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[Sowelu]

For a while, I've been feeling like my fortresses are just too roomy.  They sprawl all over the place and Z-levels never get used.  It's very sad!

So I've started doing a challenge mode for myself:  Embark on a 2x2, and then restrict my fortress to the middle 1x1 of that (so, a quarter of each embark region).  I can only build things strictly inside that area, and the only time I can even dig ramps or stairs outside of it is if caverns are empty space the entire way down through it.  Mining on the periphery is possible, if there's a vein; otherwise no exploratory mining.  It does look pretty cool, like it's actually mined out instead of just weird walls.  I suppose that if I ever run out of stone, then mining for more stone will be legit, too.

In any case it makes life more interesting...taverns and temples tend to take up most of their floor.  Important nobles get floors all to themselves, and stockpiles are no longer "dig out a massive area below each crafting area and don't think about it".  Caverns are meaningful, too--you're forced to deal with them in a significant way, instead of them just being an unimportant choice that you can breach if and when you feel like it.  Kinda like the river, the chasm, and the lava in classic DF.

I'm thinking of making it even more restrictive; reduce the buildable area even more, and forbid stairs throughout the entire fortress (to make travel take a while, as it should).  It bugs me a bit that hauling something up and down stairs is the same as taking a quick jaunt down a short hallway.

Transporting water and lava is a nightmare...which is exactly as it should be.

Does anyone else have a way they've restricted space like this, or any other challenge modes other than "build aboveground only"?  Things that need a lot of stone-block walls are disappointing because wall value stops being a thing.  I'm looking for ways to make my fortresses take some real thought in planning.

[kontako]

I often find my fortresses end up too wide and only a few z-levels deep. I try to work around this by randomly extending my list to build, however this often leads to the same problem.
I find it interesting that you want to confine your fortress, in my most recent one I did something similar by finding a small 1x1 mountain on the region map and building a wall all the way around to protect all flanks (although this is somewhat larger than your 2x2). Unfortunately this is the only thing that comes to mind when I consider restricting my fortress in the x-y direction.

If you're looking for ideas to deepen your fortress, I like to make separate barracks and dorms for each of my squads (1 per level?).

[darkflagrance]

Apparently 1x2 fortresses are possible in the current version. Because my current computer is a slightly motile brick, I'm restricted to challenge formats like the one you describe to test my mods.

To save FPS, I not only confine myself to the tiny area mentioned above, but I also confine all my activities to two floors, one for farming and one near the magma. I have mass bedrooms consisting of huge shared rooms defined from adjacent beds for my regular dwarves. My nobles have one super opulent room that counts as a dining room, office, and bed room at the same time. The middle of the fortress is workshops stacked next to each other, and storage space is a luxury or dug out from the unused dirt near the farms. The floor layouts are huge open spaces to maximize available space and save pathfinding.

I've also done the "all above ground" challenge. It depends heavily on wood, stone, and coal imports, along with purchased weapons. You get used to making rooms valuable by filling them with masterwork gold chains instead of engravings. It's also a chance to place windows into the walls of your dwarven skyscrapers.

[lorb]

there once was a tool called nano fortress and dfhack implemented "embark-tools enable nano" at some point to make 1x1 embarks possible. I have not checked them out in a while so I don't know if they work with the newest versions of df but if you are interested in restricting your x-y space that's a most formidable option that also has a positive impact on FPS.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

You can already do 1x1 embark in newest version.
But keep in mind invaders spawn nearer to your entrance than before, leaving you even less time to response.

[darkflagrance]

You can already do 1x1 embark in newest version.
But keep in mind invaders spawn nearer to your entrance than before, leaving you even less time to response.

One advantage of the tiny area is that you can build a surface fort and place your barracks near to a map edge. Then when the enemies spawn, your troops will immediately congregate on their arrival map edge and kill each squad the moment they appear on the map. There were dozens of corpses stacked on a single tile.

[Artichaut]

I always play on 2x2 embark for FPS. My standard architecture is 3x3 rooms, or 7x3, or 7x7 ... and max 15 x 15. It gives modular rooms. A level is max 4 15x15 rooms with a 3 tiles wide alley between them.

So my levels are dedicated to a function : On the surface are the barracks, tavern, statue garden, refuse, dump, butchery and tanning. Just below the surface are the farms, still, pigs, dogs... Then stocks for industry, industry, stocks of finished products, living quarters (legendary dinning room, hospital, jails, temples, library ...), the rooms for commoners, the rooms for nobles and at last the catacombs.

