Heh, I'd kind of want to trade situations with you; My first fort, ever, is still going strong at 16 years in with no signs of slowing down. I eventually started a second one just to use all these changes I'd been planning. I kept waiting like an eager puppy, "Okay, this will be the year that a siege/Titan/tantrum spiral goes nuts and wipes out Obscurelens! It'll be awesome!" Nope, just boring stability and success. Where's the fun in that?
Grass is always greener and all that.
16 years? That's amazing. My first fort fell to the goblins, the reason for their swift success was a fault i made in the defenses of my fortress, a fault so absolutely stupid and avoidable that i still kick myself for being naive enough to be so complacent about it.
And thanks to my continued naivety concerning Dwarf Fortress, i'm still finding many situations to provide me with a plethora of learning and "Fun":
While buzzards are constantly interrupting my hunters from bringing back their kills, and those damned capybaras try to bite anyone that wanders too far from the fortress, if i'm not busy being the merchant's bitch to get equipment for my pathetic 10 dwarf army(i currently don't have the metals to forge any for myself), i'm usually trying to carve out and furnish rooms for the seemingly endless flow of migrants the mountainhomes so generously send en masse, or trying to make weapons made of wood and glass for traps so that i can pretend i have a chance when the goblins feel like stopping by to ravage my little settlement, if a megabeastie doesn't beat them to it. I'm also trying to create and epic sculpture garden, as i've noticed more dwarves are starting to feel content, which worries me because most of them were usually ecstatic, or happy at the very least.
Oh, and of course, being my mayor's bitch, supplying her with all of the extravagant things she requires to keep her happy, especially since she just loves mandating things she knows damn well i can't produce. If something happens to her, that entire disease goddess worshiping family of hers is going to flip their shit.
Normally, most of these would be pretty small problems i wouldn't worry about, but when they they keep piling up, it gets hard to keep track of everything. And considering i've never had a fortress deeper than 4 or 5 z-levels, i think i still have a lot more Fun coming my way...
See, that's exactly the kind of fun I was hoping to have! 
Anyway, you, my friend, are in for a world more ‼FUN‼ once you start to dig more. It might help out with your metal situation, too.
Remember to do it greedily, and deep!
You mean the kind of fun where you start the game up and wonder "i wonder what's gonna go wrong this time"? where you don't really feel like you have any allies, only people who want to kill you slightly less? Where every time you solve a problem, the solution to that problem usually opens up opportunities for even more problems? Because that's the kind of fun my fortress usually has.
I was thinking of going really deep, but i've been hesitating do to the possibility of being trapped between two worlds, each populated with things that would each enjoy using my dwarves to paint the floor a new shade of red. Although as the amount of things on the surface that want to kill me increase, it is starting to seem like a better and better idea...
It's not like i'm trying to make it harder for myself either, on embark this place looked like a paradise. Plenty of good fishing spots, vast and beautiful grassy mountainsides, and a lovely brook flowing placidly at the bottom. About a year and a half in, it turned into "capybaras. EVERYWHERE!", "damn buzzards! get away from those corpses!", and "that goblin snatcher just shanked my armorer! shit, i haven't finished setting up the hospital!"
It's not that i don't like a challenge, i love this game even despite the fact it regularly beats me into submission, and reminds me how much i suck at it whenever i think i'm starting to get a hold of things, much like an abusive, alcoholic parent.
Aaaaaaaand I think I've found my newest sig (JUST. BARELY. Abused tinyurl, still with 0 characters remaining, sorry for the paraphrase.) and suggestion in the "This game needs a tag line" thread.
This is true. If you seriously are hankering for some quality time with your masons to make a 15 z-level high geodesic dome, you can always cut off ties with the outside world using a perimeter fence sealed with a bridge. once established, making a fort totally self-sufficient is easier than you may think.
In particular, with how developed you seem, I'd say go for at least the first cavern layer. Things down there aren't going to be much more trouble than typical wildlife on the surface, although the 2nd and 3rd caverns get increasingly difficult. It'll help with access to more water, cave plants/trees, and the spores it releases can help set up tree farms in your soil layer. Worst case, if you have second thoughts, you can install bridges at the cavern entrances to seal it off if things get too hot.
I didn't even know having a tree farm was possible. that would be extremely helpful, as my woodcutters are slowly having to move further and further away from the fort to get to any good patches of trees.
The perimeter fence idea is exactly what i tried with my first fort, and it actually came out pretty nicely, until i realized i practically left a huge backdoor for them to leisurely stroll on in through, and since half of my fort was based outside, it was pretty much over as soon as it began. Also, did you know trolls can could break down doors? I didn't. So it wasn't long before they busted in swarmed the place like a SWAT team through a meth lab. Now, with my new found experience, i could probably make it work though.
I can run a fortress just fine, a very nice one, dare i say. It's when i'm dealing with things that happen
outside my fort that i begin begin to tread into the territory of "i have little to no idea what the hell i'm doing".
I'll take your advice, but I think i'll wait a month or two to see whether or not the goblins will be around any time soon before i make my descent into the caverns, to avoid a horribly timed siege while i'm distracted exploring the deep unknown. I haven't seen any snatchers since a few of them actually started dying, but i'm not sure if it's a good thing. I can't tell whether they learned their lesson, or are simply gathering their numbers.
And no worries about the paraphrasing, glad you liked it. After thinking about it for a little while after i posted it, i was both surprised and slightly unsettled at just how accurate of an analogy it was.
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Topic: How long do you keep a fortress? (Read 16134 times)