Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MetBoy]

I am of the belief that a vertically arranged fortress, where all buildings, rooms, etc. are a relatively short distance away from a central set of stairs, would be very efficient. So, I will test this with a fortress built as follows.

Init: Rent off, so I can enjoy making great rooms for my dwarves.
Site: something as flat as I can find. I'd also like savage, evil, a brook or river, plenty of trees and a good sedimentary layer. Magma, flux, and sand would be nice. Also, as small a site as I can manage.
Starting Profile: Anything Goes, probably bring an extra mason or two; we're going to need lots of stone blocks. No anvil, I won't have time to spend smelting & forging picks and axes. I will bring bauxite though.
After innitial embark, I will save, load again, use a reveal utility, then, after taking a good look around the map, hit ctrl+alt+del to end the DF process, and start the game up again. Then I will pick the location for the central spindle. The fort will be a square 23x23, and everything of import will be contained in the 21x21 square inside the outer wall. I may allow myself a fence wall (square, 41x41, one level up) with possible dry moat outside that. Beyond that, the only buildings allowed outside the fort tower will be paved roads, and the floodgates, pumps, and walls needed for fluid management; and that will only be for horizontal movement of lava/water, if I want to get it up or down, it will have to be pumped inside that 21x21 square. I may build up as high as I want, and dig as deep as I want. I can also dig exploratory mining tunnels outside of the fortress.

So, what do you think of the idea? Am I insane? Got any suggestions? Getting power for the pumps may be very tricky.

[Mzbundifund]

I've done it.  It's very efficient.

Power isn't hard to come by, either with a perpetual motion waterwheel room or a few windmills at the top of the main stair.  You can have a column of gear assemblies running down the main stair and branch power off of that to whatever level needs it.

Don't forget that wagons can't traverse stairs, so unless your main shaft is a circular sequence of ramps or something, you'll need the trade depot outside too.

Apart from that, if you are comfortable with the game, you might consider the challenge of not artificially choosing your spindle spot.  Maybe dig several exploratory shafts and pick the most promising one.

[R1ck]

I thought that everyone did this! One of the problems with this method is workshop production. Because the z-level distance is
not taken into account when a dwarf is looking for raw materials, even if the stockpile is right next to the workshop they often travel
many stories up or down in order to get it. This mostly only affects stone goods making however.
It would be best to build a large wall around the stairs on the surface and build the trade depot there. For easy defense,
build a retractable drawbridge at the entrance and have a separate trapped entrance for invaders to come through.

[Duke 2.0]

 Actually, several towers can be a fun thing to do. One outsiders would need to climb to get up, one for sleeping, one for production/supplies, one for your military, etc.

 Then any tower being invaded can be isolated easily, as long as the only access between them is several z-level above the ground and can be retracted.

[Warlord255]

Tried building a tower inside a bottomless pit once with a self-destruct mechanism. Unfortunately, I got bored.

[andrea]

i am building an aboveground tower. it seems to work well at the moment. useless if i want to defend my dwarves (i always have dwarves outside to haul wood for the floors. many died in the several ambshes and the 2 sieges. this world is full of goblins), but i like it

[MetBoy]

Well, I figured how to power the pumps using water wheels... And I am planing on building both up and down, until I span all 31 z levels available. At the moment the ground floor isn't much to look at, past some perimeter walls (I brought 99 cobalt blocks. It's a pretty blue) but the cistern I designed worked! I just need to make a few edits to keep the internal waterfall system working... there was a goof. The goof was contained, thankfully, to the 'pumping room' not spreading to any of the living areas. I'm still learning how to properly use pressure plates to create a self-regulating cistern.

In any case, I found a perfect spot to build the thing; there's a brook, a lava pipe, and the top layer of stone for the whole map is limestone

[autophage]

I really like building large mushroom-shaped structures and putting as much as I can on the wide level up top.  Someday, though, physics will be updated, I'll download a new release, move over my save... and the whole damn thing will collapse.

[Ivefan]

Oh, i'll take this as an oppurtunity to shamelessly advertise my tower fort.
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-3625-townmatched