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[Quietust]

1. Don`t fill it with water. Sometimes dwarves (and more important loot!) fall into the moat and recovering them could prove difficult.

There's an even better reason not to fill it with water - in cold areas, water will freeze, and hostiles will be able to run right across it (additionally, your dwarves will also run across it, and if they're on top of it when the spring thaw kicks in, they'll fall right in and start drowning).

The obvious solution is to fill it with magma.

[Lordinquisitor]

Oh, yes. That`s even worse. I seldom play in cold areas, so i forgot that part..

[Albedo]

  Also, some few creatures can swim.

A double-deep moat with only 1 level of water will solve both these problems, and still look cool.  (Because that's the only reason to fill a moat with water in DF.)

ZH - re pumping or channeling for the water, think ahead.

You're going to dig the ditch - okay, there, let's say it's dug. Nice ditch, perfect defense.

But if you want to fill it with water, you can either use pumps or channel out an opening to some water source - a large pond or a river, whatever.

If you do the latter, just dig it out, it's very difficult to block that water flow off if you ever need to. 

Pumping gives you good control - you can add "some" water, and let your dwarves wade in it if/when they need to - you get the look, and still have some access.  You could reverse the process and pump it dry if you needed to do some remodeling.

If you're just going to channel, at least add some sort of water-control gate linked to a lever - a floodgate, a door, a 2x2 raising bridge (when it raises, it acts as a wall).  (This last is my preference, because nothing will jam it open!)  You fill, you close, you can pump dry later or add more or whatever.

If you simply channel, you're stuck.  It will work, but you're stuck with it.

[Rvlion]

In the beginning I actually build an above ground walled fortress (Still do that sometimes), but also create a 2 or 3 wide moat to completely surround this walled fortress. Due to the obvious lag difficulties I stopped with that kind of construction and merely channeled out some spaces near the entrance to my above ground fortress. Like shown below in code...

Code: [Select]

    ||sss
    ||--s
    BR--s
    BR--s
    BR--s
    ||--s
    ||sss

|| = Walls
BR = Bridge
-   = Channeled ground
s   = Ground

Another form of protection I mostly like to use concerning moats or empty channeled tiles is having a nice sealed of above ground walled off area and by using a ramp and underground corridor let others gain entrance to my fortress. My moat or channeled area would be dug out inside the earlier named corridor passable only by a bridge…

Code: [Select]

    ===========
    ====RRR====
    ====sss====
    ====sss====
    ====sss====
    ====---====
    ====---====
    ====---====
    ====BBB====
    ====sss====
    ====sss====

=   = Walls
s   = Ground
-   = Channeled area
B   = Bridge

Like all things in DF you can do many things you like exactly the way you want to do it. 

[Shiv]

Just channel out the ground (press 'd', then 'h') and then channel into a river/brook to fill the moat.  After that, build the bridge.  Don't forget to leave a one tile stretch unchanneled so that your dwarves can get across the unfinished moat until the bridge is built.  Then channel that one tile wide 'natural' bridge and you'll have your completed moat. 

A double-deep moat with only 1 level of water will solve both these problems, and still look cool.  (Because that's the only reason to fill a moat with water in DF.)

Nonsense!  My water filled moat looks bad ass AND is perfectly functional for drowning enemies with some strategic wall placement and a draw bridge. 

With flood gates and a drain, recovering the loot isn't a problem either. 

[UberNube]

This is my first post here, so hello everyone. Been playing DF for a week or so and it's awesome.

Actually, your moat doesn't need to be that wide, so I'm not really sure why I went on about channeling wider things up there.  It (currently) would be just as effective if it were one tile wide, and you shouldn't have to worry about dwarves getting stuck when making such a moat.

Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is one situation where a wider moat is desirable.

If you want to have a moat outside your walls, and have fortifications either in or on top of your wall, then a wider moat is better because it forces the enemy to stay further away from your fortifications. If I'm reading the wiki correctly, then this should increase the chance of enemy archers hitting the fortifications instead of your archers considerably.

