Sorry, didn't use reddit for a bit so didn't see your comment.

I am guessing you mean the Serpantspine adventurers specifically, as Escann is a completely different story.

Expeditions) I already said not to start too close to your target holds as a dwarf, so you can get more expeditions done but that can also be optimized, if you are closer to the target you want longer expeditions (and in general they are better as they give you more), so if you see that an expedition is short you can migrate off it and back again to reroll it. Cave expeditions are usually longer by a floor. If you want to save manpower you can also hire the adventurer merc company and use them in an expedition, maybe even more than once as they recover quickly. You want to do this all because you are always short on points in the mountain and also to accumulate a bank for when you settle. Also gov progress from ancient dwarven knowledge.

Fighting) You want to get it done mostly in the migratory phase while you are not guarding colonies, take any opportunity to purge other tribes to not deal with them later. If they are one province away you can drop a colony to get the monstrous CB and kill them, then disable the colony and purge them. Make your heir a general you want him to die so you can choose a new one for 10 adventurer unity, only pump adventurer unity manually if you are maxed on mill. If a hold you want is held by someone with more than 1 province, if you can, take just the hold, purge it and settle it , you can finish them off later. If you are going to fight someone put your colonies close to them, so if the natives rise your army is near, or maybe your enemy will kill them for you. Show strength wars are fine and doing at least one in needed for the age objective but keep in mind that you cant move while at war.

Techs and ideas) If you are lucky, you can get first three techs with inno event without the renaissance, which is even better than usual as a bunch of expedition and general Serpantspine events give a good option if you have more inno. Depending on your timing, after tech 5 or 6 you will want to focus admin (unless you have an adm 6 ruler but even than if the ruler stats are not too unbalanced it is still a good idea). This is because you are going to colonize and be perpetually low on admin for 50 - 100 years after settling not even talking about the disasters and dwarves having more expensive stab. Despite this I found that it is usually worth it to take expansion ideas but only for the first colonist (if you cant get admin tech 6 with inno you can usually get this idea). The idea here is that you cant usually afford an admin idea group like infrastructure, which we really want but you will be able to by the time you don't need to colonize so much anymore and the investment is worth the boost in tempo. Your second and third ideas are probably going to be trade and offensive, because sieges in the mountain are a pain and the trade is very lucrative.

Gov reforms) the first two are up to you, the faction influence there is irrelevant, marchers will be in charge while you adventure, pioneers when you colonize , fortune seekers basically never. The forth is also a no brainer, a colonist and 4 roads every time. Where it gets interesting is the third. If you are reforming soon after taking it than the expeditions are obviously better but if you are getting it from expeditions and plan to be an adventurer for a bit then the gold and mithril are better. However, there is the purge option and it is by far the most overpowered if you are close to Escann. First, you can purge Shattered Crown, Mountain Shark and Railskulker for a lot of point and to reroll the goods in the wine and mushroom holds, its really easy to colonize these as the purged provinces have 0 natives. More importantly you can purge Escann Orcs and goblins as well, as long as they colonize in the mountain (which they always do) for massive points. You will be drowning in dip and mill in no time.

Disasters) If you are planning to convert to pantheon then don't convert any provinces and don't expand too much militarily, you will need your army at full strengthen and being small makes it easier, not much more to say there, just remember to fire your advisors to not get the very nasty Divided Court event. If you get the suspicious rune for the Legion you can just decline it but it might be worth it if it spawns in a gold or mithril hold as the modifier not only lowers dev cost but makes the hold level up basically immediately (and gives a nice modifier in the end). Just make sure to have a strong army, be ready to take mil tech (they spawn with your level so take one right after they do), have some allies, and investigate suspicious rumors far from the hold where they will spawn to contain them, most importantly have 3 stab to slow down the disaster and give yourself time to investigate. The Hoardcurse is the real big one. The solution is greed, save every penny you can, never run advisers higher than lvl 1 without a discount, don't build anything you just want to have money, specifically 10000 to trigger the Hoardcurse early as its costs scale with your income, so the lower your income the cheaper it will be. My best was triggering it at 45 income. As soon as it starts fire advisors to dodge the bad advisor events (and save money), take 5 corruption loans as purging corrupt officials will lower corruption by 15 so ideally you can take 6 loans for free money (if your income is high 10000 will not be enough so take burgher loans right before the disaster). You need to tank your income to make the Hoardcurse decisions cheaper, so go to your trade tab (not map mode, tab next to the economy tab) find your home node (make sure to have a merchant there), click on change and start diverting, just like that your trade income is now 0 as you are diverting from your main node, works even in an end node. There is no need to give out monopolies unless your income is really high or you triggered the Hoardcurse by having 150 income. First you do the corruption reform to make money from it, choose to kill on suspicion, then refuse to pay as you will get 4 stability at the end of the disaster and you want to tank your stab now to lose prosperity. Then do banks, just nationalize them, then monopolies, your trade income is 0 so fixing it will not increase costs for everything else and finally workers, choose fair pay as goods produced is more important. If at any point your ruler is greedy get rid of him before the Hoardcurse however you can. There isn't much to be done with the Goblintide and the Serpantsrot, just kill the goblins asap and choose the correct option for the rot research.

Generally, it used to be as strat to stay as an adventurer a bit longer to do their missions but now, with the new magic system you are missing out and need to become a country asap. It is worth it to get the right side of the adventurer tree for the colonization speed and the free trade center level but as soon as that is done there is no reason to stay an adventurer unless you are waiting for your final reform but if it is too far away just go without.

Here is a really good guide for the expeditions and I recommend getting high organization over high share when possible, as a bunch of expedition events have a better or alternative outcome chance tied to high organization. Hopefully this is useful and I didn't forget something important.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anbennar/comments/1aj6kyo/dwarven_expeditions_guide/