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[Mitbick]

My priorities usually go like this:

1. 3-tile wide hallway into the mountain, leading to the central 3x3 staircase.
2. Expanding the central staircase a few z-levels up and down, see what stone types there are.
3. Dig out two rooms on the -1 layer, right beside the river.
4. Simple irrigation with a lever connected to a door, set up farm plots.
5. Dig out future kitchen area, designate all the proper workshops.
6. Dig out the main living area, with 1x3 bedrooms for all my dwarves.
7. Wall off a moderate area outside the main entrance.
8. Set up masonry/carpentry areas.
9. (First migration) Usually start digging out the rest of the fortress as new dwarves arrive.

[That guy]

1. Designated entry tunnel to be dug. This is used for food storage, at first.
2. Build carpenter's shop on surface, make 5 beds, 5 bins, 5 buckets, then barrels aplenty
3. Set up beds in tunnel
4. Get herbalist to gather plants
5. Have mechanic/brewer make mechanisms, then brew drinks after a season or two
6. Get trade goods by burning charcoal, then making coke with bituminous coal I've brought, then making large serrated glass discs with the sand I've brought
7. Build depot, near mouth of entrance then build dining room, followed by barracks
8. Keep using the giant hallways as workshops and storage until better space is found
9. Set up tiny surface gardens near entrance for brewable plants
10. Set up line of surplus glass traps behind trade depot. Traders will provide a meat shield in case of ambush.
11. Trade for an anvil, equip woodcutters, replenish wood stocks and make an abnormally large amount of barrels
12. Set up indoor farming operations, cistern and well

[Deteramot]

I normally dig into the nearest hillside, unless I'm trying to make a far more "dwarfy" fortress, in which case I find a small area where it's surrounded on two sides by the hill, and that's where I start digging in. I normally bring three-four picks so I can have most of my dwarfs working on making my fortress.

Because I tend to be nitpicky, I usually make my dwarfs dig my stockpiles into soil, so that I don't have to worry about rocks cluttering the stockpile. This also, unfortunately, usually causes me to have my dwarfs treking halfway across the world in order to drop stuff off and pick it up. But, because I'm a dirty rotten cheater, I usually have my dwarfs [SPEED:1]'d.

[rezon]

My last few forts started this way.

1) While clearing a small area from plants and trees I designate my central stairwell going down six or seven z-levels. I use a macro for painting each identical level of the stairwell - which saves me a lot of time. I build my trade depot using freshly cut wood at the surface-level by the down stairs.
2) After the central stairwell is dug out, I usually make a foods, wood and bone workshop with ajoining rooms, for easy access and storage of ingredients, in the soil-level.
3) I dig out a dormitory around the stairway in the next level. - this will also serve as the temporary meeting hall untill I designate a layer for that.
4) Below the dormitory I make a double-level medical center with water-depot on the lower level, I fill this by designating the well-holes as ponds several times in a row, for generating enough tasks to fight evaporation.
5) Stone/metal level.
6) The Grand Hall a huge room with engraved pillars as final meeting area.
7) I build double apartments around the dormitory.
Masoleum, barracks and such..

Recently I have taken to put traps in front of the stairs at each level. They zig-zag down, so to pass from one level to another you have to walk 5 tiles, which in effect becomes my bottleneck during sieeges.

[saru]

Like many I just start with a temporary micro-fort. Dug into soil, there's an 11x11 omni stock pile, a few workshops, a sleeping dormitory and a small dining room. My initial 7 stay there while my miners dig out the bailey (or the masons start constructing it), and then the rest of the fort.

My bailey is a semi-autonomous structure for my soldiers and other defenses, and is the only entrance to my fortress from above. Multiple bridges over dry moats, siege engine pillbox facing long main entrance corridor, on the first floor. Barracks, training hall, archery range, equipment and food stock piles, etc on the second floor. Most of it is exposed, or partially so on top, which may be dangerous, but prevents both cave adaptation and the really choking miasma.

A handful of workshops, the more temporary sort, are sometimes put above ground.
If the area is particularly dangerous or something, I'll move the temp fort into the half-finished bailey as I carve out the rest of the structure.
The temporary fort eventually becomes part of a tree farm.

[abchiptop]

i usually dig in straight 7 wide, 20 tiles ish deep. then i bottle neck to a 1 wide tunnel for a square (will be doored later) i then widen it out to 5, smooth out the walls by the bottleneck for a fortification later (a catapult will be set up firing through the opening, to shoot down the entry hallway.
the catapult room has a barracks built off to one side, and i dig straight for a lava pipe if i have one. otherwise, i build a huge open workshop room with stockpiles, and try to get a farm set up inside. i'll throw up a carpenter shop, mason's shop, craft shop and brewery. I'll start digging out my bedrooms next, then mechanics shop. i throw one person on mechanisms forever, and get a forge thrown up for weapon traps.
i then door up the catapult room and make a zigzag tunnel one wide that is basically a trap hall detour, usually 2 screens high, that winds up just on the other side of the catapult room (before the big room) and opens into cage traps. never need a military except to guard caravans
i just make trade goods and grow from there

[Vercingetorix]

I usually play with a 1500-point embark, so there's a little more room to plan the basics out.  Generally, it involves digging out the entrance and then the rooms for farms/stockpiles/workshops along with living quarters, barracks, and hospital for up to 30 dwarves.  From there, I expand incrementally based on my needs.

Security-wise, I usually rely on traps early on but get a military started with the first migrant wave. 

[Africa]

In 2010, I've been digging straight down, via spiral ramp shaft, to the first cavern layer and then digging my fort into the stone pillars of the cavern (I have it set to make wide open spaces with large pillars several z-levels high). I'll dig further down to the magma to get forges set up and the fort would grow from there, except that none of these forts have gotten very far, all dying to wildlife attacks before the second migrant wave. The most recent fort I finally caved in and set up cage traps, and so naturally a bunch of elk birds came in and wrecked my shit.

[existent]

I have it set to make wide open spaces with large pillars several z-levels high

What are the settings for that? I used to know but I've forgotten, and now I want to do this again.

[Thadius]

1 ) Figure out where the farms and massive storeroom will be.
2 ) Piles and piles of everything everywhere.
3 ) Set up farms, get to work on building rooms
4 ) Start digging down far enough to build the workshops that it won't disturb the dwarves' rest, get furniture made.
5 ) Legendary dining room, move the workshops inside.
6 ) Irrigation of farm is done, make an above-ground one and get those blasted walls up.  Oh wait, goblins with the right mounts can fly?  ROOFS.
7 ) Hey!  Migrants!  You'll be a craftdwarf, make me crafts for the caravans.
8 ) This'll be the hospital, this'll be the barracks, this'll be the prison...
9 ) Hall of dwarven dead.  Massive.  I'm under no illusions that I'm not going to suffer.
10 ) Let's put in that indoor waterfall!  Wait, that's how channeling works now?  Son of a...
11 ) Huh.  I've got almost everything I need.  Except magma...let's go find some!
...
? ) FUN.