Four year old fortress with pop-max upped to 500 (just north of 290 right now), FPS around 30 on an average day. Just upgraded to a Duchy, and my baroness is a big fan of windows (which is a good match for a volcano + sand embark). Trade economy is based on green glass, clay, and obsidian (I'm trying to be good and stick to crafts/instruments/mugs, but it's hard with glass serrated disks being so easy and lucrative). *Slowly* transitioning from iron to steel due to a complete lack of coal in the embark (buying a lot of wood to burn into charcoal, in addition to the usual beds and bins). I've decided to kill all dometic animals except pets, female cats, and alpacas, to see if I can get to a functional wool/milk supply. My dwarves have responded by instantly bonding with every stray animal that wanders onto the map, of course.
My first attempt at weaponizing lava from the mouth of a volcano ended in horrible failure; instead of running down the prepared stairwell into the floodgate controlled murder holes over my trade entrance, it instead spread out while falling down the mountainside and blocked off the trade entrance with a spreading layer of lava...and of course I mined the critical channel while the dwarven trade delegation was packing up and preparing to leave. After some rapid wall construction and a very quick and dirty mining project through the middle of my barracks, I created a new access tunnel to the map edge, allowing the merchants to leave before going insane.
Now constructing a 1-tile water tank with remotely operated drain hatch over the edge of the caldera to (hopefully) make an obsidian plug in the channel where the lava is currently flowing out; I have high hopes that stopping the constant flow of lava down the mountain will improve my FPS some as well.
Also just finished an elaborate green glass bath-house with overly complex filling and draining apparatus. I am aesthetically offended that the construction dwarves laying the glass floor left bloody boot-stains which have now been splashed all over the tastefully-engraved walls. Some times I wish the 'cleaning' task was a little higher priority. Or that moving water would actually clean things instead of just spreading the contaminants around.
The overall threat level seems pretty low; I have an army of hunters out keeping the wild animal population in the 0-5 range most of the time (and keeping me in good supply of meat, bones, and leather), and they have sniffed out the last few ambushes well ahead of them closing the fort allowing me to engage with my military and get some experience (more fun that way too). Only interesting visitor so far (not including the were-loris in year 1, which was absolutely silly) has been a cylops. After she chased my alpacas around for a week or two I decided enough was enough, dropped the drawbridge, and sent my whole military out after her. One militia commander with a short sword got there first, stabbed her repeatedly, sliced off her eyelid (*huh?*), then impaled her in the brain and twisted the sword. Not exactly the thrilling climax I was looking for, doctors are getting bored (and rusty). I'm hoping for a good large-scale siege some time soon (preferrably with some building destroyers and flying mounts) to actually test out my defenses.
EDIT: one minor irritation I have right now...for reasons that are unclear to me, my manager won't let me make any upper body covering other than dresses and vests. Although my dwarfs are fine with everyone wearing dresses, it's a little strange and something I didn't see in my last embark. Is there any reason why a common clothing item wouldn't be available?