Some early tips for humans ... thought some of y'all who have been playing longer might have more input on the accuracy of these, plus add your own.
1. Defense sucks unless you wall yourself in early on. Have a tower, church, or room in the inn where you can burrow your citizens and have them run for a centralized location to defend. Ambushes suck all the way around though.
2. Stone is better than wood. The stone cutter yields more blocks than the wood splitter does.
3. Mining straight down in a quarry is good, but unless you modify the cavern settings, you're going to hit that first cave layer all too soon.
4. You can mine in small chunks without worrying about cave adaptation. Mine out about 10 rooms at a time at first, then move on to 20 when your miner is highly skilled.
5. Food production is easy. Big farms, lots of fishing and hunting.