So in my waiting for the new version I decided to set up a pretty difficult situation (for me at least).
Going to try to survive in a haunted (terrifying) glacier living on the surface (in houses, buildings, etc). I can use the soil layer for basements/storage but no farming (in fact turning caverns off so underground farming will be impossible) and I can only use the stone layer for mining out stone/metal (if there is any), nothing else.
Rules:
-No walls and no 'linked' buildings. Each building will be free standing and at least three squares away from any other. They can only close with regular doors.
-Soil basements can only be as large as the building above, small building = small basement
-Soil basements can only be used for storage, cannot build industry down there
-No underground farming, if I can figure out some way to farm above ground more power to me
-No danger rooms
-No magma
-Buildings cannot be more then one story high
-Buildings must all be separate, no massive castles or anything
That is all the rules I can come up with right now, I'm using standard embark rules as far as points and all that go, I'm using Fortress Defense II (which adds a bunch of enemies) and Forgotten Realms (which I've never used before so we'll see how that goes) for mods.
My main concerns will be getting some shelter up and finding water early on, then of course I'll have to worry about food (as farming may well be impossible as well as keeping large grazing creatures) and setting up a military ASAP. One major deviation is I'm allowing myself to use traps (which normally I do not) given how many other limits I'm putting on myself.
More info as it arrives (genning maps looking for a suitable site now).
Update:
Ok, I've chosen my site. Its an overlap between a terrifying glacier and a (frozen) terrifying ocean (The dwindling frost and the angry water respectively). They both have some minerals (left the settings to default), the glacier has an aquifer and of course there is plenty of ice. I'm also hoping for sand but we'll see.
I have a total of nineteen enemy civs (one of which I'm at war with) and five friendly civs including dwarves.
My embark is going to be heavy on the farmable animals which don't need grass of course, and on general supplies.
Strike the earth, and all that..
Update II:
Well as I suspected there is no booze at all so I'll have to solve the water problem quickly.. On the plus side the ocean is, right now, unfrozen as is a small pool that is sitting inside a small canyon formed in the ice near the beach. Of course it will all be salt water but still, perhaps I can desalinate it. That is the first step in any rate, I have until my dwarves die of thirst to come up with a practical source of water.