So, my latest fort Intenseattic is so far shaping up to be one of the most peaceful forts I've ever ran. The location was a section of untamed wilds next to an evil forest. The fort was founded in Year 5 (I was wanting to go with a beginning of the world type game and go from there), died of dehydration in Year 5, reclaimed in Year 6, and continued onward from there with relatively few problems. It is currently the 20th of Timber, 22, and for the most part everyone is happy. The nobles originally demanded only gauntlets and spears which I constantly melted down to bars and reforged. The King has since arrived and he only requests I make bolts which I gladly do as I have more wood coming out the wazoo after chopping down every tree on the map. The workshop floor, most living quarters, the dining hall, and the catacombs were all engraved by legendary engravers so everyone is having a good time admiring everything.
The problem is that after the 16 years of running this fort I have not encountered any goblins and it seems the elves refuse to go to war. The most consistent threat to my Dwarves at the moment are the flying humanoids (barn owl men/women and others) that occasionally startle the workers building a platform at the second to highest z-level and they fall. There have been several megabeasts, forgotten beasts, and two titans that have wandered onto the map but they posed no problem. The Elven caravans made great training dummies for what is shaping up to be the spec-ops of my Dwarven military. Said squad consists of 6 axe dwarves, 2 sword masters, 1 hammer lord, and is led by a mace lord wielding an artifact steel mace. The only real source of FUN I've had so far was an experiment testing the viability of trapping all the dogs, war dogs, cats, and pets inside the cavern layer to handle the forgotten beasts that show up.
In short, any suggestions on how to introduce more FUN into this fort? I plan to continue running this fort regardless of how long it takes some real FUN to show up. I'm mainly just wondering what I'm doing wrong when it comes to angering the elves but any ideas on when the goblins will start appearing is welcome.