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[ProfessorSir]

Actually, let me rephrase that.  The project doesn't have to be a true megaproject, it just had to be major to you at the time.

For example, my first "major" project was done in my very first fortress.  I built an underground and large hole, then built pathways all the way down.  Lame, I know.  It looked good at the time, though.

[Dunamisdeos]

Outside of learning to survive, my first personal project was a defense mechanism that automatically dropped live saltwater crocodiles onto invaders from above while simultaneously shooting them with crossbows from either side, and ballista bolts from in front.

I recieved assistance from my forum mates, and it turned out beautifully. I miss you, Inchbolt.

[callisto8413]

When I started this game I did very badly, my first few cities just failed to survive beyond their first year.  You know how it is, the false starts, the were creatures, the fact that you forgot something, the Dwarfs start to tantrum and it all goes to Hell. 

Then the first REAL Fortress was finally founded.  I loved it.  I worked hard on the design, learning from past failures but also learning news things about how mass-dig bedrooms and where to put workshops and how to build a hospital and my first working wells.  The floor designs were wonderful.

But my knowledge of defenses were crap.  The first major invasion easily bypassed my walls, which had gaps, and my badly designed drawbridges and flanked my ill trained militia.     

The Fortress after that was not as pretty but it was all about enclosing it within walls, drawbridges, traps, building platforms for the archers to rain bolts down on the enemy, siege machines with a clear line of fire across a natural river I built next to.   I dug out channels, made sure all the bridges on the map could be lifted to make movement for invaders a issue, had a backdoor even made from a floodgate in case migrates appeared on the back edge of the Fortress.

If the First Fortress was Paris the Second Fortress was Fort Louisburg.   

Yes, I learned about how to use windmills and built a above ground bathhouse, and a multi-level grand hall with a glass top so light poured down into the depths of the Fortress, and many other non-military engineering and if it hadn't developed some kind of save issue I would still be playing it.

My current Fortress, the one I think of as the Third Fortress, has a stone roof over the surface city, where a majority of the Dwarf live, and can be thought of as my mega-project but I still think of the Second Fortress as the one where I really learned how to design a properly protected Fortress but one that was also designed for daily life.  Without the Second Fortress and the goal, the project of training me in the Dwarfs's Art of War, I doubt this MountainHome would have made it this far. 

I think of my current Fortress as Rome.  Powerful, wealthy, built on the knowledge of past cities, and unlikely to be brought down any time soon.  It has already passed the ten year point of its founding.

[Kreydurst]

I wanted to make well... It took me about 5 months of trial and error before I accidentally figured out that aquifers really suck.

[Veylon]

I built an elaborate system to drown caravans.

I had a reservoir above the caravan where a hatch could be opened to fill the trading area. Then I discovered that swimming was a thing when some of the merchants got up into the reservoir and escaped. So I installed a grate. And grates on the floor so that the area could be quickly emptied. Then I had troubles with the wagons being embedded in the walls due to the sheer force of the water.

A few incarnations later, I had a set of trollproof sealing bridges to enable/disable access to the trading area and had arranged the setup so that the goods pushed around by the water could be directly dropped into my main stockpile. There was a guarded control room (which could be sealed) with all the levers lined up in order of operation.

This was back in 40d, before dwarves starting getting upset at non-fort dwarves dying or harassed by their outraged spirits. It was also easier as there were subterranean rivers to work with.

[Pooky]

I wanted to build a magma piston, and an internal clean water citern and pipe distribution for the whole fortress. It took me ingame years to built, a lot of planning, design and testing. I was discovering all the concept at the time so I had built laboratories seperated from the fortress to test pump and pressure physics. Many dwarf died conceiving this magnificient construction and eventually I ended up flooding my whole fort with magma and water. But I kept such great souvenir of that fort

[Avanak]

Well, the first (and biggest) project was trying to grasp the basics of DF.

Now that i'm more experienced i try different challenges. I tried, for example, the single pick challenge a month ago. It did'nt end well. I was able to get my initial fortress up and running, but after the first big migration wave the dwarves kept running low on food and drink. When winter came and the river froze, the dwarves started to dehydrate fast. I tried to find a cavern with water, but when i found some in the lake, a cave crocodile crept into my fortress and killed some dwarves. Th already unhappy dwarves started throwing tantrums and that was the beginning of the end.

It's these funny stories that make this game so special. I look forward to what the next version brings to us!

[dirkzen]

Making a moat that actually worked. 

Invasions have always been the bane of my existence, because it only takes one tiny battle and a few dead dwarves to make the entire fortress spiral into a perpetual hell of angry, depressed, unproductive dwarves who are more interested in picking up socks from the battlefield than making booze which is about to run out and make everyone thirst to death.

My first major goal for any new fortress I start is immediately trying to cut the fortress off from the outside world as quickly as possible, allowing only one heavily guarded drawbridge in and out, and surrounding myself with whatever nearby water source I can find.  I always try to pick spots next to a river for this purpose.

With this new jumping/climing mechanic thats being added though...  oh man..  I have a feeling nothing is gonna be safe anymore.

[dirkzen]

Well, the first (and biggest) project was trying to grasp the basics of DF.

Amen to that.

[gunpowdertea]

I guess the first big thing would have been a Magma Piston - or maybe the 150 z high magma pump stack that combusted, both in the same fortress. Both with very nice control rooms, like glass floodgates to observe the rising Magma through and levers to control all sorts of things, think Death Star Fire Control. It never really worked out.

Currently I am sort of... just messing around. I want to do something big but cannot be arsed - except for walling off the surface edges. Actually no, I have a "big project": figure out how to make the Dorfs form a good military (without more forum or wiki help).

[Panando]

Hmmmm, I think the one and only megaproject I built was a magma pump stack which filled a large, multi-z above-ground cistern with magma. The floors of the cistern were retracting bridges. I tug of a lever flooded the world with boiling lava, incinerating everything.

IIRC the pump stack itself had two rows of pumps and it was hanging (built in a large open shaft), the base of the stack was fed by a row of about 20 pumps drawing magma directly from the map edge (or as close to it as you can get), I had walled off the magma sea from it's map edge using obsidian, so the stack was supplied entirely by magma from the map edge - leaving the magma sea itself pristine and making magma output rate totally independent of a bottom reservoir.
Hence the pump stack, as well as filling an above-ground cistern with magma, could also sustain a disgusting high output indefinitely, meaning if I wanted to, I could permanently flood the world with lava, making it not so much a doomsday device, as an eternal hell device. My originally goal was actually an artificial, erupting volcano. The big lava bomb in the sky thing was just random inspiration.

The pump stack was made of green glass and olivine IIRC. Where I cheated, is the world was generated with either none or only one cavern layer. But it was Fortress Defence II so there were serious sieges to contend with while building it.

[itg]

My first big project was a giant stone tent built over the map. I had walled off the surface pretty early in the fort's lifetime, but the giant eagles were still getting in and causing trouble, so I built a roof to keep them out.

[FallenAngel]

Besides what someone already mentioned (learning the things), my first "mega"project was in a glacier fort. I constructed towers at the corners and near the entrance for archers.
My current fort, however, will have a giant sky temple for every single deity my people worship.

[Slyjoker87]

I had a 10 story tower with a penthouse made entirely of glass with interior decorated with gold statues and artifact furniture. It was baller. Too bad I didn't save screenshots.

[arbarbonif]

Mine was a skyway for archers.  Several pillboxes, linked together with series of roofed passages that only touched the ground in the center of my main fortress.  Two different archery ranges, one in the main fortress, one above the trap corridors/melee training area entrance pillbox.