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[Dampe]

This weekend, I plan to start a fortress with the goal of surviving more than a single year, and hopefully, much longer beyond that.
I have a feeling that this fortress will be one in true dwarven fashion:
Moderate to great success through blinding incompetence.
I'm wondering what advice everyone has for starting out a fortress. I've sort of got the hang of the mechanics (still a little iffy on stairs, but I'll figure it out), and I'm finishing fleshing out my embark team:
One dedicated miner,
One dedicated woodcutter,
Two dedicated military dwarves, an axedwarf and a hammerdwarf respectively,
A carpenter/building designer, who will also have low-level skills in woodcrafting and wood burning,
A mason/engraver, with low-level skills in stonecrafting,
A weaponsmith/cook, with skills in brewing, growing, and herbalism.
I'd like to squeeze a fisherdwarf in somewhere, but I don't know which of these would be best for it, if any.
I've heard that turkeys are quite good embark animals, so I'll probably bring a few of those along.
What are the must haves in terms of supplies and provisions?

[sal880612m]

Booze, Food, and either Pickaxes or ores for pickaxes. Plump helmet spawn is a must. Personally I also recommend pig tail seeds( for thread,cloth,clothes and booze) as well as some cave wheat and sweet pods seeds just to add variety to your available booze. You can easily survive a single year with one type of booze and grab more when caravans come but I like my forts to be largely self-sufficient.

[blue emu]

My usual embark consists of:

One Dwarf with five levels of Planter and one level of Weaponsmith.
One Dwarf with three levels of Brewer, three levels of Cook and one level of Armorsmith.
One Dwarf with two levels of Diagnostician, one level of Mechanic, plus Management and Social skills (Expedition Leader)
Four boneheads (no skills).

Explanation:

Skills like Miner, Mason, Plant Gatherer, Lumberjack and Carpenter train so quickly that it's really a waste of points to buy those skills. Instead, I give my all-important Planter and Brewer/Cook lots of levels in their base skills, plus one level each in a valuable MOODABLE skill (planter, brewer and cook are NOT moodable) so that when they get a Strange Mood it will give me a Legendary Weaponsmith or Legendary Armorsmith instead of a Legendary Bonecarver (the default for Dwarves that have no moodable skill).

For embark items:

Take ONE of each $2 meat (only one type per source-animal: if you take sheep eyeballs, then skip sheep intestines) since the meat from each different source-animal gets a separate FREE barrel. One piece of meat from each of twenty different animals gives you twenty FREE barrels.

Twenty-one rations of each of the four drink types. Sixteen (or twenty-five) Plump Helmet Seeds, along with nine Sweet Pod seeds and six of each of the other seeds. Twenty-one (or twenty-eight) Plump Helmets.

I like to embark on Aquifers, so I take several stones along for making mechanisms (in case I need them before I can get through the Aquifer and reach rock).

Three Picks and an Axe (unless you want to just bring the stuff you will need to make them instead... ores, charcoal, coal, fire-resistant stone, etc), since I like to train up my four no-skill boneheads as two Miners, one Miner/Mason and one Lumberjack/Carpenter. Other players will tell you that those two jobs (Lumberjack and Carpenter) should be given to different Dwarves... but you'll be getting lots of totally useless immigrants (Dog Barbers, Bee Psychiatrists, Turtle Milkers, etc) that you can re-purpose early in the game to split those skills.

One Anvil. No Wheelbarrow (you can just make a few). Thread (cave spider thread or yarn are cheapest). Three Gypsum Powder.

If I have points left over, I usually bring wood, stone, ores and coal in order to get a quick start.

[Dampe]

Okay, would the miner and the woodcutter each benefit from having moodable skills?

[deepfreeze78]

Okay, would the miner and the woodcutter each benefit from having moodable skills?

I know miner is a moodable skill, so having a different one would be completely useless with how quick mining levels up. I'm not sure about woodcutter, but it's probably the same.

[blue emu]

Okay, would the miner and the woodcutter each benefit from having moodable skills?

I know miner is a moodable skill, so having a different one would be completely useless with how quick mining levels up. I'm not sure about woodcutter, but it's probably the same.

Miner is Moodable. Lumberjack is not, but I always cross-train him as a Carpenter, which IS moodable.

