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[Faces of Mu]

Do you like to pause the game and plan out every square you can in mining, even if it means changing it all once you find a feature? Or do you like to mine out one tile at a time and see what takes you?

[Dryn]

When I am excavating a new fortress I generally  go slowly. Once the cave features are mapped out I speed it up a little and go 'room by room'.

I wouldn't go and designate the whole fortress out at the start, since I generally don't make a solid enough plan to do so.

[Entropy]

Not knowing the terrain, you never know where a little side branch of the chasm might crop up - so go room by room building.  Planning the whole thing out would be a waste of time.

[Core Xii]

I dig a straight tunnel into the mountain to see how the features are arranged. Then I lay down the entire fortress at once. And finally dig it out, starting from the most important rooms.

[Lokum]

I have to rush for the river and then make a farm on the other side, safest thing to do for me...Im generally not patient at all in the beggining. But in the late game im still pretty bad at planning out an entire fortress. Im still new so im just going with what ever comes at me. THe most i've ever had is 183 people but then we all starved cause we missed a human caravan cause of goblins.

[Asehujiko]

I got to 212 people and then a -3.

I rush for the river asap. When settled i go look for the magma.

[Albert the Absentminded]

I map the river and the chasm up and down a ways so I know what space is available. Then - I'm always developing a list of site principles. Such as, stonecrafting is done next to the trade depot, bonecrafting (bolts) is done close to the river on the left of it, so that it is close to the archery targets next to the entrance.

Butchering needs to be next to tanning and near to the meat stockpiles. Cooking is close to the food stockpiles, as are the dining rooms. Farming and weaving and brewing and processing all need to occur close to each other, and weaving needs to be close to the river.

And so on.

I've also found that a strategically located mason shop or carpenter shop is often better than a stockpile, especially in the first few years when you don't have a bunch of dwarves to spare as gophers.

-Albert

[Solara]

I usually build at a pretty slow pace - first a big entrance room so everyone can work and store things safely inside, then I locate the river and chasm and dig a narrow strip up the sides of each one. Once I'm sure a branch isn't going to be in my way I sit down and design the entire fortress. Afterwards I section it off so the most important stuff gets dug out first. Even then it takes awhile though, and it's usually a couple of years before I get bedrooms and tombs set up.

This is the only way I can have anything even approaching an organized fortress, let alone a pretty one. I used to do the 'build as I go' thing and it always ended in an ugly inefficient  mess I'd eventually abandon out of disgust.

[Mlittle]

In my last fort I did somewhat cheat:
I played normally until I just bridged the river. Than I saved and put that save aside dug all the way to the chasm, abandoned and reclaimed, exported the bmp, quit and loaded the old save. The bmp had the entire river and chasm on it.

I usually put down the basic layout of the entire area, but with room for some tweaking and placing the rooms that are the easiest to adjust just next to the river, chasm, magma. Than I dig the areas as I need to expand. Also, most of the shops and storage are first placed in temporary locations.

[ July 06, 2007: Message edited by: Mlittle ]

[herrbdog]

An easier way to do the same, and get more detail, is to save your game, back it up, load it back up, use reveal.exe, export .bmp, quit, restore the backup, then load that. Then you can use the map that has ALL the details, including ore and gems.

If that is your sort of thing anyway. I used reveal a couple of times, out of curiosity. I like finding the cave features and then adapting to them.

[LordBucket]

I generally rush in a straight line from cliff face to river to chasm, then start tunneling vertically along the river and chasm to identify where my boundaries are. Then, once I have a more or less rectangular block, I lay out large sections, working inward.

I prefer grid layouts to central hall layouts, so generally I'll lay out the grid early on, and then 'unmark' barriers so that there's always a thousand spots marked to be dug, but only only the section that I want miners to actively be digging 'right now' is accessible. That way I can design the general layout all at once, but still have control of what gets built when.

Finally, since I use a grid, only a few types of areas really need to be planned in advance. With only hallways mined, leaving large rectangular sections intact, I can decide at any time what goes where. A nice block that's 9 squares wide, and any odd number of squares tall can easily be made into bedrooms, a dining area, storage, etc. at any time.

So really, the only things I need to plan in advance are farms, defenses, and trade depot.  Anything else can be placed at any time.

[Dryn]

quote:Originally posted by LordBucket:
<STRONG>

I prefer grid layouts </STRONG>

I will have to give that a go sometime.

Generally speaking, I rush for farms, then in winter I rush for the magma. This is less to do with impatience and more to do with having a secure food source and not wasting wood.

[Veroule]

I take a very long and patient view.  My patience finally expired in my current fortress at year 1080.  I wanted all the remaining stone moved to front and it was taking way to long so I started upping the speed of the dwarves.  Seeing everything that speed increase affects I almost wish I had done it sooner.

Still I figure 30 years with only 10 dwarves actively building all that time qualifies me as patient.  They hit the magma well before that but only on the defensive flood ring, which is at the outer edges on my build.

My secret to wood conservation is yet more cheating.  It is an odd thing, but you can make adamantine armors at a regular forge.  When doing so no charcoal is required.  In any case I would class myself as patient.

[Mlittle]

quote:Originally posted by herrbdog:
<STRONG>An easier way to do the same, and get more detail, is to save your game, back it up, load it back up, use reveal.exe, export .bmp, quit, restore the backup, then load that. Then you can use the map that has ALL the details, including ore and gems.

If that is your sort of thing anyway. I used reveal a couple of times, out of curiosity. I like finding the cave features and then adapting to them.</STRONG>

I know about reveal, but I don't want all the details, just the layout of the river and chasm. Than I can incorporate the cave features in a creative way and not hope they don't get in the way.