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[Murdersquish]

I also like to build towers aboveground, though the usefulness of this has never really been proven.

This.

I have two, six floor towers flanking my entryway with the top two levels made of fortifications. Gateguard Alpha and Beta squads man the towers, ever vigilant. The towers are stocked with an ample supply of bolts, roasts, and more importantly, brew. When the goblin invasions arrive, the Gateguard squads spring into action...

... and fire a single bolt.

Yeah, my towers are useless and yet I continue to build them outside my fortress.

[worldspawn]

On a related note, half-dirt half-stone complexes drive me insane. I have to floor over all the dirt so it looks like the smooth stone, and carve out all the dirt walls so they look like smooth stone. But then half the fort has this weird dirt frame from the revealed walls behind the constructions, so I have to carve out all the walls. Nothing gets done until then.

Lately I've been going to great depths to avoid this.

You have no idea how relieving it is to learn that I'm not the only one immensely bothered by this. I even change the color of different stone layers in the RAW's to match the rest of the area if I cross into a differently colored layer, to make the entire fortress uniform.

I haven't tried it yet and it would be a bit cheaty but wouldn't dfhacks "revforget" command fix this? I will test this later when I get home to see if the command paths through constructed walls or not.

[Monk321654]

I've never used Dwarf Therapist and I swear I never will. Don't want to grow dependent on it.

[pisskop]

I've never used Dwarf Therapist and I swear I never will. Don't want to grow dependent on it.

Its not so bad.  It saves time, and I usually only use it for large scale edits to my labors.  I still make most of my singular edits via (u)(z)(l)(p).

[Dirst]

I have never used a quantum stockpile or an atom smasher because they feel exploity (then again, I've also never run a fort to FPS death).  This leads to multiple 11x11 stockpiles of stone scattered throughout the fort.  Then I have to manually configure each one to reject clay and economic stone.

The 3-wide entry hallway is really long (50 or so tiles) to accommodate layers and layers of traps.  Then I never get around to making the traps before the first siege.  Meanwhile anything that involves going to the trade depot or outside is massively inefficient.

I repeatedly designate too many 5x5 rooms at once, then rage at my Dwarves for partially digging out every damn one of them.

My layout is 5x5 rooms with one-tile borders (with 3x3 stairwells in the center of each 3x3 room grouping).  Large rooms are made by knocking down the interior walls, but all too often the dining room is hemmed in by the food industry workshops.

First thing from the mason's workshop is a hatch cover.  Because of that one time my main staircase pierced the caverns in less than 10 z levels.

An underground passage must be dug to bring water from the river to the fort, complete with wells, waterwheels, and linked drawbridges at the river connections for safety.  The only way I've figured out to do the latter is by waiting for the river to freeze.  Getting this dug before the first winter is a huge distraction from mining out the fort, and yet I think I've actually used the waterwheels only once.

2x2 bedrooms for every Dwarf, though there is a dormitory to handle migrants.

As others have mentioned, I actually try to keep all of the Dwarves alive and happy.  Success rate is... below 100%.

[Scruiser]

An underground passage must be dug to bring water from the river to the fort, complete with wells, waterwheels, and linked drawbridges at the river connections for safety.  The only way I've figured out to do the latter is by waiting for the river to freeze.  Getting this dug before the first winter is a huge distraction from mining out the fort, and yet I think I've actually used the waterwheels only once.

Dig out everything first except for the final connection to the river.  Place and link all you drawbridges and such before digging the final connection.  Then dig the final connection to the river from above using channeling.  No need to wait for freezing required.

[Dirst]

An underground passage must be dug to bring water from the river to the fort, complete with wells, waterwheels, and linked drawbridges at the river connections for safety.  The only way I've figured out to do the latter is by waiting for the river to freeze.  Getting this dug before the first winter is a huge distraction from mining out the fort, and yet I think I've actually used the waterwheels only once.

Dig out everything first except for the final connection to the river.  Place and link all you drawbridges and such before digging the final connection.  Then dig the final connection to the river from above using channeling.  No need to wait for freezing required.

That is the way I do it, except for the channeling bit.  Thanks for that tip, since it means the timing isn't as important.

[PsychoAngel]

At the beginning of the game, I always make one dwarf constantly train his ass off for the time danger ACTUALLY presents itself. It either never comes, or is always here before I'm actually ready...

I also try to make my fort as neat and tidy as possible, and it angers me when my layouts are rendered inefficient because of certain qualities that dorfs like to show...

[SimRobert2001]

I've assigned a small stockpile to each workshop, or having several workshops work off of a singe stockpile. At that point, if there's extra stuff, like bars, I just let them sit in the workshops. Same with furniture.

[Chevaleresse]

I keep making 5x5 rooms for workshops.

[Dirst]

I keep making 5x5 rooms for workshops.

That lets you put a stockpile around the workshop.  Eventually I figured out that you can designate the workshop then plop a 5x5 stockpile on top of it and just the ring is designated.

It also guarantees that your workshop won't wall anyone in.

[SlyStalker]

My dwarves and I believe that:
1) Traps are for pussies
2) I am a god to whom they should build massive above-ground statues to 

[Tacomagic]

I build a stone-pile while I'm still working with my first 7.

I know it slows things down, but I keep doing it.  WHY DO I KEEP DOING IT!?

[omega_dwarf]

I read the forum instead of working on my fort. Or homework, for that matter.

[dwarf_reform]

I'm obsessed with fort entrances and defense, to the point that I'll ignore everything except beds, tables and chairs, and stockpiles in favor of wasting time preparing mechanisms and traps and digging channels and smoothing ramps and collapsing layers to create steep walls, and usually end up invaded before I complete any of it Working on just setting up a small interior defense (a drawbridge would do) before starting on the bigger stuff..

Last nights failure was a heavily goblin-and-undead-infested reanimating biome where I channeled out the entire flatland to let the water expand all the way back to sheer walls, leaving only three single-tile straight paths into my fort, all three of which were designed to have a very long shooting range for a catapult-based defense.. The zombs showed up just as I built the bridge and linked a lever (the guy was there attaching the mechanism to the bridge when they showed up less than 10 tiles away and he actually finished attaching them.. Almost never happens!)

Anyway, they ate me alive and I didn't even have catapult parts built or stone piled nearby to power them.. 5 survivors, two of which are in the hospital (one with a broken toe only), two of which are children, and the only one that'll listen to orders at all is the expedition leader.. I've locked the kids away and he might stabilize..

Also, dependance on Therapist is pretty terrifying, considering the changes coming in the next update :| Sad part is I only really started using it with the last update, and only to quickly pinpoint the highest-skilled dwarf out of my 150+ to assign personal workshops..