I agree with the time reduction. A year is too short, but two years is too long.
Yeah, generally I'll be asking for votes and such, but I think the amount of stuff I was about to get is a bit unbalanced. So for now I'll say 1 year 6 months for fortress building stage.
May I also suggest that the adventurer period be reduced to a month? Thirty days is enough to make your mark on the world if you don't waste time, but ninety allows you too much time. The game could get dragged down in waiting for people to finish.
I'll do some personal testing on that myself. Two years fortress mode took me one day; I'll see how long 30 days of adventurer mode takes (if I can survive that long).
What's your stance in danger rooms/crab wrestling/grinding? Personally I think we shouldn't allow it, but it's your call.
Dangerrooms in your player fortress to train your adventurer?
As for grinding adventurer skills I'll see how well I can manage without doing that tomorrow.
Embark rules. IE, won't we end up with a LOT of Good or Calm embarks?
I had the default balance in my world gen. I'm open to negotiation on changing that, but I think world gen tweaks should wait until we've decided on what size world we want to start with.
Also, can we have a minimum distance from another player fortress for new embarks. Five squares, perhaps?
I was thinking about requiring each player (clan) to pick a different dwarf civilization for their fortress and start near(ish) that civilization. 5 squares gap on the world map sounds reasonable to me though.
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[EDIT] Second post updated. Latest changes in italic.