If you have extra embark points left over, buy Weapon, Armor, Dodge, Fighter AND TEACHER skills for your untrained Miners... with the intention of retiring them from Mining and drafting them as Pick-armed soldiers once they reach Legendary and you have immigrants to take over (and learn) Mining.

[Dampe]

So combining the lumberjack and woodcutter could work?

[blue emu]

So combining the lumberjack and woodcutter could work?

Yes, as long as you train a useless Immigrant in one (or both) of those skills later on. When your fort gets large and complicated, you will want to both chop trees and use the wood at the same time, so you shouldn't rely on one Lumberjack/Carpenter forever.

Note: the skill that I've been calling "Lumberjack" is called "Woodcutter" by the game. A Carpenter uses the cut wood to make things.

[ancistrus]

It is not hard to survive, it is hard to survive without resorting to cheap tactics like walling off the entrance.

I firmly believe that overanalyzing the preembark preparations (which seems to be quite a fad lately) is pointless. I especially dislike advices like you should bring 100 different types of food, so that you get more barrels. If you have trouble with lack of embark points, increase them in the advanced world generation, who cares.
Truly important stuff is picks(better bring two), anvil, food(~50), drinks(~100). Can't think of much else.
Animals... yeah bring some dogs if you want. You can always import animals later, or catch some cool ones with cagetraps.

two military dwarves - ...makes sense if your goal is to defend yourself without using traps, purely with military, right from the start. Otherwise, not so important. Giving them the teacher or armor user skill may be a good choice.

All the rest of dwarves and skills- you are overthinking it. Too many different skills. Being an adequate brewer vs no skill in brewing makes basically no difference. Make dwarves proficient in a few skills, don't invest 1-2 points in a dozen of skills.
stonecrafting/woodcrafting/brewing/wood burning seem useless for your starting 7. Bring a proficient armorer instead.

Your biggest (only) challenges will be defense and providing for the huge number of dwarves you are likely to have by the end of year two.
For defense, don't just rely on soldiers, try to build a simple trap. Is there an infinite source of water on the surface? Then the easiest thing would be a long entrance tunnel that can trap the intruders inside, then pour water in and drown them.

Food and drinks- make a safe reservoir of water early and build a well above it. Food is almost too easy to get. I frequently have so much there is no room in the stockpile, so it rots. That is because migrants bring all sorts of stupid useless animals for me to butcher. Also there is always some stupid animal that decides to enter the fortress and I have to kill it.

[Dampe]

Make dwarves proficient in a few skills, don't invest 1-2 points in a dozen of skills.
stonecrafting/woodcrafting/brewing/wood burning seem useless for your starting 7. Bring a proficient armorer instead.

Alright, I'll take that into consideration. I'll probably scratch off woodburning, as I don't actually know what it does.
Isn't it for furnaces?

[blue emu]

Woodburning turns Wood logs into Charcoal, which is used to fuel Forges and Smelters. The labor is useful, the skill is nearly useless.

I don't bother getting into Forging in a big way until I reach the Magma layer and set up Magma Smelters and Magma Forges. You don't need any charcoal for that (unless you want Steel and have no Coal on-map).

[Dampe]

Alrighty.
I don't know how to assign unskilled dwarves to certain jobs, how does one do that?

[ancistrus]

Wood burning is the skill used for making ash and charcoal. If you just dig straight down till you hit magma, and build your forges and smelters there, then the only use for charcoal is steel production.
If you want to start metal industry asap, to arm your military, then bringing some charcoal with you, or making charcoal early actually makes sense. But I prefer not to bother with temporary arrangements that will be abandoned and destroyed a season later anyway(pretty much what emu said).
Ash is used in production of soap and glass, definitely not your first priorities.

Also, the skill actually used to get metals from ore, or smelt things is called Furnace operating.

[Dampe]

If you want to start metal industry asap, to arm your military, then bringing some charcoal with you, or making charcoal early actually makes sense.

Oh, they'll be coming armed.

[deepfreeze78]

Alrighty.
I don't know how to assign unskilled dwarves to certain jobs, how does one do that?

Well, I'd recommend using Dwarf Therapist. Otherwise, I think it's v to look at them, p for professions, and then you can choose it there somehow, but I'm not sure at all.