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Above ground

9 (17.3%)

Underground

34 (65.4%)

No preference

9 (17.3%)

Total Members Voted: 51

[Starver]

you have to dig a moat and wait for it to fill

Unless that's with magma, that's probably less secure than a 'dry' moat.

[Spriggans]

Dwarves live underground. Period.
What kind of monster makes them live outside, breathing fresh air and seeing sunlight ?! Heresy !


@whomever voted for aboveground fort : You must be an elven spy. DWARVES ! Capture the traitors and seal them inside our sturdy UNDERGROUND jail cells !


PS : I find it too painful to make a aboveground of decent size. The corners especially. brrrr !
So, I usually stick with underground-ness, except for some stuff like windmills and pastures.

[Daniel the Finlander]

you have to dig a moat and wait for it to fill

Unless that's with magma, that's probably less secure than a 'dry' moat.

That might be the case, though for some reason there haven’t been any goblin sieges in a long time in my current surface fort so I haven’t had a chance to see how the water moat works. It is three tiles deep though.

[Grand Sage]

Sligtly sidetracking, but is the moat filled to the top (so that a swimmer could swim over it) or is it just the bottom layer that is filled (so that stuff drowns down there)?

[Starver]

PS : I find it too painful to make a aboveground of decent size. The corners especially. brrrr !

Build corners first, where trying to wall up against an edge (access exists from both neo-corner wall spaces, and needs one kep clear, but both is useful - when corner is built, both neo-corner blocks can be filled in, and you may have already built the rest of the non-corner walls by that point)

Build an internal corner last when sealing off an inner space you don't want to wall yourself into (it forces the last building action to occur not-in-the-sealed-off-area - also a useful technique for underground sealing off of caverns without messing about putting suspended wall jobs to force the issue, if you find the right spot to put your barrier up)

When putting walls atop walls, start at the point(s) furthest away from the climbing-up-onto-the-walls access (if you aren't, or aren't yet, building walkways alongside the walls) regardless of whether that's a corner, then as soon as it is (or they are, as you can do two next to each other) built define the next wall, regardless of corner or edge, round each way towards the point of access (it takes micromanaging, but it is obvious what you can build without blocking further building).

Though digging out space is still easier, most of the time, than enclosing space aboveground. Fact of life. So much so that the extra niggling difficulties perhaps qualify a suitably practical aboveground construction site to be the epitome of dwarfiness in the field of engineering! (If not in the field of fields.)

(I advise no moat filling at all, at least of water, but that's partly because I design mine to make it possible to retrieve anything dead, and anything possessed by that dead thing (including 'decorative steel bolts through the skull'), should it find itself in tnat state and ditched (or ditched and then given that state), friendly and unfrkendly alike. And partly because I spend time digging a deep ditch and to fill it back up a z-layer or two tends to undo the effect of any drop to the dug-to degree, even if drowning/etc is still an option. IMO, though, YMMV.)

[doublestrafe]

I was fixing part of an outdoor training facility yesterday and noticed that dwarves will still deconstruct floor tiles that they're standing on. I could have sworn that was fixed in 0.34, but here it is back again. Outdoor constructions are a pain.

[Daniel the Finlander]

Not filling moats is not too good of an idea as goblins can easily climb out of them. Though I don't think it's a good idea to fill them fully with water as that makes it easier to swim. Having a moat that is 3 tiles deep with 2 tiles filled with water is pretty good, especially if one side has a tall constructed wall made from blocks (block walls are hard to climb)

[Starver]

Climbing is always possible. Sufficient overhang is your next level of defence. Part-filling a moat is costly (unless you've got a very conveniently placed water-source, maybe) and just makes falls into it less immediately dangerous (when it ought to be dangerous) the potential climbing out easier and the recovery of good guys (living or dead) and other stuff that fell in that much more difficult.

If it's a magma moat, it's more of a barrier (good), more deadly (good and bad) less likely to yield up rewards (if that's what you want to do) and probably a right pain to accomplish (without a handy volcanic crater nearby).

That's how the balance works out to me. Your Weightings May Vary. (It is a very very dwarfy thing to do, to have a half-fillable/drainable megaditch, but I just go with the very dwarfy dry megaditch.)

[Werdna]

Moat problem everyone forgets about: design it so your melee dwarves cannot get within several tiles of it, or expect them to go swimming in whatever liquid floats your moat.  They will inevitably 'dodge' into it.  Don't forget they can dodge-teleport through walls on occasion - I use fort curtain walls 2 tiles thick because I've had combatants inside the castle walls dodge out through single tile walls.

[forgotten_idiot]

I usually build above ground, just because fighting sieges is easier. I build castles on flat ground, so I can see everything clearly and deploy archers on towers. Also multi storey buildings are cool.

[Ulfarr]

I prefer above ground fortresses. The gather/produce building materials part might become a bit of a chore depending on your design but I find both designing and building an efficient fortress to be a lot more interesting/engaging than digging one.

Another interesting design (compromise between the two) is a fort carved/built on a mountain cliff with both indoor and outdoor areas. In one of my previous fortresses, I had all the workshops/stockpiles/bedrooms inside a mountain while all the meeting areas/taverns/barracks were on open air balconies build on the cliffs.

[h27kim]

Well, UG fortress has many advantages:

1) easier to build--building roofs can be quite painful.
2) far easier on FPS.  Not only because of the number of items, but also, I strongly suspect, because of pathing issues.  No science! yet, but I have strong suspicions that dwarves tend to get lost more easily wandering above ground.
3) easier on resources--producing enough blocks is painfully slow at times.
4) much more dwarflike.

But I always seem to wind up building a lot above ground.  The advantages are:

1) Easier to stage battle areas.   I try to set a "killing zone" where marksdwarves can shower intruders from all sides from 1 or 2 z-levels above, usually in form of 20x20 area leading into the depot, surrounded by "arcades" with fortifications dug into constructed walls.  Marksdwarves are protected because invaders can't get next to fortifications (they are 1 or 2 z-levels below).  Killing zone is narrow enough that there's nowhere to hide from bolts.  This is much easier to build up than dig down.   I did try an alternate version that involves channeling fairly extensive area and building "above ground" areas below ground.
2) Easier on livestock.  I hate ug plantlife overrunning fortress so I tend to be very deliberate in breaching the caverns.  This also means grazing areas need to be exposed to sunlight, which, in my fortresses, tend to be channeled out, usually in the z-level right below the killing zone.  The caveat is that, unless the soil layer is very thick, you can't channel very far down.
3) easier on agriculture.  Above ground plants can be planted next to the grazing zone, covered by constructed floor of the killing zone. 

So, really just a matter of fitting my preferred fortress style, despite several disadvantages. 

[Grand Sage]

I just wanted to point out that, if you hollow out a big multi-z-level room, you can in fact build above ground structures... Underground!! 

[Starver]

I've also quarried heavy and deep, leaving behind raw subsurface rock within which the fort complex itself is tunnelled, meaning my underground fortress is effectively aboveground... 

[trib]

I'm a true sadist and I've combined them. Hollowed out a massive 7 layers high cavern and built an above ground style city in it complete with mushroom forest and a river. I did cheat a little though and built my dwarf housing on 3 pillars that go all the way up, but they're still constructed 3x3 rooms hanging off the pillars.

But underground is definitely much better because it's just easier and more efficient.