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[Toxicles]

I build a giant burial vault somewhere out of the way so the dwarves can sleep in peace.  Regular dwarves don't get their own big, awesome tombs with cabinets and weapon racks, but they ARE guaranteed a nice stone coffin in a 1x3 room with a door.

And then I build a marble mausoleum nearby for the bodies of their faithful war dogs.

Worse yet, one of the first things I do is designate up/down stairways from wherever I end up starting all the way down to the very, very bottom.  Let's ignore the fact that I only ever use like six Z levels for my fort.

I imagine that will begin to end poorly if the next version has 50 to 100 layers below as the update list said.

[Magick]

-Everything is hooked up to magma. Everything. Dining room? magma. Bedrooms? magma. Stockpile? magma. King's throne room? Definitely magma.
-I use the stone beds mod so that i never have to touch a single piece of wood ever.
-All of my non-military dwarves are masons, furnace operators, or smiths. There is one grower in the entire fort. He also happens to be every settable noble, a cook, a brewer, and a weaver/clothier.
-Every day is garbage day, where i lock everyone in their rooms and purge the hallways with magma.Sometimes, annoying nobles fail to get into their luxurious rooms on time, and are incinerated.
-I regularly capture live fire snakes in steel cages and dump them in the magma pipe.
-I capture the servants of armok(read: fire imps, fire men, magma men) and put them in the best rooms. Usually with an annoying noble or two to eat.
-I try to keep the good nobles happy, and when they become a nuisance they get dumped in the magma pipe.
-I never trade with anything that isn't a dwarf
-I put half of the booze near the nobles rooms, and then I dump a fire imp on the stockpile.
-Dwarves with legendary skills get a small adamantine-plated tomb with an adamantine sarcophagus in it.
-I don't dump siegers in magma. Instead, i take all of their clothing/equipment, dump the poor fool into the glowing pit, and throw a single copper short sword down after them. Their equipment goes to the magma pipe. I like to think that this is why no more demons are ever sent after me, because they are having enough fun tearing a goblin to pieces.
-I use lignite/coal to lite a series of booze stockpiles that are hidden in channels. Dwarven fireworks, anyone?
-every single champion in my fortress is armed with an artifact weapon. If they don't have one, they get thrown into a small pit until one is made.
-I have a small pit filled with 1/4th of the fortress's total population. It is also hooked up to magma.
-I usually add in a fail-safe that collapses the entire mountain. Should the fortress become compromised, one switch will crush everything. This switch is kept in the barracks.
-The armor/weapon/ammo stockpiles and prison are only accessible from the barracks.
-I arm squad leading recruits with adamantine maces, just for the horrific hilarious sparring injuries that will ensue
-Should a dwarf go insane, garbage day is re-enacted, but without the whole locking in the room thing.

[shadowform]

-every single champion in my fortress is armed with an artifact weapon. If they don't have one, they get thrown into a small pit until one is made.

Screenshot of your artifact screen or I won't believe it.

[Magick]

I forgot to note that most of them starve to death in the pit.

[Rakonas]

I never use the same general layout twice in a row. My current fort is finally back to the grand central staircase plan, last one was placed on one floor with every workshop belonging to a dwarf, with connected bedroom, dining room, study, and store room across z level. Fort before that was all ramps, fort before that was some crazy nonsensical layout, and so on.
I always cover the area around any exposed magma pipes with statues of battle-ready dwarves. A kind of massive 100 scarecrow defence mechanism.
I also like to have tombs spanning multiple z-leves and screens. Occasionally with the entire lower z-level filled with warrior statues. Tombs also have any non-weapon artifacts that were created by the occupant in them.
I hate plump helmets, and never, ever, plant them.
Never Traps. Never. Also, never sealing the fort in with doors or bridges. If I do seal the fort in, I build several layers of wall after removing all possible trace of the fort ever existing on the outside.
I segregate people by castes unless I'm operating with a different intent with the fort.
I also get all my champions masterwork midnight blue (or black if available) gcs silk cloaks as soon as possible.

[assimilateur]

Screenshot of your artifact screen or I won't believe it.

Having a shitload of artifact weapons isn't that impressive if you consider two things:
1. You can greatly increase your odds of getting weaponsmith moods by giving all your haulers (and other dwarves with no moodable skills) one appropriate job at the forge, so they're all dabbling weaponsmiths.
2. Using Dwarf Companion you can have moods trigger at will. I'm not saying that the previous poster used DC, but even what I said in point 1. makes it sufficiently easy (at least in theory, because I have yet to use it) to get what moods you want that one shouldn't make a big deal out of it.

[Omegastick]

I build a death chamber as soon as I get about 50 dwarves in an attempt to get rid of all the useless dwarves ( I could draft them but this is more fun).

[NewoTigra]

Everybody gets wars wolves. Sieges are a depressing time for the soldiers.

I gave the goblins / orcs war wolves, spiders and elephants. Then I felt this was a bit too much so I gave my dwarves war-bears.

In a response to this daring move, the ice-raiders (a race composed of viking versions of superman) started to train up their platoons of penguins.

Yeah, I like giving my civs war animals, the stranger more culturally appropriate the better.

