My forts are Social Strong. That is, there is a single-tile meeting zone and plenty of dwarves get plenty of time to spend idle. This means they have mad stats.
Pros:
1. My dwarves outrun goblins with ease. They only die when ambushes materialize on at least three sides of them. And even then they tend to kill three or four before they go down, as long as I recruit them.
2. My dwarves carry heavy things with ease. This really helps out when clearing sub-masterful green glass statues from one side of the map, where the sand is, to the other, where the chasm is.
3. My dwarves don't pass out from pain. On a previous fort, one of my founders lost a lung somehow in the first couple of years. This did not slow him down and around year 17, when FPS took a dark gray hit to the brain, he was still running around doing what he did.
4. My dwarves make each other happy. If a dwarf is unhappy and not bedridden, I just have to take their jobs away from a bit and they go find someone to talk to. Then they get happy again.
Cons:
1. My dwarves mourn with their fists. If one dwarf dies, many dwarves mourn. If many dwarves mourn, some of those mourners will make poor decisions. You all know where that can go.
2. My dwarves hurt each other when they hit each other. That's how the countess died. I missed the death of a child and didn't unforbid the corpse. It rotted, which was enough to send momma over the edge. Momma found the Countess Consort and showed the Countess Consort's brain what the Countess Consort's beard felt like.
3. The God Damned Batman. I'm pretty sure what happened is that I meant to hit b->C to bring up the construction menu. Instead I hit v->C and put the nearest dwarf on the Fortress Guard. Dude then did what dude does: he solved some problems.
There have been a number of production mandates missed due to shortages of the makings for lead and sterling silver. Part of the reason for this is that the Mountainhome Liaison found a group of troglodytes in Autumn 201. Later I found lead and silver producing ores, so that's okay now.
There have been a few crimes committed during a few brief tantrums.
Then there was the Countess Consort who had a thing for crowns that I didn't notice for a little while. So one day she asks for crowns and I'm like "Oh that's eas -- waitaminute." I saw that she had a mandate against exporting them. So I checked Justice and, sure enough, there was a long list of export mandate violations in addition to all the other local color.
So, yeah, Brutal Batman.