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[caddybear]

So I've been thinking about dividing a fortress to 6 ( or maybe more ) districts with waterways running between to separate them and containing any trouble with the use of drawbridges. Maybe I'll even throw cave crocs into the waters, who knows.

My first question is how would I go about doing this, I think embarking near a lake or ocean should be easy enough after preparing the ground just open the floodgates and the water should fill in nicely sooner or later. I plan on a 3 or 4 z level design with the waters being 2 levels deep. I think it should be possible to raise the gates again after the water is high enough that it won't go away.

Second question is how can I make it look, you know, pretty. I don't want squares, to be fair. Something that looks significantly pretty is what I'm aiming for here.

Third question is, I need gardens. I'll probably have to dig channels to the surface and build glass floors on those places and mud the stone floors to get some trees ( I think ) to get underground trees. Not mushrooms, I hate those.

So there's that, I need ideas people. I want to make an underground city that is the stuff of legends and I turn to you, the creative intelligence that rests in the collective conscience of humanity that we like to call internet.

[runlvlzero]

So I've been thinking about dividing a fortress to 6 ( or maybe more ) districts with waterways running between to separate them and containing any trouble with the use of drawbridges. Maybe I'll even throw cave crocs into the waters, who knows.

My first question is how would I go about doing this, I think embarking near a lake or ocean should be easy enough after preparing the ground just open the floodgates and the water should fill in nicely sooner or later. I plan on a 3 or 4 z level design with the waters being 2 levels deep. I think it should be possible to raise the gates again after the water is high enough that it won't go away.

Second question is how can I make it look, you know, pretty. I don't want squares, to be fair. Something that looks significantly pretty is what I'm aiming for here.

Third question is, I need gardens. I'll probably have to dig channels to the surface and build glass floors on those places and mud the stone floors to get some trees ( I think ) to get underground trees. Not mushrooms, I hate those.

So there's that, I need ideas people. I want to make an underground city that is the stuff of legends and I turn to you, the creative intelligence that rests in the collective conscience of humanity that we like to call internet.

#1 you got it alright, you need the multiple z levels if you want hostile aquatic life to not crawl out into your main fort
                  -Although I would find a multi-level river canyon and use that instead, that would make it much easier to have above river fort
#2 designate freehand with the mouse, you can click and drag the mouse around to make organic lines, you will need to spend some time doing this, but with a little effort it should look splendid
#3 just use pumps and pump water over the spots you want to garden, it will leave muddied tiles, although building walls and roofing over with glass seems pretty awesome too =), or channeling down one z level, if there is soil on that z level u wont have to muddy anything, if you open something to the sky (channeling from above) it will only grow above ground fauna and crops from then on, so if you want a subterranean terrarium you need to build it underground first, and channel to the constructed roof, that should keep it from opening to the sky, but leave glass in place if you want to get that complex.

It sounds like a really awesome idea, don't forget to load it into http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=3882 and give us pictures when your done =)

[Broseph Stalin]

So I've been thinking about dividing a fortress to 6 ( or maybe more ) districts with waterways running between to separate them and containing any trouble with the use of drawbridges. Maybe I'll even throw cave crocs into the waters, who knows.

My first question is how would I go about doing this, I think embarking near a lake or ocean should be easy enough after preparing the ground just open the floodgates and the water should fill in nicely sooner or later. I plan on a 3 or 4 z level design with the waters being 2 levels deep. I think it should be possible to raise the gates again after the water is high enough that it won't go away.

Second question is how can I make it look, you know, pretty. I don't want squares, to be fair. Something that looks significantly pretty is what I'm aiming for here.

Third question is, I need gardens. I'll probably have to dig channels to the surface and build glass floors on those places and mud the stone floors to get some trees ( I think ) to get underground trees. Not mushrooms, I hate those.

So there's that, I need ideas people. I want to make an underground city that is the stuff of legends and I turn to you, the creative intelligence that rests in the collective conscience of humanity that we like to call internet.

This is a good idea.

Honestly you don't seem to need much help, you've got a solid idea and it looks like you know how to implement it. For making a garden cleanly I suggest pouring water through holes in the ceiling with pond designations. As for how to organize your city I wouldn't shy away from the humble square.

Spoiler: squares are sexy (click to show/hide)

You could also do a simple mega circle divided into sections depending on how many districts you want. After a tile has been exposed to the open air it is "light above ground" forever. You don't really need glass roofs to farm trees.

To keep it uniform remember that if you construct a floor tile and then remove it the tile becomes the same as the layer material, it's good for when you want an all gabbro floor but you have a vein of metal running through it.

