If that is the case, 13th Ronin, it'd probably be better that you actually include the details of difficulty in your readme and upload directories. As I said before, I believe I gave them a very thorough run-down, and I believe they are not, but I may be wrong.
Without that, it seems less as though you intended it, and more as though you seemed to blunder about it. After knowing what to expect from the mod, I prepared appropriately, and can and do survive without much, if any problems. The issue is that these details seem to have gone completely unspoken in your readme, and that's what bothers me.
You'd think since the mod was meant for the difficulty, that it'd be mentioned. Suprises are good for some people, but generally, with mods for games, a detailed list with the intent of changes, as well as the itemized list thereafter, is the best course of action.
And also, I must disagree on your comment about never expecting my dwarves to take a scratch. I pride myself on being able to come up with strategies that allow my dwarves to never -have- to take anything, as fun as it might be to the otherwise, and as much as I love the ASCII brutality of DF combat. Winning with clever ingenuity and design is just as dwarven as hacking at their necks with an axe. The current fortress, as said, can deal the orcs off with little to no difficulty, whether by killing them, or simply outlasting them. The Fortress is entirely self-sufficient and protected, a goal I had to start on much earlier than usual.
I digress, though, and perhaps the Goblins is simply a local problem of mine, however unlikely it would be, having simply plugged the mod over my vanilla copy of DF. I still cannot seem to locate them on the four or five worlds I've generated, even after modding them into Adventurer mode to check. Also, if difficulty is your goal, why don't you just work towards having the Goblins and Orcs siege in tandem? That'd seem much better, I'd think, and honestly, that's what I was hoping for in this mod.
Opposingly, on the issue of orcs, there was never a problem with goblins sending caravans, and yet they all had names? I am fairly sure, because of that, that it's possible, whether that includes the [CANSPEAK] tag or not.
On another note, I've found that a hell of a lot of stone types have been moved to economic instead of other stone, category-wise. I try to make blocks of Alunite, only to find that my dwarves won't touch the stuff because the stone list is all skewered.