The Death of a Fortress

I've been dabbling/learning the game for about a month now, and just lost my first game. Most games I'll be learning so much about how the game works and what you can do that I'll abandon my current fortress to start anew with all my newfound knowledge.

My last fortress had many firsts in it for me. My first goblin siege came, and in the midst of the battle my first megabeast spawned. Said megabeast burned the entire map down along with my entire army and the goblins. I haven't learned how to use burrows/alerts so all my civilians then ran outside to pick up the corpses and loot... burning themselves to death in the process. The few that survived were badly injured with no doctor available and completely miserable. I didn't stick around to see if I could recover, as I wanted to read up on working with burrows and alerts in my next game.

Much of the information and inspiration I've obtained has come from the blogs of other players. I've decided to try and start one up myself to both share things I've learned, fortress layouts I like, and stories of great adventures!