[SRD]

For gardens, just make green glass statues (They look like curvy trees :3)

[caddybear]

@runlvlzero:
Thanks for the help and confirmation. I'm not very good at using pumps, after a few fatal flooding everything with magma/water accidents I'm scared of using the damn things. Also I think plumbing those would be a logistical nightmare since right now I'm making designs on paper, and it's quite a lot of stuff to consider. Makes my brain hurt when I have to think that it's also a 3d structure. I should talk to my architect friends a bit on that I guess.

@Broseph Stalin:
Thank you, I've read these forums and the wiki like a it was the world reading championship and almost all of what I know comes from this great community who tried things. I'm looking for ways to improve the design and you're right, squares are nice. I was being unfair to them, but we have an understanding. I'm looking for more ideas and tricks.


@SRD:
Great idea! I'm going to put those green glass statues with the trees and make it a statue garden so people will hang out. I'm pretty adamant on having surface trees underground though. With glass ceilings.


Progress so far: I've embarked near a mildly savage lake ( the embark map said it was saltwater, but it isn't in game for some reason ) and looked around, there's about 7 layers of stone and 5 of soil before the first cavern, which is plenty enough space to build whatever I like. I really like this deep soil because it allows for mistakes when making waterways above the fortress proper. I've then quit the game without saving and started drawing floorplans

[vjek]

My advice:

• decide in advance if you want underground trees, above ground trees, or both.
• put levers tied to floodgates on ALL WATER SOURCES.
• PAVE all water pathways to prevent unexpected tree growth/blockage.
• use GRATES on all exterior water paths, as they enter your fort.  This will prevent (to a degree) unwelcome visitors.

Underground trees are honestly easier, and allows you to do much more interesting things, so I'm going to describe that.

Breach the caverns.  If you have more than one, breach them all, and then seal them up.  You only need to breach them once to get 'spores' that will grow underground trees and shrubs everywhere in your fort where there is mud on the floor or dirt on the floor.

The top view levels of any embark can be dirt/growable.  It is possible to find up to four layers (very deep soil) including Sandy Clay, Silty Clay Loam, Sandy Loam, and Sand all of which will grow all underground trees and shrubs immediately once the caverns are breached, and they are dug out.

While growing things in these topmost soil layers is easy, if you really want an artistic megaproject, this is just the beginning.  Any MOVING water over soil deposits mud.  If you flood an area, and the water moves over every single tile?  You've got all that as places things will grow.  If you've breached the caverns, shrubs and trees will immediately begin growing on newly muddied tiles, regardless of what they were before (ore, stone, whatever).

My recommendation would be to dig a "river path" just like you dig your hallways, just be aware it's going to be filled with water at some point, so you don't want your dwarves drowning in it.  If you are going to put door access to it, remember to forbid the doors before you turn on the tap.  Along this path, via whatever mechanism you want (flood, dfhack liquids, bucket brigade/pond) line the path of the river with muddied tiles.

Then, just prune out the trees/shrubs you don't want, and/or pave them over so nothing grows on them in whatever artistic pattern your heart desires.

As far as the river path itself, it can be as long and convoluted as you want.  Just dig and channel and remember that you can make a water "drain" by engraving fortifications in any stone that is on the edge of the map.  For this reason a 2x2 or 3x3 embark may be better, so you're always closer to a map edge for drainage.  However, you could start with a river on the surface (in a warm/hot biome) and channel it to become your underground river/garden source.  Then make it snake it's way down the Z-Levels and finally drain to a map edge however far down.

A side view of what I mean:

.,.;..... surface with river ...,.,.,..:..
###W####################
###W####################
###WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW##
#####################W##
#####################W##
###WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW##
###W####################
###W####################
###WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW##
#####################W##
#####################W##
###WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW##
###W####################
###W####################
###WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWDrain
########################

That way, it continuously flows, and you can have it run in whatever pattern/flow you want in each level.  REMEMBER TO PAVE YOUR RIVER PATH BEFORE YOU TURN ON THE WATER.  If you don't, trees will grow in it, and block your water flow, and flood your fort, and drown all your dwarves.  Unless you want that.

Oh, and if you only want bloodthorns?  Easily done.  Just ensure there is NO WATER (as in zero) in your caverns for worldgen.  Then you'll only have bloodthorn spores when you breach them.

[slothen]

check out undergrotto from the hall of legends in the community game forum.

[runlvlzero]

@runlvlzero:
Thanks for the help and confirmation. I'm not very good at using pumps, after a few fatal flooding everything with magma/water accidents I'm scared of using the damn things. Also I think plumbing those would be a logistical nightmare since right now I'm making designs on paper, and it's quite a lot of stuff to consider. Makes my brain hurt when I have to think that it's also a 3d structure. I should talk to my architect friends a bit on that I guess.

Just remember for future forts, always start pumping manually with a dwarf =) at least they will  cancel from dangerous terrain or drown and die. The pump will stop itself at some point =) This is for those times were your just trying to do a small flood or something.

