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[Fleeting Frames]

...As members of your fort

Human:
Attributes overall worse and not excelling than any other race, though larger for combat.
Not innately alcohol-dependent, but will eat food and drink water.
I guess you'd use them as haulers or fighters until they die.

Goblin:
Awful creativity, intuition and sociopathic empathy, but perfect memory and dwarven strength with better endurance, willpower and social awareness.
Not eating or drinking seems very nice, unless one is driven to drink from violence or a vamping would be desired. Sprinkling a fort with few relatively peaceful goblins seems somewhat desirable (for miners, perhaps), but they're overall worse than dwarves.

Dwarves:
Bad agility, but nice strength, creativity, memory, analytical ability with better spatial sense and focus.
Alcohol-dependent, but not a great difference unless one is vamping the fort.
Cave adaptation can weaken military sent on surface, and give unhappy thoughts.
Only civilization that gets strange moods or trances. 

Elves:
Nice agility, intuition, spatial sense, empathy with better kinesthetic sense, great linguistic ability and perfect memory...
And also friends to woodland animals,
not alcohol-dependent if impatient.
and don't trample grass.

Between dwarves and elves the stats don't seem that tilted outside of memory-dependent jobs, but always-on are pretty biased in favour of elves. Goblins and humans mostly fall by the wayside.

Of course, strange moods of dwarves give them unparalleled crafting ability for all but long-lasting forts, and even there those provide unique powerful advantages not otherwise obtainable. Sending out embark teams of 7 with two migrant waves makes suddenly far more sense.

It might be harder to get a breeding pair of elves or goblins than humans or dwarves due immortality, granted - but it seems like they would quite well overtake dwarves on a lot of jobs and goblins on almost all jobs, and are just plain best for vampire castles.

Now....are there any other species-specific things that throw off this assessment? Some animal men who can have an unique role?

[Orange Wizard]

Eh.
Creativity is much better for crafting because of the higher masterwork chance, so dwarves win out here.
Strength is most important for hauling, so it's a toss-up between dwarves and goblins. Dwarves are more versatile.
Strength and agility are the most relevant in combat, Intuition, spacial sense, and kinaesthetic sense play a minor role. I'd say dwarves and elves are roughly even at baseline.

In terms of perks, most of the elven bonuses are situational. Trampling grass is irrelevant indoors. Booze is easy to make, and animals are only occasionally a danger.
Dwarves, however, are the only race that can process steel and adamantine. The benefits of having top-tier metals available throws off any initial gains the elves might have.

Also, obligatory elf genocide joke.

[QuakeIV]

By far biggest edge the elves have is eternal life.  It tends to lead to their superlegendary warriors lasting forever, where the dwarf ones die of age eventually.

They can in the long term really take over world gen unless they get romped on in the first few centuries.  e: Notably, that isn't entirely uncommon.

[Fleeting Frames]

Dwarves, however, are the only race that can process steel and adamantine. The benefits of having top-tier metals available throws off any initial gains the elves might have.

Elven citizen can smelt steel and enjoy cutting down trees without even grumbling about outdoors

Otherwise, I'm under the impression from the wiki that crafting workshop use at least 4 stats, one of which is creativity - I wouldn't be surprised to have ++kinesthetic sense win out over that. So yeah, I agree they seem mostly even at baseline, bonuses/maluses expected. Dwarves have most maluseses and no bonuses, elves have all the bonuses. Expect for perhaps zeroth generation naturalized citizens?

...And that only heavy object hauling uses lot of strength/endurance, otherwise falling down down to speed determined by both strength and agility.

[Sanctume]

Magma > trees.  You can't melt stone houses.

[Fleeting Frames]

You can't melt wooden ones either, though? Even ice ones won't melt, as long as they're constructions.

Besides, flooding your living area with magma seems terribly irresponsible.

[Crashmaster]

...flooding your living area with magma seems terribly irresponsible.

You will never fully appreciate Dwarves while still clinging to foreign ideals.

[timotheos]

I'm fairly sure dwarves are the only race that can enter a martial trance. Which is a truly impressive thing in a fight.
Can non-dwarves make artefacts?
Both of those are better situational benefits then anything the elves have.

[Sanctume]

Yeah, like martial trance with an artifact adamantine battle-axe.

[vjmdhzgr]

I'd consider not trampling grass a downside because it has an incredibly minor effect on grass outside, but it might manage to help if you accidentally muddy some floors so moss doesn't grow on it.
Also keep in mind that goblins and humans have better agility than dwarves, that is the standard level rather than a penalty. The minor size bonus for humans is a big deal for wrestling, or if you happen to get any good quality long swords or something. The high willpower of goblins is also going to be more valuable now that Toady fixed the immediately passing out from a singular toe being broken regardless of willpower. I've actually seen it in action, and it's pretty useful now. I think goblins are better at prolonged fights generally. Especially since they don't need to eat. You could just send them off on some eternal patrols or something and they wouldn't ever need to go back and fill up their backpack at an inconvenient time.
Then yeah dwarves have both strange moods and martial trances, as well as extremely high spatial sense and focus. The only thing in the game with any spatial sense equal to or higher is minotaurs, which are semimegabeasts. And for focus, they're completely unmatched.
A lot of the things elves have bonuses to are actually pretty much useless. Like musicality. Sure they'll play music better, but what's the benefit to that? The needs get satisfied regardless of quality, and it's pretty much impossible to make dwarves snap from stress, so reducing stress is useless.
There's also the walking gaits to be taken into account. Dwarves are slower than humans and goblins, who are a bit slower than elves, except at climbing, swimming, and crawling where elves are faster.

There's benefits to all of them, I feel like humans kind of get the least useful ones, but they're still fine. I think dwarves are mostly best for combat, and then also best for crafting, and so I guess goblins can do jobs where it's useful to just not even bother with food, and elves can haul and mine.

[Fleeting Frames]

Can non-dwarves make artefacts?

I looked, and no. Only dwarves have [STRANGE_MOODS] (or [TRANCES], but don't care too much about combat rn).

That's ....That easily smashes all disadvantages, likely giving a dwarf better general creation ability than vamped elf for year or two while also providing unique, massive advantages in buildings and significant in weaponry or clothing.

It's exactly the sort thing I was overlooking for, thank you. OP edited accordingly.

There's benefits to all of them, I feel like humans kind of get the least useful ones, but they're still fine. I think dwarves are mostly best for combat, and then also best for crafting, and so I guess goblins can do jobs where it's useful to just not even bother with food, and elves can haul and mine.

I'd probably make goblins mine due distance and having strength, endurance and willpower to stay on job, while elves greater empathy would make them better doctor (despite maxed memory on both).

You will never fully appreciate Dwarves while still clinging to foreign ideals.

I also dream of making just about everything in a fort out of wood or petrified wood with frolicking animals viewed in the Above Ground dining hall built in the treetops with fish swimming in river underneath, and petting animals on chains for visitors.

...I really dislike keas, though?

[Fleeting Frames]

Whoops ( Delete this )

[Findulidas]

They stand in the way of progress.

Also they are cannibals.