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[Oxidus]

I've played Masterwork and recently started playing Old Genesis, but feel really underwhelmed with the challenge. I just beat off undead siege (around 80 undead) and I would have done it without difficulty, If I hadn't forgotten that the dwarves won't hold their ground and charge when given opportunity. I have my caverns open all the time (even though they are filled with around 20 monster slayers), and not so strong military. My recent games look like this: make some jobs on manager for dwarves to do, and then just alt-tab and scroll through internet, occasionaly checking if something interesting had not happened. I had a forgotten beast (got screwed up in few seconds by three monster slayers), thunderbird (killed by zombies) and a roc which just got caught in my cage trap.
 Are there some mods that could overhaul the game quite a bit so it wouldn't feel so monotonous?

[Telgin]

You can try asking in the modding forum directly, but Fortress Defense was the first that came to mind.  The linked version is for an older version of the game and I didn't see a newer one, so it probably has issues that would need to be fixed for it to work in the current version.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually played with the mod, so I don't know what all it does contain, but it appears to add a fair bit and would probably take some work to make it compatible.

[nutregina]

have you tried setting numbers of vampires and werebeasts in world to max?

[Fleeting Frames]

have you tried setting numbers of vampires and werebeasts in world to max?

I guess* this only increases the variety of metal weaknesses in them and the variety of available forms in werebeasts; actual cursing is still capped by the limit of how many people topple them (I've genned a world with no vampires by ensuring late temple and werebeast nr outnumbering vamps 22 to 1.), much like with number of secret types.

*I'm not sure lycantrophe/vampire curses are shared across gods or civs as I've usually go for worlds with just 1 city, thus imposing a limit beyond the number like with demon types and goblin civilizations; shouldn't be hard to check with legends viewer and a large world with some length of history however.

[thefriendlyhacker]

If you want something difficult and different, why not ponies?

Give Fallout Equestria a try.  Pick a fun embark spot, and watch the local wildlife whittle your civilian population down to nothing.

I have a test fort in a reanimating terrifying biome with an aquifier layer going right now.  I am going to run off some facts about this fort, in no particular order:

• It is year 4
• There are almost 900 units in the dead list.
• the number of living migrants is outnumbered by the number of dead migrants and dead slaves bought off slaver caravans by almost 3 to 1
• Currently, nearly half of the fort is mercenaries.  This might sound a bit lopsided as far as worker/combatant ratios go, but I am just happy to have something that can reduce the number of workers getting an engraved tombstone and a one way trip down into a magma pit.
• About half a dozen of my mercenaries and several civilians are completely blind due to blistering gas spewed by packs of opposed-to-life mutated ambulatory plants.  Luckily, only one civilian has been mutated into a horrific, paralyzing gaze equipped abomination by the same gas...so far.
• Half of the fort is stressed or worse.  This is an improvement - many of the less stress tolerant ones have been weeded out through insanity, stumbling around obliviously into packs of ghoulified dogs etc.
• A substantial fraction of my fort's weapons and trading fodder came from visitors and migrants who are no longer in need of worldly possessions.  Kinetic Sledgehammers are for the living, the dead go down the magma chute.
• An armored ghoul somehow wandered into the bedroom section by walking past a dozen mercs and strolling through a busy fort entrance.  It killed two workers before being ganked by my mercenaries.  My only feelings on this are mild bafflement and faint amusement.  This must be what it feels like when a dwarf doesn't really care about anything any more.
• Multiple visitors have been driven insane just by hanging out by the front of my fort.
• Tantruming, oblivious or depressed visitors are barely even worth taking note of.
• At one point, my fort was down to 5 survivors.  Shortly before that, it had over 20 civilians.  This is what successive packs of radioactive ghouls followed by reanimating dead ponies does to a fort.
• The fort doesn't sustain those kinds of casualties among the civilian population any more.  That is what mercenaries are for.
• The fort is in a biome that rains blood.  I consider this a boon - all that blood that isn't my fault hides all the blood that is.
• For most of the fort's life I had enough manpower to either bring in wood and build beds for my citizens survivors, or minecart dump several hundred corpses into an artificial magma incinerator, but not both.  Consequently, most of the fort gets to sleep in the dirt.

Fallout Equestria is a lot of fun.

[Oxidus]

It sounds good, but those ponies though..

[Splint]

It sounds good, but those ponies though..

As he pointed out with his notes, these ain't normal ponies. These are ones forced to live not just by wasteland, but dwarf fortress rules. They have as much mercy to spare the world as dwarves do -  that is to say, virtually none.

If you want just a general difficulty spike, there's also Agricultural Revolution, which greatly decreases farming and herbalism's outputs, sans for trees which will possibly form the basis of your food industry in forested areas, and make others far harsher to survive in. There's also Lands of Duality which make Good and Evil biomes equally horrible in their own ways, and What Lurks Below, which makes the caverns even more dangerous than they already are. There's also Zombies Ate My Dwarves, which adds a number of exciting new monsters with a B-Movie Sci-Fi/Horror flavor to evil biomes and caverns as well as various hostile civs such as land pirates, martians, and hillbilly cannibals. This last one recently got a nice DOOM flavored update recently.

Fortress Defense, which Telgin recommended, adds tons of new civs to fight from weak Dark Strangler hordes to steel-equipped Greater Badgermen, and Grimlocke's mod changes various things with equipment and combat, and optionally makes iron and steelworking more realistic/difficult. There's also my own prehistoric creature pack, which while nothing expansive, adds many animals to be seen outside savage biomes, some of which like the aurochs and great elk might randomly decide they don't like your dwarves, or can be encountered in both mountains and caverns - consequently making mountains a bit more dangerous, due the the presence of Cave Lions and Bears on the slopes as well as a variant of terror bird.

