Print

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

[CapnUrist]

Recently I've begun to avoid planning my forts, because doing so causes me to ignore my dwarves' needs (the whiny little ingrates). As a result, my fortresses tend to spread like cancer, and I try to find uses for every bit of unrevealed stone in between rooms, resulting in very dense layouts and some passages twisting in odd directions to avoid magma channels and water reservoirs, and other rooms. I use ramps for major hallways, but staircases for low-traffic areas, such as tombs and workshops. I'll often get a new idea for some feature (such as the Auto-Shower Dwarven Fixture, or ASDF) and immediately hunt for the nearest available space for it.

I also tend to make VERY large stockpiles, often unnecessarily, such as the 26x27 sand bag stockpile surrounded on three sides by standard glass furnaces and opening into the Magma Glass Furnace hall. I like to make green glass megaconstructions, and I don't like waiting on blocks.

[TolyK]

I just build randomly. my bedrooms take maximum consideration of space.

so, ad-hoc with modules

 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

or just dig-deeper-embark-with-7-miners-go-have-some-hfs

[anqxyr]

All walls must be 4 tiles wide, as do major corridors (which I usually have only 1-2 per z-level). Giant spiral  ramp staircase take 20x20x150+ tiles and connects to the fortress every tenth z-level. I dig new rooms only when have need to, and don't plan ahead except on larger scale, like reserving some place in corner for magma pump stack. This way my fortress end up with kind of natural look in it, as opposed to symmetrical layouts, which, in my opinion, feels a little synthetic.

[TolyK]

yes, ad-hoc planning is AWESOME!

it makes it flow.

[rephikul]

The Eerie Forest of Spirals Year 3. Currently occupied by The Assaulted Girl.
All of my fortresses look like this.

EDIT: that image is quite big so below is my floor plan for 3x3 embarks. Basically: Double dry moats. Top entrance has a special shortcut made for trader. 40 siege machines pointing at a dwarven menancing catwalk. The purple line above the no man's land is the archery target row. Z+1 of no man's land is the armory, archer's towers and training areas. Civilian quarter (green) is buffered 30 tiles from any feasible hostiles. Depot at the center, surrounded by stockpiles which's surrounded by meat & booze industry complex. Llife support and metal industry below the depot. Life support also well distanced away from major source of noises. One mist generator at each corner of the depot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[MrWiggles]

I build a throw away fort, that is organic in design and growth. Once I've hit around 150 dorfs, and get a few grand masters or legendary masons, and carpenters, I start to design and build my actual fort.

[UristMcDwarf]

1:Dig out meeting hall
2:Dig out medium sized room for stocks and workshops
3:Make Dorm.
4:
5:FORTRESS

[iyaerP]

I am a big fan of 3x3 rooms for almost all purposes.

perfect size for bedrooms and workshops, which take up the vast majority of my fortress space.

So I basically start with a grand entrance hall past the Corridor of DOOOM. Hall is dining room/meeting place and contains my trade depot. South of that in the area between hall and cliff face where I entered the mountain, I make a  massive booze/food stockpile. To the east are the honeycomb cubicles for all my workshops. Past the workshops is the catapult range for my siege operators to practice. (and get rid of all the scrap stone at) To the west are the honeycomb cubicles for my bedrooms. Stockpiles for goods are underneath the main hall and workshops. The north is left open for expansion/noble chambers.

Every bedroom has a statue, a cabinet, a coffer, the bed, weapon rack, armour rack and door.

Entire fortress is covered by engravings.

[Rose]

aboveground, everything made from wood, wood must all match properly.

[Brisk]

3x3 central staircase
everything symmetrical
all stone quantum stockpiled
I generally don't build much above ground except for a wall. I prefer underground defenses.

[drvoke]

So, I got this idea for a siege corridor from either here or on the wiki, and I've adapted it.  My last dozen or so forts have incorporated some variation of this feature, it's effective, and I like recycling rooms as I expand my forts.

It starts off as the first rooms for my initial seven:

Code: [Select]

.#########
.#########
.#B#B#B#B#
.# # # # #
.#+#+#+#+#
..........
..........
..........
..........
..........
.###+#+#+#
.### # # #
.###B#B#B#
.#########
.#########B's are beds, dots and whitespace are open floor.

Then, once I've got the basics carved out in my fort, I convert them to a siege corridor:

Code: [Select]

.#########
.##^###^##
.#^#^#^#^#
.#^#^#^#^#
.#^#^#^#^#
II.I^I^I^I
II.I^I^I^I
II.I^I^I^I
II.I^I^I^I
II.I^I^I^I
.###^#^#^#
.###^#^#^#
.###^#^#^#
.####^###^
.#########And you can extend that down your entrance corridor as far as you like.
The I's are raising bridges.  The ones between the traps are 1 tile width wide when lowered.  When raised, they constrain the path into your fortress along the 1 tile wide path of traps.

This follows a basic design that is basically impenetrable (with the right traps; I prefer multiple iron serrated discs) to anything but trapavoids/flying creatures.  But there's a front gate, obviously, for complete lockdown.  It doesn't obviate the need for military, but it completely nerfs ambushes.  After doing this for a while, I just went all the way and turned invaders off, because all that goblinite is ridiculous to get rid of, and it gets annoying to have essentially toothless ambushers or sieges with every caravan.

[Savarin]

My friend usually refers to my fortress setup as "the cube of doom."  Generally there is a walled central staircase that only opens to a few floors.  I tend to almost exclusively build on plains.

Above Ground: Fortress, traps, military barracks, sleeping quarters, hospital.  Usually spans 2-3 floors.
Ground Layer: Fortress base floor, Wood Stockpile, siege weapons.
Soil Layers: Clothing Industry
Deep Layers: Nobles Quarters, Labor Quarters, Food/Booze, Dining Room, Refuse/Butcheries, Other Workshops
Above Magma Layers: Ore/Bar Stockpile, Metal Industry

Usually everything except above ground is completed in the first 2-3 years.  Then this starts developing:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Long, winding paths for my enemy to move through that I can control their path via switches that make paths just disappear.  If I time it right, they fall into the pit, which has no exits, and can be safely fired upon by siege weapons and archers.  You can see in there the hospitals, military quarters and dining hall, as well as the danger rooms.  Usually this is above ground.  In this case, this was in the ice layers of a glacier.