Print

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

[Crandal]

I usually just design on the go, and try to avoid doing anything too similar to something recent, so I don't have a static fortress design.

[SRD]

You know that newby tutorial by that pirate guy? My fortresses ALWAYS start like that out of habbit.

[kingubu]

I plop every building down in a cluster around my wagon.  Dig down one level in the dirt and slap some beds and chairs and tables down and start a farm.

Done.  Welcome to Fort Expedient.

Then I'm off, brewing booze and murdering animals.

[Dish It Out!]

I lack creativity so my fort is usually a series of mined out boxes around a 3x3 central staircase.

[xmakina]

I use a similar system to zach123b, with the large workshop areas surrounded by pathways.

I like to have one z-level (usually a couple of urists below the aquifer) which I dedicate to The Great Hall and all the bedrooms. Above is usually the waterworks which breach and channel the aquifer where it's needed. Below is the Completed Goods workshops (so blocks, socks, and such) in an open plan layout. Below that are my workshops, usually positioned near or below their respective Completed Good stockpile (the food and farming is as close to The Great Hall as I can make it). Below the workshops are the Material Stockpiles which hold the usual rocks, wood, coal materials, again, positioned either directly below or as close as possible to their consumer workshops. These will usually be sectioned off from each other.

If I'm feeling particularly extravagant, I like to build an impressive entrance to the flooding chamber trade depot which is where I usually plow the majority of my Dwarven Engineering projects into making a perfect "Capture/Kill/Dump" system.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

My fortress have a 3 block thick exterior wall which houses my entrance inside is a long tunnel to a 3-7 story tall circlular chamber which houses a lot of shit on its sides then I make more of these as needed.

[Ashery]

Current design in use is a bit similar to KodKod's. Note, however, that I only use stairs when doing multi-level digging projects.

A, uh, large image composed of a juxtaposition of different z-level digging designations showing the basic layout (5x5 embark):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some details are omitted from the picture for various reasons, but here's the gist:

SW corner: Brook water feed. This actually drops eight or so z-levels.

S: Entrance pathway. This also drops several additional z-levels, but not as many as the brook feed.

Lower center: Outer courtyard. This is where all combat will be taking place (Hopefully, heh). Missing from this picture are the four waterfall pillars (identical to the central pillar in my main hall above), the mine access on the southern edge (Between the dual ramps from the entrance), the trade depot access (The dual ramps on the norther edge), the actual hallway that connects to the fort proper (In between the trade depot ramps), and the barracks entrance that will be along said hallway. Also missing from this picture is the giant artificial lake that will run all the way from the entrance up to the northern tip of the courtyard

Upper center: Main hall. Tables around the single waterfalls (Designated as stairwells) and coffins along the edges (Separated by a "moat"). Missing here is the connection between the dual ramp on the southern edge to the hospital directly below and the connection to the noble quarters on the dual ramp on the northern edge.

Left/Right of main hall: Bedrooms. Three levels worth (Top and bottom are mirrored, but the central one is different. This is the bottom one). Nothing else to say here except that these connect to:

Caverns: This are difficult to make out due to the fact that you only see the upper level, but here we'll have animal training (The southern bit that you see. Walled off from the rest), farms (N bit of the left cavern where the stair "path" is), and pens (N bit of the right cavern). The rest is just for show, including more waterfalls that aren't pictured.

N: Workshops. Stockpiles will predominately be on the z-levels above. Magma pools will be in the black space on the inside of the pathway as well as a couple of magma falls because why the hell not? The jail is also located below this level.

Bit more detailed than I originally planned, but I'm remarkably good at putting off actual playing, heh.

[GhostDwemer]

Ashery, is that supposed to look like an oversized sperm approaching a somewhat abstract diagram of the female reproductive system? Or am I just a perv?

[Ashery]

...*Sigh*...

God damnit.

I recognized the second part, but not the first. Had I recognized both, I probably would've redone my workshop layout.