For example, in my current fortress I have a 5 tile wide moat all around the edge of my main entrance hall, filled with pumps and with bridges to cross it. The central platform has several traps on it, and there are fortifications with archers behind them along the edge of the room 2 z levels up. Once the bridges are raised the whole room can be filled with water up to the z level below the archers using a second set of pumps, and it can be drained via a floodgate leading down to the brook. I could have done the same with a 1 tile wide moat, but it wouldn't look as cool dwarvenly and the archers would be much more vulnerable.

[bluea]

++ on the thought "Moats help archers."

With a three-wide dry moat and a one-Z-level shift, goblin archers don't appear to even try to fire back at the archers firing through the fortifications.

[Lemunde]

A lot of this sounds like what I'm doing with my current fortress, sans a drawbridge.  http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-6940-ceilingsteel

If you're starting a new fortress I would recommend digging two z levels down to start the bulk of your fortress, reserving the first z level for mushroom farms, if you plan to make them.  This way you get plenty of work area to make your moat.  As an alternative to water and magma you might try filling your moat with spike traps or war dogs.

[Albedo]

++ on the thought "Moats help archers."

With a three-wide dry moat and a one-Z-level shift...

Or you could plan ahead, and have a 1-wide moat 3 tiles out from the wall. 

[bluea]

Or you could plan ahead, and have a 1-wide moat 3 tiles out from the wall. 

My dwarves are too stupid to avoid watching the enemy from somewhere accessible like that.

[Albedo]

Here's a pro-tip to making an area like that inaccessible - it's called a "wall". 

(Putting a lockable gate or drawbridge in it is optional, for those "just in case" moments.)

There's no reason to have it accessible in the first place.

[Eidalac]

Something I've learned in my first fort, and will try whenever I get around to starting a second, is that it'll be easier if you start any digging of the fort proper at least 1 z level under where you will have a moat.  Makes it much easier to prevent any Fun incidents.

While the moat never caused me any flooding, I did hem myself in in the early years and had to re-do my general layout because of it.  Also, doing so should give you more room to play with things like wells and water/magmafalls and the like.

[Albedo]

I was a big fan of early moats in my first fortresses, but a lot depends on the terrain layout.  Removing slops to hillsides and plateaus work just as well, and walls have to go up anyway, for safety against archers.  There is always time to make some custom defensive setup later, before the real fun starts.

It's a lot of personal preference, experience with responding to threats (and being aware of them in the first place) and confidence with your defense/military.

[Dorf3000]

Moats are great.  Just build them very far from your fort, that way you wont break into your farms and flood everything, and you'll have more aboveground area that's protected.

I put ramps on one end of the moat leading to the outside and another set of ramps at the other end, leading inside.  The goblins somehow know that if they walk the whole length of the moat, they can get inside and kill some dorfs.  One steps on a pressure plate - shh-click - but nothing happens.  They look around, scared at first and then smiling.  The trap didn't work! Those stupid dorfs forgot to build it!

Then they hear a rushing, roaring sound getting louder and louder...

[ShadeJS]

The biggest reason for a water filled moat is aesthetics, or for drowning foes. Magma has the advantage of melting stuff that falls in for clean up.

As was pointed out before akways be "Z-Level aware". Gravity will fill moats just fine, and a moat with thick wall with a thin wall with carved fortifications on top of that offers excellent protection. (Too excellent, IMHO.) Link a bridge to an indoor lever, and voila!

Some other notes: Set the moat as a low traffic zone to help keep your dwarves from pathing over it if it is a magma or water moat. In fact, you might want to extent the low traffic desination a couple of tiles out from the edge, and give the bridge(s) a high traffic designation. If it's a wet moat consider digging some ramps into the far side of the perimeter. If you're on the ball you can recess them, and block them with levered floodgates. Then it's a race between drowning dwarves and lever pulling. Even if you don't block the ramps, the fact that a foe will have to swim out in front of your archers can be great fun.