I wasn't thinking of any kind of serious plumping, just a mobile pump stack construction over whatever channels you created, that you would move and manually operate for each section you wanted irrigated...

Broseph's idea of dumping buckets of water through roof holes is great though, I have done that before. It might be way more logistically feasible, sometimes its much better or simply quicker to start some farms in rock that way then bothering with floods.

And ya you seem to have your knowledge in hand =)

[Ashery]

Just to get it out of the way: Death to squares! (And rectangles!)

Seriously, though, if you're doing anything remotely complex (Read: Non-uniform), I strongly recommend drawing it out in Paint (Zoom to 600-800% and enable the grid) and then transferring it over either with a macro program or by hand. This will allow you a substantially greater level of control/oversight when coming up with designs (Multi-z-level gardens, for instance).

The actual design itself is a bit more difficult to make suggestions for as it largely depends on inspiration. Having restrictions helps when coming up with a design, though. By restrictions, I mean in the sense that an oddly shaped aboveground tower will force you to to be more creative with your room layouts.

I actually find flooding to be one of the easier methods for muddying stone, but I always insist on using a closed system and try to flood using water pulled from my cistern. That means that even if there's catastrophic flooding, it will almost always clear up on its own. Well, save for the occasional pocket that'd form if it drops a z-level into a room without a drain, but those should be easy to fix.

My one big tip: Use diagonal bends to kill pressure. This is especially true if you decide to use pumps to create artificial waterfalls, as pumps move *significantly* more water up than gravity can pull down. It's counterintuitive, but I've experienced it first hand. Thankfully, I was using a closed system and only suffered a couple unimportant casualties. All of which could've been avoided if I left my safety grates in place (They blocked the sunlight/open space graphic that looked pretty down in my catacombs).

[caddybear]

Thanks for the ideas, I'm working on several designs at the moment and I'll post about them by the end of the weekend I think. With fancy pictures and all that stuff. Even made a blog for this, because I hope to get more friends to play this game by making it look as awesome as it can be

[Broseph Stalin]

My idea was an underground dome that was made by circles stacked on top of each other in descending size from top to bottom with the ground level divided into quadrants by two intersecting artificial rivers. I gave up because it looked ugly as sin.

[caddybear]

The problem I'm facing right now is that grass and trees won't grow in my underground gardens... even though the stone is muddied and it is "outside and light" I can even grow sunberries in the place. But no grass seems to grow =/

[Broseph Stalin]

The problem I'm facing right now is that grass and trees won't grow in my underground gardens... even though the stone is muddied and it is "outside and light" I can even grow sunberries in the place. But no grass seems to grow =/

I don't know if grass will grow on muddy tiles, moss does but I don't think I've ever seen grass do it.

[Talvieno]

The problem I'm facing right now is that grass and trees won't grow in my underground gardens... even though the stone is muddied and it is "outside and light" I can even grow sunberries in the place. But no grass seems to grow =/

It can take a while... Don't let anyone walk on it. (I'm sure you already knew all of that.)

Can't wait to see it when it's done.

[caddybear]

I have some old screenshots from my general district design, I 'll dig them up now.. I probably should have turned the sieges off, those tigermen don't leave me alone for a bit =( already lost 3 of my guys to them because let's just say I didn't build anything underground that isn't related to Dawn Raven, the Eternal City And well, I didn't have any weapons either hahaha. They shall be remembered and buried right under the government district.



So this is what we have so far, I don't mind the color mismatch as it makes things look more natural; to the east we have Government district with small dining rooms for the officials and some offices for the lower class clerks, downstairs from that there's the fortress guard barracks (and the housing for the soldiers ) and catacombs for the heroes. Also you can see the outline of the small fungus gardens walls, they're just there to funnel the water, will tear them down after I mud the floor.

North is crafting district, each circle is for another kind of job and the big one is for smithing and bar/block stockpiles. On the lower floor of that there's going to be just more stockpiles for various things.

In the middle we have our housing district, upstairs and downstairs from that we have rooms for various people, I don't plan to separate living areas for the lower class people as they will all get great living spaces anyways.

To the south there's the gardens district prototype so far, just to test how the water works and if I can get the gardens to grow surface trees and shrubs.. no luck so far. That area is going to be huge with continuous waterfalls and statue gardens and a zoo. When it's done I'm going to reroute the entrance to the city from there instead of the central staircase. Because I have huge plans for the surface as well, but those are easily implemented

To the west will be the palace for the real higher ups and people who made worthwhile artifacts and the war heroes. It is also going to be huge with barracks for 3 squads of soldiers and the best of everything for the highest class of people. I might even keep the bridge retracted to stop the elite from slumming.

I plan to have an arena around the gardens as well, since I embarked near a pair of dragons should they show up I'll need a place to build a temple for them as well. And their children.