unhappy and half of which are tantruming.
- They all run to the drink stockpile. We get migrants; 25 of them. Wheelsbasis will live on!
It's been a decade since the closest to defeat I've been, in year 2 and a half of this fort's life, and the two crossbow dwarves live to this day (the civilians died of insanity, one of the crossbow dwarves is missing a nose and her legs). We can hold off even the war elephants and giant cave spider invaders. All across my halls are engravings of dwarves being strangled, stabbed or burnt from the holocaust of Wheelsbasis.
I love this game.