So I've got an idea. I'm going to embark on a good/evil border. Ethics will be modded to allow sentient butchering, goblins will be modded to appear only during winter, and unicorns will be modded to be [UBIQUITOUS] or else I'll keep re-embarking until I get them, and make them [PET_EXOTIC]. Mega and Semi-megabeasts will be max population, history of 2 years. The megaproject will be a toaster and the theme will be exotic animal control.
I'd like an interesting social structure though. Normally I have no structure. Everyone sleeps in communal rooms, common booze piles, clumps of workshops, etc. This time, I'm thinking a strict hierarchy based on... something. Commoners get into the common dorms, or the dirt, living in near-squalor. Certain others will get put into specialized areas, mainly places of work like the armorsmith's temple or the clothier's pit. These will be strictly separate from each other. The only movement between them will be when the producer places an item into a cubbyhole, and a spacial "hauler caste" of worker takes it out of the cubby and takes it down to the commoner's pit, where it's placed into another cubbyhole and transferred to the common chambers. Special use of burrows and "take from" stockpiles will dictate how this occurs.
In order to keep the masses occupied, I'm likely to mod how farming works by increasing the growth time and having intermediate steps to produce edible items. For instance, plump helmets will be inedible, but there will be an automatic reaction that takes 5 plump helmets and produces 1 prepared mushroom and 2-4 seeds. These will be edible, effectively cutting food production by 1/10th. If it takes 2x longer to grow, and 5x more to produce edible numbers... Well, this type of trickery should keep the peasants busy farming instead of just loitering around in the pits. Similar trickery will be done for threadmaking and milling, which should make cloth production more difficult and thus make the economic model just a bit more challenging.
In any case, I'm ultimately faced with one important issue. How do I decide who's privileged nobility and who's peasant scum? Based on their skills? That's way too logical. Based on the color of their hair perhaps? Their stature, with the larger of the species being peasants and the very largest taking on the downtrodden task of military service? Perhaps further divide them according to their deities?
What would make an interesting social construct, and what would be the most dwarven way to implement it?