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[Diacritic]

Now that invasions are working again and I can set aside any (ultimately fruitless) work on goblin populations, and now that I have several successful-if-boring fortresses under my belt, I'm thinking of my first real project.  I'm going to embark on an evil glacier and build an ice fortress, and I was wondering if anyone had advice (other than "don't do that").

[Funtimes]

Use lots of magma.

[Brandstone]

Bring wood. Speed of construction, and having short hauling distances are key.  You can also try casting the fortress in a big enclosed mold by taking advantage of the fact that water "inside" won't freeze, but once the roof/mold is removed it will instantly freeze. This is assuming a sufficiently cold biome is used. Having it get warm enough in the heat of summer can lead to some fun unless you mine out the ice, then built walls in place of the mined out areas. 

[Diacritic]

Use lots of magma.

Thanks.

I think, although it hadn't occurred to be before writing the thread title, I may aim for some angle ice spires made of constructed walls and ramps that approximates the eponymous Superman hideout.

[KaguroDraven]

May I suggest that once it is done you find a way to drop it into the magma sea in one big drop?

[FleshForge]

Bring in 200ish (or more!) booze, that's the hardest problem to get around in pretty much any hard biome.  That will give you enough time to figure out how to handle all the rest.  Since you'll probably be digging into some hard stuff pretty much all the time, it helps to go in with a lot of miners and picks as well, I like having 5 miners at start.  Going in with wood is nice but not terribly necessary, as you'll only have to do without beds until some traders make it to you, or you break into the caverns and can either set up a safe tree farm or try to secure some wild cavern area.

[Emily]

Bring wood. Speed of construction, and having short hauling distances are key.  You can also try casting the fortress in a big enclosed mold by taking advantage of the fact that water "inside" won't freeze, but once the roof/mold is removed it will instantly freeze. This is assuming a sufficiently cold biome is used. Having it get warm enough in the heat of summer can lead to some fun unless you mine out the ice, then built walls in place of the mined out areas.

I don't believe this would work, since I believe it actually looks at whether the tile is above ground or not.  You still could cast it from ice but it'd be much harder and couldn't be above ground...

[Xenos]

once you have built your ice castle, pump magma from the magma sea and create a self recycling magma fall/magma moat.  (constructed ice walls will never melt )  Imagine the terror that would instill in your enemies...

Gobbo1:  "Uh, boss, is that castle made of ice?"
GobboBoss:  "yeah...."
Gobbo1:  "Then how is it pissing magma without melting?"
GobboBoss:  "these are dwarves, physics does not apply to them!"
Gobbo1:  *leaves*