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[Miuramir]

Be aware that it really is A LOT smaller and you do not even have a guaranteed adamantine vein anymore.

Very mild spoilers about veins:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

See Raw adamantine on the wiki. 
If you set up an aligned 2x2 embark, it should have exactly one adamantine vein.  If you set up an offset one, it could have as few as zero or as many as four, randomly with an average of one.  Note that any particular vein might have issues due to random terrain generation weirdness; so you're not completely guaranteed the "classic experience" even with an aligned 2x2.  (Note, as usual, that these have not been tested for 0.40.xx, but are believed unchanged.)

[Max™]

The vast majority of my forts are 2x2 and I started in uh, 40.05 I think? Most had candy if I generated the world to have it.

Incidentally, don't knock nanoforts til you try a 1x1, they're a really interesting little exercise to help you reconsider how you lay things out and utilize space.

I've got a 2x2 in one of my weird parameter worlds that produces empty volcano tubes open to the cavern layer which started with what is typically an auto-lost-interest button: I preserve the wagon with a walled off shrine and build the entrance around/beside/above and below it.

This fort the wagon landed on the very highest point of the map, a spire of stone that was easily 30 z tall but only about 8x8 squares wide that far down.

I cleaned off the stone around it, removed everything but a 2x2 block, smoothed and engraved it, then upramped the stone around it and repeated it until I got a large enough section of stone exposed to begin building useful rooms and such.

Now I'm planning long term to remove everything around the central tower so I end up with an engraved stone skyscraper.

I've taken out three entire layers of a 2x2 embark to produce a huge stone box under the bottom aquifer layer around my dorf living areas because I thought it would look neat with multilevel turned on.

It can be a pain to get the metals you want, I suggest making good use of prospect before you embark unless you are prepared to jump into a situation where gobs are never more than 1 embark square away and you don't have anything better than copper or bronze.

[GavJ]

I play on 1x1 all the time, and in fact it annoys me greatly that Toady does not allow this by default (for no apparent reason... it's perfectly stable), since it's often the only thing I use dfhack for, and I have to install it to play on 1x1 embarks each new version, tediously.

[dwarf_reform]

Agreed, Sir Gav.. I think the above listed mild vein spoilers are probably the reason for the default embark size, but I love a 1x1 embark.. I'd also sacrifice hundreds of dwarf-babies for the vanilla ability to totally disable migrants and then to embark with a single dwarf

And Embark Anywhere is amazing too, and I think it should be a widely available (vanilla) option, with a 'disclaimer' that you're not really supposed to embark right on top of other civs and strangeness or instability may occur.. For now Embark Anywhere is the only way you can simulate dwarves "taking the fight to the enemy", by treating it like a Reclaim embark..

[Uronym]

And Embark Anywhere is amazing too, and I think it should be a widely available (vanilla) option, with a 'disclaimer' that you're not really supposed to embark right on top of other civs and strangeness or instability may occur.. For now Embark Anywhere is the only way you can simulate dwarves "taking the fight to the enemy", by treating it like a Reclaim embark..

Probably waiting for embark scenarios, or, for "taking the fight to the enemy", for the army arc.

[Urist McVoyager]

I've done eight by eights. They can be fun, though I think most of the reason for so much extra space would be to build a sprawling metropolis. There'll be more use to it when your population can sanely grow past 200 without FPS issues.

If I did a 2x2 or 1x1, I'd probably disable migrants with the pop caps and build my little "Fortress" as a seven person communal farm. All growth would be through children.

[utunnels]

Well I tried dfhack 1x1 recently but the game crashed a lot.
I don't know if it is related, but maybe 2x2 is safer.

[Patchy]

As the versions have progressed, I've been doing smaller and smaller embarks as my default. Back in 40d I used to do 6x6 and 5x5 quite commonly. By 34.11 I was pretty much doing occasional 3x3 and 2x2 as my default embark size. Still waiting on the .40x version rush and fps issues to stabilise, but I'll probably be doing nothing but 2x2 in it and maybe 1x1's depending on how well my pc handles the game. I've done 1x1 nanoforts before and back in 40d those were actually a bit tougher than they are now. Or could have just been my general level of skill and df knowledge back then accountting for my perceived difficulty.

But anyways, a 2x2 embark is very doable. Just have to be wary of the limited distance between map edge and your dwarves and compensate for it. You can still design some nice horizontal areas in your fort with the space a 2x2 provides, unlike a 1x1. But do try out a 1x1 sometime if you haven't, they can be quite the fun experience.

[GavJ]

To some extent 1x1s can be easier by forcing you to go vertically which is almost 100% of the time more actually efficient. Putting a 10x10 room next to another one means 20 paces from one to the other maximum. Putting a 10x10 room atop another one means no more than 11 paces maximum from anywhere to anywhere...

And it compounds from there as you sprawl. People are too biased horizontally due to the view system and it actually causes dwarves to do less work and respond more slowly to levers and everything else.

[Vattic]

1x1 are much easier than in 40d because you can embark anywhere and be sure to get magma and water. Not having to embark on a magma tube means you have more space to build. Underground tree farms and magma provide fuel. Then again it was fun fitting a fort around and in a magma tube.

[Slogo]

One of the forts I've been playing lately is actually on a 2x2, but I think it'd also fit easily in a 1x1 embark:

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-12321-smallabbey

Quantum Stockpiles makes 1x1/micro sized forts pretty easy to pull off.

[Max™]

I like that tileset, the simple mood wasn't it?

Tried to get just a few levels of my current map uploaded but even with the arch version of mono installed it just dies, whether or not I turn them into png's, make sure everything is cleared out of ram, or try to just load up three z levels. Probably missing a library somewhere that is keeping it from working entirely.

The fort I was posting about most on the boards lately, with Urist McLegendary and Nish the Repeatedly Dead Dorf is actually on a 2x4 embark. Only reason was because I wanted to try out a mixed serene/terrifying site with a volcano and steel, so I had to stretch the embark a little to cover them all.

The main fort fits entirely within a 2x2 though, due to my habits of working within those shapes for so long. I actually forgot it wasn't a 2x2 because the only thing in the south end of the map is magma and uh... the dropped piston from the onacloV, which meant I got to have an accidental magma flood in the middle of a deliberate magma flood, since it made a tidal wave of !!Fun!! that leaked over the edges of what should have been safe areas.

[Aslandus]

I thought this thread was really about the actual fortress size

2x2 fortress: only dig a 2 tile by 2 tile wide shaft into the ground, all workshops on the outside... sounds tricky...

[Ancalagon_TB]

I've been pondering creating a "spiral" wall on the edge of the map to force invaders to go around and around a few times, but it would take a lot of labor...

[GavJ]

lol, actual 2x2 tile fortress, notsomuch.

Although a 4x4 tile fortress sounds interesting, and actually allows stairs + workshop, which seems like a minimum. You'd want a lot of hotkeys.