The problem I had was that I designed the workshop area last and so the caverns (including farms and pens) were already laid out. I initially had a more basic "+" type design for the central magma pool, but the limited amount of space would've forced me to use straight hallways, and I can't have too many straight hallways now can I? So, my solution was to push the horizontal piece of the "+" up to what you see in the picture and use the added "height" difference to create the curve between the central magma pool and the farms/pens. This, however, still left me short a bit on workshop space and so I decided to bend the hallway back up and create smaller magma pools at the tips.

Once I got out of the zone and was able to see the forest instead of the trees, I immediately recognized it but decided "Eh, fuck it." I only just now (well, at the time of my last post) created the juxtaposition of pictures that gave off your impression.

[SRD]

My current fortress after about 30 mins of just starting

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Cobaldunderpants]

I try to build into the side of a mountain whenever possible. Digging stairs straight down in the middle of a field always makes me feel...naked. I dig an entrance hallway followed by an intersection. Depending on the situation and my mood I then either build a branching hallway to a room with downward stairs or I stick the stairs in the first intersection. Second floor down is (almost) always farming into whatever clay, sand, or soil I can find. Third floor down is general wood/goods/furniture storage and workshops. I then drop five or six levels and build a grand dining room/meeting hall and as many 3x3 rooms I can for my dwarves' bedrooms. I spoil them stupid with beds, cabinets, and coffers.

I always put a statue garden in my meeting halls. The dwarves are usually so overjoyed at all the awesome found in their meeting areas I've recovered from fortress threatening tantrum levels.

[SRD]

After I get around 100~ dwarfs I tend to put showers in the entrances of the caverns and the fortress (or just the fortress if the cavern entrance is outside)

[SRD]

I'd like too see a screeny of a 'micro fort' if anyone has one

[eataTREE]

I always start with a temporary entrance leading right into what will eventually become the farming/brewing/food production area in a soil layer (if available), with two stockpiles, one of which starts and stays a food stockpile and the other of which is the staging/everything else stockpile until other areas of the fort are complete. As soon as everything is inside and food production is underway, I dig the real front entrance and wall/floor off the temporary one. Thus do I get a secure fortress entrance without having to waste valuable time digging it at the very beginning of the game.

[Gizogin]

I put the vast majority of my fortress on the first four below-ground z-levels.  Farming, food production and related industries, dining, and food storage go on the first layer, because the soil makes it easy to set up farms and to dig out more storage space.  Almost all of the other workshops and industries go in the layer below that, assuming it's mostly stone.  I also put my primary stockpiles on this level, which take the products from the workshops.  Below (or above, depending on the arrangement of stone/soil) the workshops go my input stockpiles, which hold the raw materials for the workshops directly above them.  I also put some overflow stockpiles on this level.  Below that I put the bedrooms, jails, and offices.

All the levels (except the bedroom level) share a general floorplan, with a central 3x3 staircase between them.  I extend a 3-wide hallway in each cardinal direction from this staircase, and build square rooms of various sizes to hold the workshops/stockpiles.  I generally make branching hallways to separate different industries, with a hallway for metalworking, one for masonry, etc.  I build four workshops to a 7x7 or 9x9 room, with a stairway in the middle leading to the input stockpile.

For my bedrooms, I dig a 1x4 room for each dwarf, and give each room its own door, bed, chest/coffer, and cabinet.  I keep the 3-wide hallways, but dig them parallel to each other, rather than perpendicular.

My hospital goes on the first level below ground, as close to the river as I can get it.  I dig a large cistern under it, fill it from the river, and build wells inside the hospital.

Depending on the terrain, my aboveground structures vary wildly.  I usually wall off a small area, with a double-drawbridge-airlock system, then put my depot there.  The first drawbridge allows access from the surface to the depot, and the second allows access from the depot to the fortress.  I also put another wall around an area to use as a refuse stockpile, because I don't really like putting them underground.