Oh it can definitely be optimized further. Assuming we don't just find a way to cheese it outright, getting to metropolis status (140 dwarves) before the second caravan would speed it up by a couple hours. I also spent a lot of time making my fortress look nice and didn't set up my basic manager orders early enough. And for reference, the only three tricks I used to get dwarves outside of migrant waves were to attract monster hunters by opening the cavern, attracting scholars by having a library, and requesting workers from the holdings that naturally pop up around your fort.

Hey, I was thinking about starting to run DF. Mountainhome% sounds fun, but it's quite the endurance test! For these newer longer formats, do we have any rules around breaking it up by saving and quitting?