Most of my forts also have an entrance as elaborate as is feasible at the time, such as dragons' maws rising from a magma moat, or a giant speartrap-filled aboveground tunnel, made entirely from ice.

And death pits, the more the merrier. Current fort has a tower with 4 walkways branching off at the top, each delivering prisoners into a different pit. There is are regular, spiked, magma and drowning pits. All are inescapable.

The regular pit also has a bridge that attests the poor prisoners' fall a few levels short of them dying from the impact, retaining a few wounds instead. They can then walk along the bridge into a side room...which is a large coliseum, right next to the 'extremely dangerous' animal pens, and has a few handy access hatches in the ceiling for soldiers / condemned criminals / animals to be dropped in.
Sort of like the Roman coliseums, if the criminal / prisoner can kill whatever else is in there with him, he goes free. For the soldiers it's just a live-action training exercise. For the animals it's a free meal.
Win / Win situation for all involved!

EDIT: I think there is also a subset of humans modded to only settle in deserts, also with location-related war animals, but they don't show up much. Something to do with the whole 'vast swathes of desert are only in super-tweaked world-gens'. I need to find more...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also thought about modding in some sort of shark-demon, sort of like the regular frog ones, but significantly more badass. And less slimy.

[forsaken1111]

I imagine that will begin to end poorly if the next version has 50 to 100 layers below as the update list said.

Not to mention all the open caverns, water, magma layers, and hidden fun stuff you might start piercing in the new version.

[Magick]

Screenshot of your artifact screen or I won't believe it.

Having a shitload of artifact weapons isn't that impressive if you consider two things:
1. You can greatly increase your odds of getting weaponsmith moods by giving all your haulers (and other dwarves with no moodable skills) one appropriate job at the forge, so they're all dabbling weaponsmiths.
2. Using Dwarf Companion you can have moods trigger at will. I'm not saying that the previous poster used DC, but even what I said in point 1. makes it sufficiently easy (at least in theory, because I have yet to use it) to get what moods you want that one shouldn't make a big deal out of it.

Last i checked, editing moods caused the dwarf that has it to stop doing things.
and created moods from DC don't make artifacts.

[decius]

I put copper floor bars over the entrance to my pit. Now I'm filling it with water.

Let's see if troglodites can breathe water.

[Particleman]

I enjoy making catacombs. Basically just a bunch of 5x5 rooms, each containing a coffin, four statues, a cabinet, and a chest. I make the walls between them two tiles thick so each tomb has it's own set of unique engravings. Once a dwarf's body and all his posessions are placed in his tomb, I forbid the door to it and build a wall in front of it with stone blocks to make it blend in with the rest of the wall (which is smoothed.)

I prefer for my catacombs to either be huge and symmetrical (at least east-west symmetrical) or a single long, twisty passage with all the doors on the same side.

I also seperate most of my immigrants into two groups- serfs and drudges. Drudges are basically peasants but with Pump Operating enabled as well, so they can build up some agility.

Serfs are rough laborers. They do hauling like drudges, but they also do things like building walls and floors, smelting, woodcutting, butchery, and tanning. y reasoning is that if I had dedicated butchers, tanners, and woodcutters, they'd all spend downtime hauling stuff anyway. Plus, having two dozen amatuer woodcutters makes harvesting wood a lot faster (or at least about the same speed) as a single legendary woodcutter.

Serfs also do the majority of work on my projects.

[madjoe5]

Every fort of mine has to have a coliseum. No, not an arena, a coliseum.

It's much greater that any arena I have seen, so far at least. It's a well organized, intricate part of my fortress. It is completely smoothed out and walls are engraved. The lower floor is for gladiator combat, and is paved in patterns of color and smoothed and engraved as well. Note that bones and corpses are never cleaned from this area, even though I could. The exit from this level is an intricate two door and a bridge/wall system that at any moment can make all the hostile creatures path to the inner part of my base, and walk over cage traps, but also keeps them in.

The upper level is much larger, consisting of a channeled out middle are, in which the pit is visible. Glass windows are placed on the perimiter of the hole, and those are surrounded by chairs for the audience (again entire area smoothed and walls engraved). There is a hallway leading to this in which there are two ticket booths and stairs to the third level. Just before that, there are doors to the two holding chambers. The holding chamber is where the combatants' cages are built and they are held not during battle. The north one holds my war bears, war dogs and war cougars, all equipped with the [CAN_LEARN] tag as well, and the South is for hostiles (invaders, untamed etc.).

The upper level is another level of window/chairs surrounding a hole that can view the combatants.

It is a shame I can't see my dwarves actually sit and watch, but it still looks epic.

Edit: Forgot to add that the holding chambers are zoos and sometimes I add breeding pens. There is also a water system that I can fill the pit with and drain appropriately, for aquatic battles.

[Halmie]

- I always name my first dwarf after a god and cheat to give him high stats but don't spend points on anything else bar a pickaxe, an axe, a couple of seeds and a special item for my demi-god dwarf. e.g. If he/she is called Thor I grab a hammer.

- Often I split my fortressess into sectors. Each sector has a material and a general theme. Usually going: Slum, Apartment, General Residential, Mansions, Temples, Sacred Areas.

[kobot]

I make all of my rooms and tunnels curving and rounded and asymmetrical, more like a burrow or natural system of caves than an engineered fortress