Print

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

[zenos14]

When I make a fortress the inhabited areas (workshops, farms, beds, ect.) tend to be in the top 8-12 layers.

I'm trying to add a bit more variety to my fortress designs and was wondering how deep others fortresses are?

[misko27]

About the same, some industries are deep underground, like metal-working, and web-collection. It depends on how based on metal you are, some are shallow early on but make deeper facilities later.

[Loud Whispers]

like metal-working, and web-collection

1. Deforestation = surface metalworking
2. Recluse/Phantom spiders?

[Sabreur]

I usually do the same, except for my metal industries.  Those are usually magma-based.  I try to kick-start them as early as possible, which usually means I don't use a magma piston or pump stack to bring the magma up.  So my fortress tends to have everything in the first 10 levels, followed by a 100 z-level drop down the first magma pipe or even the magma sea.  Sometimes there's a collection area for ores partway down, with minecarts leading down to the magma smelters.

[Triaxx2]

Depends a lot on the embark. I had a desert embark down nearly 120z to the magma. My current embark is precisely 51z from the top of the mountain to the magma pipe.

[Sutremaine]

My current fortress starts at -18 (ramp straight down into the cavern) and technically extends to -118, where the forges and metal storage is. But most of the fortress is scattered around -18, directly inside the sealed cavern. There is very little connection between the metalworks and the rest of the fortress, though there are four spiral ramps running from top to bottom and used for ore, fuel material, and flux transportation.

[wuphonsreach]

If I'm going deep, then I'll usually try and map out the 1st two cavern layers quickly and figure out where to put a 7-tile wide ramp / main corridor down into the depths.  That 7-tile wide ramp is eventually used to allow the caravans access to deep within the fortress, closer to all my workshops.

Farms / livestock almost always end up at the surface, along with the main kitchens / butcher shops, etc. (on the upper floors of the surface keep).

If I'm going deep because there are no shallow magma pipes, I also have to worry about setting up drop-shafts so I can drop things like sand bags, clay, food/drink down to the magma forges.

[MasterShizzle]

I usually try to keep everything above the first cavern. It goes:
- First layer into the side of a hill or a small ramp down if it's a flat map. It's usually soil, so farm plots and related workshops, fisheries, butcher, tanner, and animal storage.
- Second layer is most of the remaining workshops, plus forges if I've got lots of coal.
- Third level down is usually completely mined out for mass stockpiles. I'll put barracks and a hospital here later, close to the main downshaft.
- Fourth level is dining hall and food storage, plus stills/kitchens. I may mine out this level as well if there are good ores.
- Fifth level, bedrooms. Five levels down is guaranteed noise-free housing.
- Sixth level is usually the morgue, plus a reservoir directly below the hospital to eventually fill and make a well above. If I'm hurting for space above it's a good place for noble rooms as well.

So that's six levels, plus fortifications on the entrance level if I'm on a flat map. Magma forges go further below unless it's a volcano embark.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm trying to add a bit more variety to my fortress designs and was wondering how deep others fortresses are?

The only Dwarves that live underground are Were-creatures so far. The majority of housing and industry takes place on zlvl0. The higher up you go you find military fortifications and more civilian houses. 3 z lvls below 0 lies the grand dining room, and then there are just tunnels branching off everywhere that go down to -14 at it's deepest. The quarry has been excavated to z lvl 17, and I've still not hit the caverns yet. Might just be very unlucky.

[misko27]

like metal-working, and web-collection

1. Deforestation = surface metalworking

Not nescasarrily. Surface metalworking implies Deforestation, But I could deforest things just for the sweet deforesting sensation.

And what I meant was web collection is infromt of one of the caverns (Mostly because of the amount of GCS and FB web there), and metal is hybrid, half magma, half elvish. The Elf part is just so so I can fuck with the elves.

There are limited parts of the fort which are deep underground and are populated by dwarves, but those are just chambers for War Prisoners, and zoo animals. I like having some dwarfs deep underground so if a siege somehow wins, I can seal off a small but useful segment of the population and rebuild.

[Corai]

I like embarking on mountains/hills and have it all on the surface/one zlevel below. Then once I hit caverns, I make a city down there.

[Quietust]

My standard fortress layout is divided into 13 regions, each generally occupying 1 Z-level, connected by up-down stairways extending the full height of the fortress:
1. Entry level (trade depot, barracks, hospital, refuse stockpiles, and farm plots)
2. Food preparation/storage
3. Dining/entertainment (and more food storage)
4. General crafting materials (stone, wood, cloth, leather)
5. General crafting workshops
6. General crafting output (furniture/finished goods)
7. Magma-crafting materials (metal bars, ores, sand bags)
8. Magma workshops (forges, smelters, glass furnaces, kilns)
9. Magma reservoir
10. Magma-crafting outputs (weapons, armor, metal/glass blocks, pearlash)
11. Noble quarters / jails
12. Common quarters
13. Burial

Other important things (power generation, tree farms, water reservoirs, obsidian generators, etc.) tend to get placed wherever they fit. Early metalworking/glassmaking (specifically, construction of pump components) tends to be done at the magma sea, but that's typically less than 50 Z-levels beneath the surface (I only use REGION-style worlds, never ISLANDs, so I don't get the ridiculously tall caverns everybody complains about).

[DavionFuxa]

How I build my Fortress is highly based on my mood when creating the Fortress, as well as where I embark and how I embark.

My Recent Fort in the Swamp -

I pierced the aquifer, then made a ramp for like a lower entry, then found the caverns. As a result I basically made the majority of my Fortress underneath the first cavern, then I started adding little bits up and up to include barracks, farm, livestock, beekeeping, training, and Fortifications above the aquifer with a Trade Depot below the aquifer and above the caverns.

The Desert Embark from a bit back -

That embark I basically made this sprawling Fortress with little enclosed areas appearing above the ground here and there. While a great deal of the Fortress was in a standard line going down around a main staircase, some of it (such as Food related) was near the surface or at the surface.

The only thing I try to keep consistent is that I make a Fortress that surrounds a main stairwell going down.

[FuzzyZergling]

It depends on whether or not I'm delibrately drilling down to the magma first thing. My normal fortresses are generally shallow was a deep outpost in their later life, while the delibrately deeper ones are just above the magma sea.

[Rallan]

If I'm not going for some kind of fancy-looking fortress design I tend to spread it around. A smattering of stuff on the surface (fisheries, carpenters, farmers workshops), a bunch of accomodation and workshops in the first few stone levels, then once its set up I just head straight down and do a big-assed metal industry at the magma sea with accompanying dining rooms, bedrooms, and a few supporting workshops to go with it so that the guys down there won't waste a lot of time commuting back to the surface when they're on their break.

Then after that it gets messy. My nobles get all their rooms built in the marble layers (I always seem to get marble these days) so I don't have to put as much work into improving room values for them. Cavern layers with plants get their own barracks and a bunch of kitchens and stills and fisheries and looms and farmers workshops and clothiers. Cavern layers with water get a well and a hospital and some accomodation. And the metric assload of unemployable glazers and waxworkers end up with bedrooms dug out of exploratory mining tunnels all over the damn place. Oh and if things haven't fallen apart by the time the justice system kicks into action, I tend to build cells for my prisoners in the marble layer for the same reason that I put the nobles there.

And since I'm really lazy about micromanagement its as inefficient as all hell, because I just can't be bothered checking bedroom assignments to make sure that my smelters are housed at the bottom or my silk weavers are housed near the caverns.