I started up a new Gnomoria game to challenge myself last night. It's really tough. Basically, I'm playing with a self-imposed "above ground only" building rule - I'm only allowed to mine/tunnel for resources. I can dig up stone, mine for metal and gems, but everything I build has to be on the surface. This means I'm building a de facto village, with buildings for the various common workshops, and am building living quarters on the second floor of these buildings. IE, the blacksmiths live above the smithy, the farmers live above the kitchens/distilleries/tailor buildings.
It's much more difficult for a number of reasons... it causes surface congestion problems for things like farming that didn't exist before when I'd tunnel into the mountain to build my fortress. Also, it takes MUCH longer to build walls and ceilings/floors than it does just to mine out empty space, even in solid stone. So building is extremely time consuming - half my population is still sleeping in the dormitory-turned-hospital. And those buildings are very important, because it's guaranteed that every bear, honey badger and monitor lizard in the area will definitely amble through the middle of town at some point, and it's already caused several incidents which have lead to the deaths of a half dozen gnomes. I'm not even a year in yet and I've lost all my dedicated builders - I've had to give my miners secondary duties for being builders as well. It's the end of fall, and I just hope I have enough food to make it through the winter.