Where did this notion of Dwarves being steampunk even come from. Is it a Gamesworkshop thing, or did Blizzard do it?
The idea of dwarves crafting powerful advanced devices goes all the way back to Norse mythology, if not further: dwarven smiths created Thor's hammer, Sif's golden hair, Odin's spear, a huge flying ship made of metal plates that could fold up small enough to fit in your pocket, a golden bracelet that produces nine more golden bracelets each night, and this magic ring that some guy wrote an opera about, among others. In the legends these are described as "magical"; in modern fantasy we often want more detail about how things work, so either dwarves have some sort of complicated runic enchantment system or they have higher technology than the neighboring civilizations, usually involving clockwork and/or steam power.
I'm not sure when exactly the "dwarves=steampunk" thing started, although my guess would be the dwarves in WarHammer with their gyrocopters and organ cannons and what-not. Making dwarves
too techy can be annoying, but overall I think the general trend of dwarves being higher tech than their neighbors (and somewhat secretive about it) is a neat trope, and I'm pleased with the implementation of that we see here with Mechanisms (and definitely looking forward to being able to do more stuff with them eventually).
It should be considered that you MUST have an anvil or you can't forge anything as a minor tech tree.
In the Dark Dwarves mod, anvils can be "cast" at a Smelter for three bars of iron or steel. I thought it was a nice workaround and provided a good explanation for where anvils come in the first place--although of course it begs the question of where
picks came from in the first place. And of course being able to buy 3 hematite and a fire-safe rock instead of an expensive anvil drastically alters starting build balance, so that needs to be considered as well.