Print

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

[Oaktree]

Mine tend to be shallow and between the surface and the first cavern.  Want the soil/clay/sand for industry, and then relatively uninterrupted stone layers for laying out the fortress plan and extended access tunnels.  Forging activities may start deep, but at least some of them will move back shallow once magma can be supplied there via pump stack (or now mine cart since that is an option.)  Metalwork will depend on where the ore is coming from.

[XXSockXX]

Varies wildly from fort to fort. Currently I'm trying out a more compact design, hoping that there will be longterm benefits FPSwise.

- on the surface we have a small castle with a grazing area and a refuse pile. Eventually it will be a small tower with barracks and bee hives on top of it. In a hill on the surface lvl are the rooms that were the starting fort, now used for trade depot, barracks and wood stockpile.
- on lvl -1 the soil parts have been completely mined out for tree farming. There are also farms for above ground plants.
- lvl -2 is the same but with bigger farms for underground plants. Also has a well feeding from the surface river.
- on lvls -3 - -9 there are ores and flux, so only mining operations
- lvl -10 has all non-magma-workshops, the hospital and non-grazing animals
- lvl -11 has huge rooms, most stockpiles are here
- lvls -12 and -13 are living areas with 2x4 bedrooms
- lvl -15 has noble rooms, a huge dining room and the central meeting area.
- lvl -16 has prison cells, an atomsmasher, an execution pit and a pet shredder. If I get my hands on a GCS there will also be a silk farm.
- lvl -17 has the entrance to the first cavern
- lvl -29: entrance to the second cavern
- lvl -40: 3rd cavern entrance
- lvl -49: crypts, quite big but currently somewhat empty
- lvl -54: magma workshops with ore and metal storage

I rarely pump magma up because it hurts my FPS too much. This fort is still in 34.07, so hauling ore 54 lvls down is no problem.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Mine start near the surface, but that is just an outpost and it gets filled with traps fast. The real life is caverns two and three. I like hollowing out stalagmite formations and filling the smaller ones with peasant housing and the larger with workshops. I also like making elite and noble apartments in the third cavern. Pretty mushroom statue groves with rampaging horrors are a must.

[terko]

After some time (like 6 years, IF the fort survives that long), the only stuff left on the first 5 floors are farmers that farm the above ground crops. Anything else is moved down to the magma area step by step.

And that's only because of it's too much hassle to channel down completely to farm the above ground crops deep underground.

Negative side effect though: caravans take like forever sometimes to reach the deep down trade depot. But since it's spiralling, anything 'evil' coming down is shredded to pieces by the weapon traps along the inner wall. Which is a positive side effect.

[Buttery_Mess]

I've made a couple of forts where almost everything was located just above the magma sea. It can take a little while before you get your farms set up down there, but it's quite possible to set up and very worthwhile. Aside from having a highly potent metal industry; it becomes your main 'go to' resource, which is what you want; it's extraordinarily safe from attackers. Invaders are forced to path through hundreds of squares to get to your fort, and are bottlenecked through narrow passageways; ideal for a well-armoured infantry to defeat. It's easy to set up against sneakers, easy to trap, and there's a lot of time to respond.

Obviously you will want some surface presence; a small fort with a farm and some beds, and probably a barracks stocked with marksdwarves. Some turkeys on the walls to serve as lookouts. Perhaps a depot, and controlled access points for migrants.

[Sutremaine]

If you can make the wagon pathing work, you can have the depot near the bottom of the map. You can order stuff taken to the depot from the moment merchants arrive on the map.

[WanderingKid]

I've been debating lately, mostly for giggles, of taking seven high-end miners to a site and simply Channeling away everything until I hit the magma sea.  I want to see the traders attempt a 120 Z drop to get to the trade depot.  I also want to see the look on the elves' faces when they realize we strip mined an entire embark.

Personally I usually drop a ramp 5-6 levels down to stone and then start building after a passageway for traps/defense.  Surface eventually gets walls.  Most of the living space/workshops are in the Z-6 through Z-12 range, I'm still experimenting with setups.  I also tend to dig back UP so I can get the underground farms/distillery working pretty early, but on this side of the 'last defense' corridor.

Eventually I connect a small bailey to the fortress proper and drill another shaft down to the caverns for hunting and trapping, and cavern drill exploration.  Eventually once I've mapped them I'll drop a shaft from the main fort down to the magma sea for furnace work.

[nighzmarquls]

Before I reclaimed my fortress had its in habitations between absolute Z 229 and 190...

But the reclaim has me building much more modestly in the foothills at absolute Z 149-160 until I have a sizable military ready to clear out the goblins and also to just clean up the mess of a fifteen year fort worth of trash off the mountain slopes.

At least it cleaned off most of the blood.