This use 10 z levels, but there is still lot of place for projects like arenas, tree farms ...

[Wheeljack]

I've seen a few people post about a similar/same challenge. Restricting yourself to such a tiny build area can be fun the first few times, but I don't particular like giving myself such strict boundaries. Sometimes I just want to go big. XD

I usually keep a very specific layout that spans the z-levels and ensures I don't accidentally have everything spanning one or two z-levels. I've since shuffled a few things with the new locations we can set down, but the heart of my layout remains basically the same.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Surface: Barracks near the entrance gates, two small statue gardens on either side of the path leading into the main keep. The keep has two rooms on either side of the main staircase leading into the fort below. One for the Depot, and one for storing goods that will be traded away. Behind that are the farms and pastures, with two small buildings with the respective workshops in them.
Level 1: Typically placed one or two z-levels down to prevent trees knocking holes in my roof. I put a public tavern with stairs leading up directly to the farms above. Also a public temple. This is where my early dwarves chill while I dig out the rest of the fort. :3
Level 2-4: Three levels get devoted to crafts. I group the workshops by product, with stairs leading into related workshops below/above them.
Level 5: Peasant living. I typically only need a single level for this because I limit my population for FPS reasons.
Level 6: Main floor. The Great Hall, main temple, and main hospital get put here. Also the royal chambers.
Level 7-8: Noble living. most times I only need the one level, but there have been a few times I needed another level, so I've gotten in the habit of saving an extra level for them. I have a tendency to spoil my favorite dwarfs and move them here whether their actual nobles or not.

Not listed are a few plumbing levels for wells. I like putting wells in the great hall and the hospital, and the nobles typically get their own wells if I'm feeling particularly generous that fort. My last few levels are set down depending on where the caverns and lava are. I like putting my crypt down deep. If I'm in the mood to mess with it, I'll bring lava up and put my forges nearer the rest of the fort, but I'm usually lazy and just set up on top of the magma sea. My prison, when I bother with it, I like putting near the magma sea as well. Flooding prison blocks with magma is a good way to clear out prisoners if I don't feel like pitting them into the training arena on the same level.

The nice thing about this set up, is my dwarves rarely have to walk more than 20-30 steps from one end of a level to the main stairs and it fits on my screen nicely so I can keep track of what's going on in the entire z-level. And since I follow this same format, I rarely have to guess where things are.

[Loci]

Lots of options:

Build your fortress only in the caverns
Find a tall mountain and carve a fortress out of the top
The World is Flat challenge
Embark on a cave and disable all mining
Build inside the tube of a volcano
Mod most common stones to be lethal to mine
Change all layers to aquifers
Insist on "realistic" support: no large rooms without support columns, no floor tiles without unmined rock below, etc.
decrease the movement speed of dwarves (penalizes rooms larger than necessary)
The Dwarves need magma challenge
All rooms require windows (cliff embark recommended)
Pick an arbitrary pattern (e.g. triangles) and force all your rooms to conform to it
Only mine out X tiles per dwarf, where X is as small as you can manage
A dfhack mod that sprinkles random pockets of water and/or magma throughout the map

[Chief10]

The floor layouts are huge open spaces to maximize available space and save pathfinding.

As far as I know, this actually increases the FPS needed for pathfinding. It may be more efficient in terms of having a dwarf walk the shortest possible route, but is less efficient in terms of time needed to calculate a path.

[quekwoambojish]

Huh, never realized how fps issues have changed the way I play so heavily.

I usually do a 1x1 embark over 7-10 z-levels. Each floor looks like a puzzle piece for a particular thing it does. With one staircase attaching all floors it really helps pathing fps issues, especially if you make the staircase 3x3.

The biggest down side is that !FUN! Has access to your entire fort once it gets in the staircase.

[lorb]

The floor layouts are huge open spaces to maximize available space and save pathfinding.

As far as I know, this actually increases the FPS needed for pathfinding. It may be more efficient in terms of having a dwarf walk the shortest possible route, but is less efficient in terms of time needed to calculate a path.

A* performs really good in open space in most situations.

[Roofless]

Lots of options:
Build your fortress only in the caverns

Oh, I've tried this one. There're tons of !!FUN!! to be had.


On the topic:
If you consider making a Stupid Dwarf Trick, you can build a fortress inside Magma Sea. It's a real pain, but in the end I got an awesome throne room with glass walls around a polished adamantine spire.