My own Disclaimer: Never used Grimlocke's. I've always used Stal's Armory when I wanted better weapons and armor related stuff.

[Leonidas]

If your fort is in a populated part of the world, you don't need a mod. Go to war with each of the nearby civs by raiding one of their sites. You'll get one or more groups of visitors every season.

[Oxidus]

If your fort is in a populated part of the world, you don't need a mod. Go to war with each of the nearby civs by raiding one of their sites. You'll get one or more groups of visitors every season.

Been there, done that. My legendary macedwarves dispose of everyone and everything by crushing them in literally two hits (even hill titans).

[Splint]

The only things that can really help make the game harder are adding in hazards - more enemies with higher innate skills or better materials than you, hostile wildlife,  detrimental weather, reducing trade by angering allies, making smelting dangerous, jacking up people's weakness to stress, or self-induced challenges, like not allowing your soldiers to ear more than a metal helmet leather body armor and a mail shirt over thier street clothes, or building a city's structures specifically out of pork soap and only pork soap.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If your fort is in a populated part of the world, you don't need a mod. Go to war with each of the nearby civs by raiding one of their sites. You'll get one or more groups of visitors every season.

Been there, done that. My legendary macedwarves dispose of everyone and everything by crushing them in literally two hits (even hill titans).

What is your sieger cap at? It's one thing to one-hit a single titan. Quite another to stand up to 500 invaders mounted on giant animals without collapsing of exhaustion eventually.

Three simple things to try as it's much quicker to tweak the game yourself than wait around for the perfect mod).

- Give all enemies access to steel.

- Add [item_thief] to dwarves. Now you're automatically hostile to all the races (except kobolds who will happily still send thieves to you) and you get only one caravan a year.

- Lower siege triggers to minimums for all civs, titans, megabeasts and semis so initial attacks can come before your dorfs are trained macelords.

Then embark near lots of enemies.

DF is a very customizable game with simple plain English text files to edit as you like. If the game's to easy, modify it. Think of it as the advanced options menu. If you can edit the standard options, you can edit the raws.

[Oxidus]

If your fort is in a populated part of the world, you don't need a mod. Go to war with each of the nearby civs by raiding one of their sites. You'll get one or more groups of visitors every season.

Been there, done that. My legendary macedwarves dispose of everyone and everything by crushing them in literally two hits (even hill titans).

What is your sieger cap at? It's one thing to one-hit a single titan. Quite another to stand up to 500 invaders mounted on giant animals without collapsing of exhaustion eventually.

Three simple things to try as it's much quicker to tweak the game yourself than wait around for the perfect mod).

- Give all enemies access to steel.

- Add [item_thief] to dwarves. Now you're automatically hostile to all the races (except kobolds who will happily still send thieves to you) and you get only one caravan a year.

- Lower siege triggers to minimums for all civs, titans, megabeasts and semis so initial attacks can come before your dorfs are trained macelords.

Then embark near lots of enemies.

DF is a very customizable game with simple plain English text files to edit as you like. If the game's to easy, modify it. Think of it as the advanced options menu. If you can edit the standard options, you can edit the raws.

I don't think my computer, or even average one could run the game with 500 invaders, but I guess I generate my next world with maximum savagery.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If your fort is in a populated part of the world, you don't need a mod. Go to war with each of the nearby civs by raiding one of their sites. You'll get one or more groups of visitors every season.

Been there, done that. My legendary macedwarves dispose of everyone and everything by crushing them in literally two hits (even hill titans).

What is your sieger cap at? It's one thing to one-hit a single titan. Quite another to stand up to 500 invaders mounted on giant animals without collapsing of exhaustion eventually.

Three simple things to try as it's much quicker to tweak the game yourself than wait around for the perfect mod).

- Give all enemies access to steel.

- Add [item_thief] to dwarves. Now you're automatically hostile to all the races (except kobolds who will happily still send thieves to you) and you get only one caravan a year.

- Lower siege triggers to minimums for all civs, titans, megabeasts and semis so initial attacks can come before your dorfs are trained macelords.

Then embark near lots of enemies.

DF is a very customizable game with simple plain English text files to edit as you like. If the game's to easy, modify it. Think of it as the advanced options menu. If you can edit the standard options, you can edit the raws.

I don't think my computer, or even average one could run the game with 500 invaders, but I guess I generate my next world with maximum savagery.

Max savagery will give you less sieges as civilized races won't have anywhere to settle.
Try 250. I play on 250 with beast cap at 140. That leads to some good sieges which don't kill my computer too badly. But I also play in worlds with a steel wielding minotaur civ and large pops of dark elves who invade at max cap riding giant snakes and cave spiders. Giant flies too sometimes, but that really will kill your fps when they get stuck in the trees...

[anewaname]

I don't think my computer, or even average one could run the game with 500 invaders, but I guess I generate my next world with maximum savagery.

I have had 800+ invaders on an older computer and FPS dropped to about 6 for some hours, then it was over and FPS had returned. If you have not tried raising the invader cap, it is a lot of fun.

[Fleeting Frames]

Also, untamed wilds aren't significantly more dangerous than calm, as the wildlife which picks a fight is relatively rare - and even then, a woodcutter may very well slay your average giant critter. (Unless you're on reanimating embark.)

You could also mod dwarves' skill to grow slower, so they're not near unheard-of legendary in a year or two, but I know some find nerfing themselves irritating.