Search for Plants for a year or two, and live off them. The very few plants...
Train on animals.
Kill Goblins, pray for axe.
Build stuff
Ect ect.

Hmm. Yeah. Though I'm trying to make stuff a little bit harder by creating some other senseless challenge, such a limiting myself to one working dwarf, one hammerdwarf with full copper plate armor, one speardwarf with a copper helmet and leather armor (who must, by the way, be the hammerdwarf's daughter), and the king. Everyone else goes to the *Sacrificial iron upright spike trap*. Even so, it's easier than I had thought.

dude, nanofortress (1x1 embark) or microfortress (2x2 embark) is the way to play. Way, way more urgency in attacks and even in zombies on an evil map. 2x2 terrifying beach is the way I'm playing currently.

Nah, it gives you too little space to develop megaprojects and the like. You have to go on a no-items embark with Dig Deeper installed to have a real challenge.

SEVEN DWARVES
NINE HUNDRED ORCS
NO ITEMS
FINAL DESTINATION

I have the best War Dog ever.
In the latest of a series of kobold thiefs, the dirty kobold in question was discovered by a small group of puppies. The thief then ran outside to supposed freedom, while being chased by a War Dog that had a red lung. It outran the wounded dog, and ran straight into a perfectly healthy War Dog. Who then proceeded to RIP THE KOBOLDS ARMS OFF, BOTH OF THEM, AT THE SHOULDER. The arms both went flying, and the kobold went unconscious while the dog continued to chew his face off. The murderous dog is now named Zodstosnogong, or Steellanterns.
Doggy gets a treat. :3

EDIT: Looked around a bit more and found the kobold's left lower leg and lower body, also ripped off.

Eh, I dont do megaprojects, my building is generally restricted to tactical practicalities rather than upside down pyramids. I did have a normal pyramid as my fortress once, playing as a modded race of mummies (from arne's skeleton wars), but regardless I generally prefer the embarks as a rule. You can fit all you need to into that easily.

Same here. Why waste your time on a gigantic dildo made of diamond with adamantine testicles and filled with lava, when it does nothing and sucks down tremendous amounts of resources? I say use em on sieges instead. I LIVE for combat in DF. And hairbrained schemes, such as flooding a kobold den.

Hell yes. Oh, and giant water towers of doom, generally on either side of my main gate.
There is something awesome about the level that raises the drawbridge also opening the floodgates of the towers, and watching two waves zoom towards each other and crush 20 goblins against each other.

Son, I am disappoint.

Frankly, my main reason for playing DF is trying to see how insanely big I can get my fortress to be, or building a whole city underwater out of clear glass, or making a huge tridimensional sculpture using just microcline and telling people it looks like a nude Samus if you look at it from a particular angle just to see them asking "OMG really wut?!?/??!1/", or making a red self-destruct lever that floods the world with magma, that kind of stuff. Y'know, just for the pleasure of being able to say that I've wasted several hour of my life on something completely useless but undeniably awesome.

Does height really have such a profound impact on water deadliness?

Sure does. Each z-level increases pressure (and flow speed) by 1.5X or so, if I'm not mistaken. Of course, you could just build a screw pump and save yourself all the trouble.

Screw pumps are useless for crushing goblins under waves of water.
Also areku, all of the things you just said are possible on a 2x2 embark.
Glass underwater city: embark on a 2x2 with 1 square of land, the rest in the ocean or a lake. beach = sand, ocean = lots of water. If you need more space, channel it out and then pump some water up from the almost inescapable saline aquifer.
Nude Microcline Samus project: Embark on a mountain with microcline, proceed to channel. You're likely to be basing it on lo-fi sprites anyway, so why would you need a huge res for sculpting.
Red Lever OF DOOOM: embark near a vocano or magma vent, in the second scenario you'll need to make a tower and have some bauxite around for the pumping, but not too hard.

Small embarks make you more creative with what you do with your space, if anything.

I prefer 4x4. Also, my dorf has killed 2 wolfes, 1 black bear and a sasquatch. With one hand. Without weapons.

That's pretty normal. Packs of >5 wolves pose a problem for unarmed dwarves, but eh. The sasquatch is kinda notable though.

That same sasquatch killed my 4 hunters, so... I think that guy got enraged or something.