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[Aslandus]

Caravans can go underground if you build ramps for them.
Just secure a large enough area for the trade depot.

Yeah but they can't spawn in the caverns, can they? You still have to build a ramp aboveground to lead them underground.  You can't seal off all the map edges except something in the caverns and have the caravan use those.  You also cannot dig out the last tiles around the map edge- those can only be carved out for fortifications.

I read somewhere that the dwarf caravans can reach you from the caverns if the only trade depot available can only be reached through there, but I've never used it so I don't know if that's true

[utunnels]

I'm sure caravans can leave via the caverns.
I saw that happened.

[Goblins]

Well then chaps, time for some !!SCIENCE!!

[Urist McVoyager]

They can leave, but they shouldn't come that way. Only the Dwarven one ought to come through the caverns.

I have fun with the above ground ones. It's extra strategy.

[99Hedgehog]

Now that enemies can climb 3-z high smoothed stone walls without trouble it requires some extra effort to stay safe...

Just make one level of your walls fortifications. Fortifications are unclimbable.

[Badger Storm]

Once I had an elven caravan leave through the caverns while a forgotten beast was in there.  It ended about as well as you would expect.

Anyway, I'm neither above ground nor below it.  I always dig into the mountainside and use around 4-5 levels below that.  I'm too lazy to build above ground, but I can't bear the thought of abandoning the surface.

[Urist McVoyager]

Aboveground lets you settle on Aquifers without having to pierce them to settle much. Of course, you'll still have to pierce them to get stone and metal, but you'll be able to set up everything else in the soil levels or on the ground.

My current projects are above-ground. I'm actually working on leveling some hills to make the entire area flat.

[Goblins]

Hm.

I don't enable aquifers.  Too much work in my opinion.  It really takes away from the game and creativity of embarks.

[Urist McVoyager]

It definitely limits you in where you want to settle until you learn how to deal with them. I've never even bothered trying, though I'm sure I could if I really wanted to.

[Aslandus]

Hm.

I don't enable aquifers.  Too much work in my opinion.  It really takes away from the game and creativity of embarks.

In that case water in an underground fortress is finite, unless you build a path for it to flow down from the surface. You won't even have rain to refill the cavern lakes. I keep aquifers off too, but my fortresses are usually surface-based with corridors reaching into the caverns.

[Kuikka]

Now that enemies can climb 3-z high smoothed stone walls without trouble it requires some extra effort to stay safe...

Just make one level of your walls fortifications. Fortifications are unclimbable.

Thats what I thought as well, but that is wrong. I had a wall where 2nd level was fortifications, and my archers, as well as enemies, climbed over it. It definitely wont stop enemies (or friendlies alike). I had to build a roof over the fortification to stop that.

Heres a screenshot depicting how fortification "prevents climbing":

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Badger Storm]

The first (and last) time I tried to get through an aquifer I was literally frustrated to the point of tears.  It was so confusing and so tedious.  If I absol have to, I'll embark on a partial aquifer, but I prefer a river for water.

[Niddhoger]

Hm.

I don't enable aquifers.  Too much work in my opinion.  It really takes away from the game and creativity of embarks.

Psh, there are some hella-fun ways to pierce aquifers and non of them are really "hard."  Double slit can be tedious but makes a nice neat stair-well.  "Pump-stack" isn't as neat as double-slit, but a little quicker.  It does rely on "dwarven hydro-reactors" so if you consider that an exploit its as no-no.  That leaves cave-ins and freezing.  Both of these are "messy" imho, because they leave large holes in the ground.  Both rely on "concentric" squares (we can't really make circles in this game, now can we?) layers of stairs going down.  Cave-in collapses floor after floor onto the aquifer, which destroys the aquifer tiles.  you then have this giant pit with a staircase through in the middle.  The freezing method will have a similar design in the end, but is only really safe to do in tundras or cold biomes where you have a long "winter." The point is to expose the aquifer tiles to the surface, which immediately freezes them.  You can then dig through the ice.  If you embarked on a cold (or temperate) biome, you'll have to channel out extra wide to place walls down for when the temperatures warm up.  Either way, these last two methods (cave-in and freezing) require you to either know or guess the depth of the aquifer you are dealing with before hand.  The problem is that you can never know exactly how deep an aquifer is beyond 1-layer without using cheats (DF-hack reveal). 

Oh there are technically two more ways to pierce the aquifer.  You can cast it in obsidian similar to the freezing method, but obviously this requires you to already have magma :p.  The last is called "lucky as shit" because your aquifer didn't extent all the way through your embark, thus you can simply dig around it.  You get all the benefits of an aquifer (infinite secured water for defenses/civilian use) as well as avoiding having to actually pierce it.

To me it ADDS to the challenge and creativity of your forts.  You have to add in the aquifer to your fort design.  This often means you can easily triple the amount of planned water-works for your fort! Drowning chambers are so easy to make! Even ones that fill/refill on their own.  Your own reservoir is also so much easier to not only secure but set up.  You can then start adding dwarven baths and even add "fountains" to your dining room. 

[Niddhoger]

The first (and last) time I tried to get through an aquifer I was literally frustrated to the point of tears.  It was so confusing and so tedious.  If I absol have to, I'll embark on a partial aquifer, but I prefer a river for water.

They can be intimidating at first, but just have the wiki page open to tab through and just embark right onto an aquifer as a tutorial.  Once you do this a couple of times with any given method, you'll be able to do it without any problems.  Now, the only one that is confusing is the double-slit.  You have to be careful with building stairs and setting up the last layer.  Otherwise its not so bad. 

The main thing to remember about aquifer-safety is that the first non-aquifer layer below the aquifer is also off-limits.  So a 2z-level aquifer is really taking up 3 levels... aquifer tiles leek orthogonaly and below.  So if you dig underneath one.... congratulations! You just flooded your fort!

[Badger Storm]

Yeah, I used the double slit method because I heard that one was the best.  If I try it again I'll probably go somewhere with a fairly long freeze period, see if I can dig through and wall it off or something.