Dwarf Fortress has some exciting plans for the future

With Adventure Mode out now, the Dwarf Fortress team are looking ahead and it's sounding quite exciting with some big features coming to the game.

Over the next few updates there's going to be an Lua upgrade which they said "will allow you to create more powerful mods and lay the foundation for future Myth and Magic updates". For the Fortress mode, they're going to be focusing on sieges as they want "to give players the tools and abilities to be more properly prepared for an attack". Plus plans to have abilities to "interact with magic systems (beyond necromancers and mods.)".

Some other of their plans for the next few updates include (no guarantees though):

• Allow siegers to plan and learn, tracking where deaths occur and using alternate routes.
• Properly equipped siegers should be able to build, demolish and dig (default on, can be turned off in difficulty settings).
• Kidnapped humans and dwarves should be more interesting - warlords and demon-trained sorcerers focused on siege warfare and infiltration (for now).
• Temple/etc.-based defenses for any magic that proves too annoying to combat with soldiers.
• Ranged weapon/squad fixes.
• Changes to defensive siege weapons to make them more useful.
• If ranged weapon changes remove the delightful effect of fast-shooting crossbows, add a repeating defensive bolt thrower emplacement that uses regular bolts.
• Changes to cage traps to make it more intensive but still possible to e.g. capture megabeasts.
• Make megabeast and kobold attacks more functional and interesting.
• Fix and improve underground civilization attacks (as far as we can without future map changes).
• Anything from Combat Flow and Combat Styles that comes up, also a notion of reach.

After that back to Adventure Mode and they are hoping to add "Site Building", a way for you to have your own little settlements. It was in the classic version but not in the new graphical Steam build. Then after that the focus is on Maps that will include world map rewrites and graphics improvements, which they say is needed to prepare "for a more magical and procedural, dynamically-reactive future".

Sometime eventually they'll then get back to various other bigger new features like "Villains, army warfare, civilizations, etc". They also said all steps through the roadmap will include various art additions and "content that make sense to add along the way".

Source: Steam