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[mdqp]

Is it a maze? Traps after traps in a long corridor? A megaproject? An army of 200 dwarves? A pet dragon? A garden with 1000 statues? What is it that you simply must have in your fortress no matter what for it to feel "right"? What is it that you can't give up,  no matter what are your current objectives or projects in any of your games? What is it that makes your fortress YOUR fortress?

[arzzult]

My 31x31 room system. Every room or block of rooms is set in a 31x31 area with 3 wide hallways in between them. And at each hallway junction is a 3x3 room that is part of a stairwell. Every fort must have it's 31x31 grand dining room with a 31x31 food stock pile right bellow it, connected by staircases in them for easy access. All furniture in this room must be exceptional or masterwork.

[malroth]

crossbows and bolts issued to every civilian just incase.

[LrZeph]

My horrific bunk bed system, and the kickass statues of skeletal eagles tearing apart elves everywhere.

[Jalen]

Making an artificial cavern with buildings carved into the stone.

[SmileyMan]

A moat. Filled with water.

[Sus]

Murder holes. My entrrance is always liberally flanked with fortifications to shoot from behind, either with ballistas or crossbows. That and as many serrated discs and goblinite weapon traps as I can manage. The entrance to my fort is a veritable hallway of nasty, pointy death.

My other design idioms include a large, walled-off pasture only accessible from an enclosed gatehouse and a pairt of floored-over pits serving as the refusde stockpile and "outdoors" farms, respectively.

One of my favorite "megaproject" formats (of sorts) is to try and make my entrance into a huge shaft with a spiral ramp on the edges, preferably descending all the way down to the magma sea. (Think Clanker's Lab from Might & Magic VI)
Sadly, the latter has defied any attempts at practical implementation so far.

[Scruga]

Prison/street structure, basically:

Code: [Select]

Room|_   _|Room
Room|_   _|Room
Room|_   _|Room
Room|_   _|Room
######~~~######

I love the walkways, gives it a city feel to it

[mdqp]

My horrific bunk bed system, and the kickass statues of skeletal eagles tearing apart elves everywhere.

You mean that each room has stairs that go through them? I wish I had those statues, too! 

Making an artificial cavern with buildings carved into the stone.

I am not sure I get what you mean, here. How is that any different from a normal fortress?

[Scruga]

Making an artificial cavern with buildings carved into the stone.

I am not sure I get what you mean, here. How is that any different from a normal fortress?

I think he means like a big hole that all rooms are connected to.

[luppolo]

3x3 royal bedrooms for each useful dwarf with table,chair and personal masterwork food stockpile, the others can stay in the dormitory and grab some berries outside if they really want to eat

also killing room for unwanted immigrants and vampires

[LrZeph]

You mean that each room has stairs that go through them? I wish I had those statues, too! 

More like the standard set of 3x3 rooms (Space wasting I know) with up/down staircases outside them, with a bedroom both above and below the main floor. I made this design because labor was at a premium at the time, and I couldn't be bothered making hallways to access each floor of bedrooms.

[Steb]

Catacombs: mazes of 1 tile corridors lined with doors leading to 1x1 rooms containing coffins. I prepare these in advance for when some kind of horrible accident wipes out 20 dwarves. I once recovered from a tantrum spiral after accidentally breaching hell. I went down from around 80 to around 10 dwarves. If I hadn't had my coffins ready to await corpses I would have died to despair from miasma clouds and decaying relatives. When the next migrant wave came I renamed all the original survivors so I could keep track of them. They all had the "getting used to tragedy" or "doesn't care about anything anymore" personality traits.

[Nagassh]

As standard I drive for symetry and all of my floors and walls being the same colour, at least on a room to room basis, 3x3 bedrooms and a huge dining hall.

But what makes a fort feel "special" is when the crazy RNG of DF produces an interesting little story or cool event for a dwarf. Sadly nothing has topped the DF2010 Baron I had. My mayor got killed in a goblin ambush, so I promoted the only friend he'd developed from the starting 7. He was put on mining duty, my old mayors job. A giant toad ripped his left arm off, he beat it off with his pick and washed the wound, didn't seem to think medical treatment was necesary.

He continued to be a complete badass, ended up wearing an artifact adamantine gauntlet and becoming a combat monster with an artifact steel warhammer. I spent most of DF2010 trying not to suffer from FPS death and getting him to sire an heir, he was getting very old, but never married his lover.

How the game can generate endearing characters like that is what will maintain DFs spot as the greatest game devised in my books.

[gzoker]

I only build on every other level, and connect them with ramps. Stairs are temporary. Tree farms. The Grand Hospital with test subject chamber.(for medical training) Epic Throne Room for royalty. Magma everywhere.