Because I'm aware you'll have to rebuild the whole game from the ground up, more or less, to update to the new release (I do not envy you)... I offer some purely mechanical suggestions. Not to change the "flavor" you're trying to create, but to make the whole thing cleaner and easier in the long run.
My current dorf worldgen in a nutshell:
Harder everything on. Aquifers/Diseases/secret fun off because they're annoying more than challenging.
Warlocks and automatons turned off for annoyance factor. Warlocks force archers and/or traps, which I dislike. I like melee and am not a fan of "high tech" stuff for DF. Humans, drow and gnomes off because they're too cheaty-good to trade with, not that it matters.
Variety of fortress defense races. I always keep the four hard races on, I pick others based on what I feel like.
All the "simple" stuff active. Part of why I love your mod is the simplicity of item sorting.
Most of the "tech" trees off. No libraries. No Magic. Usually no religion. No trap upgrading (I don't do traps, save what's needed to get the rare silk farm running). No guns. No chandler or Dyer or Painter or Toolmaker. No runes, no machinery. Only lab is herbalist. The steampunk and magic stuff just isn't to my liking.
Bring stealoak acorns. Start farm immediately. Also strawberries.
Get underground farm going a bit later.
Have plump helmet men and badgerdogs. Train them for war immediately upon embark.
Dig down for Magma immediately.
Set up herbalist lab and colosseum ASAP. If you're quick, you can have everything ready before the summer migration wave. Depending on size, draft about half of it to the military.
Now you pasture all your war animals and set your (probably)stone-weapon-military over the colosseum. Set summoning corrupted wolf packs to repeat. Infinite supply of food, bones and leather. Guard pets are going to die. They'll be butchered for more supplies (yay PHM booze).
You can set ash- and thus potash- to auto at this point. Functionally infinite fertilizer production. With hard farming, you'll need it.
Military is likely sporting 4-5 in their weapon skills. Or dead. Should be in at least leather and/or bone gear. Iron or copper if it's on the map.
Switch from wolf pack to drakes. Each provides one dragonhide when killed.
By the time spring rolls back around, it's easy to have every dwarf in a full suits of dragonleather (I always put every dwarf in the military, set to always wear their armor- mostly to avoid clothing wear headaches). The military is typically 100% exceptional or masterful quality. The rest at least superior.33.
I've yet to have a fort where I can't buy the elven caravan's full load (assuming I even want what it brings), selling the early junk armor I made for the military and the lowest quality dragonhide.
Once the first wave of steeloaks are ready for harvest (I've probably bought a couple bags of seeds by now). Plate dragonleather suits are a thing now. Arm the military, then switch to steel bolts as trade goods. Goal: xp grinding for the first wave of adamantine weaponry. I've found my addy spires by this point, just a matter of when I start digging.
By the time the second dwarf caravan rolls around... I have legendary warriors in masterwork fireproof armor. All my plump men and most of the dogs are of course dead. Either in battle, or I've butchered the survivors by now just to conserve FPS. I don't need them.
And that's the story of my first couple years in every fortress. Boring, right?
*Claps hands together* So, now the bugs, issues and suggestions.
1- For whatever reason, adamantine golems created at the colosseum are always friendly. Iron, Steel and Mithril are appropriately violent. Adamantine are not, becoming uncontrolled (not existing in the butcher/pasture lists) pets that head immediately to the meeting hall and stay there. I ass/u/me this is a bug.
1.5- Speaking of, all spawned pets seem to be uncontrolled. Including that dragon I bought one time. I'm guessing this can't be corrected, but you may want to warn newbies this feature is a bit bugged.
2- Balance Issue: rare silk farms need to be nerfed. It's far too easy to get rare silk spewers in this mod... several species running around, one of which is guaranteed from Drow, another very likely with elves (jungle spiders). It's a trivial matter to be spawning 100k+ worth of silk trade goods by year 3.
Solutions: reduce the value of rare silk so it's not as profitable, or reduce the number of rare silk spewers.
3- Balance Issue: Ironbark. It's mechanically useless, since you can acquire steeloaks just as easily, and they produce (obviously superior) steel for basically the exact same effort. Granted, ironbarks are cheaper, but not by enough.
Solution: increase the cost of steeloaks significantly, or make them take longer to grow. Remove ironbark from game as superfluous. Remove steeloaks as overpowered.
4- Speaking of superfluous, there's a number of meaningless "fluff" metals and equipment types. I get that they're flavorful, but I usually just melt everything down to build my own better equipment (through the miracle of quality levels) anyway.
Solution: remove item types and/or special metals that aren't any different than current types. Or at least put an option in the settings.
5- Speaking of options. Turning off smoke effects in the current options doesn't seem to fully work. I still get prayer (if religion's even on) and rotten smell and sweat when I decide to run with temp disabled in the late game for FPS reasons. My computer's kinda shit like that. I raw-edit to clear most of these out.
6- Turning off options doesn't really turn off options. No guns for me to build, but there are still guns available through trades (part of why I disable so many trade partners) or moods or, once, noble demands (One very dead noble right there). I disable magic, still see that stuff. Disable everything Spring Steel is used in, it's still there to buy or make. Disable the improved archery options, got a bladed bow from a mood. Libraries off, all the library supply production still available.
Sometimes my nobles demand I make things that aren't an option because the buildings to make them with don't exist. I figure this is a bug.
7- I recently discovered you can't make blocks, furniture or mechanisms from obsidian. Still consumed during moods, which is great if you're toying with the planepacked glitch in a stoneworker mood.
That's a list of bugs and balance issues I've noticed in my playthroughs. Hopefully they'll be useful for future considerations.
