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[blaster395]

So I came up with a new idea for a self-imposed challenge. It is only slightly more challenging than your average game because it gives you a very inefficient layout, but it should be interesting regardless.

The premise is that you need to build an underground city (preferably on as few z-levels as possible) that is actually planned out like a real medieval city, with mixed use zones, shops on street corners, cottage industries, inns instead of random dining halls, those kinds of things.

The basics:

• Your fortress needs to use roads of varying diameters for travelling around
• Every building is connected to this road network
• Building types are scattered around. Although you could have a shopping district, or a residential district, they cannot be entirely one kind of building
• Stockpiles need to be re-imagined from the standard 'piles of crap scattered on the floor' system to seeing them as shop inventory. Dwarves "shop" for items when they need them
• An example shop would be a Weapon shop, ran by a Weaponsmith dwarf. He produces weapons inside the shop at the forge, then puts it into 'display' stockpiles for militia to 'purchase'
• For shops where it would be nonsensical to produce products within the store (such as a grocery), give them a dedicated hauler to collect the stock that they 'sell', such as hauling the plump helmets into the store
• Communal dining rooms and dormitories are replaced by inns. They have a hauler or two to purchase the stock that it will then resell (food and booze), perhaps a cook to make better meals to sell, and an innkeeper. Dormitory use is 'renting' a room.
• Houses need to be larger and house small families. Include non-obligatory furniture such as tables and chairs even for 'poorer' dwarfs.
• Use some of your militia as beat cops

Extra Challenges:

• A plumbing system connecting every building in the city to fresh water
• Lava plumbing system to also connect heating and 'electricity'.
• Power plants to pump lava and also burn stuff for... pretending you are generating power?
• Add city services that are not actually represented within the game, such as fire services, courts, mass transit with minecarts, libraries and anything else you can think of
• Add areas of extravagant wealth and those of extreme poverty within your city. Militia doesn't patrol poor areas at all.
• For more edgy social commentary, arbitrarily determine nobles and those living in wealthy areas not by ability, but by attractiveness (as per description) or whatever other silly method you can think of
• Add commuter towns and villages a moderate distance away from your main city.
• Occasionally have your fortress elect an incompetent mayor, then fill your fortress with semi/nonfunctional infrastructure and anything else that wastes resources and time
• Pretend the city is in Best Korea and mass produce monuments to the great leader. Forget to grow enough food.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I like it, but develop the underground aspect: should it be in the cavern?

If so may I suggest public zoo and mushroom garden? And a massive deep road to exit the map for the caravans to use.

[blaster395]

You dig out all the roads and houses, not construct them in already hollow areas, so you shouldn't be using caverns for this beyond what you normally use caverns for.

[AutomataKittay]

I've seen similar things done, but it's still pretty neat idea to play around with, seems more alive sometimes too

[MrWillsauce]

For more edgy social commentary, arbitrarily determine nobles and those living in wealthy areas not by ability, but by attractiveness (as per description) or whatever other silly method you can think of

Status should definitely be determined by the quality of one's beard. Sorry ladies.

[Hammerstar]

For more edgy social commentary, arbitrarily determine nobles and those living in wealthy areas not by ability, but by attractiveness (as per description) or whatever other silly method you can think of

Status should definitely be determined by the quality of one's beard. Sorry ladies.

My lady dwarves all have beards.

[MrWillsauce]

For more edgy social commentary, arbitrarily determine nobles and those living in wealthy areas not by ability, but by attractiveness (as per description) or whatever other silly method you can think of

Status should definitely be determined by the quality of one's beard. Sorry ladies.

My lady dwarves all have beards.

You are playing dwarf fortress correctly. I really wish they had beards by default.

[thegoatgod_pan]

For more edgy social commentary, arbitrarily determine nobles and those living in wealthy areas not by ability, but by attractiveness (as per description) or whatever other silly method you can think of

Status should definitely be determined by the quality of one's beard. Sorry ladies.

My lady dwarves all have beards.

You are playing dwarf fortress correctly. I really wish they had beards by default.

They sorta do. Being the default how-to-modding guide in the default file explains precisely that, and even suggests adding the necessary bracket to an already-written set of raws, it is as if Toady welcomed you to dive into the exciting world of raw editing my letting dwarven women share in their bearded birthright.

[napancux]

Can you explain more about "shops"?

Is it basically a quantum stockpile in the same building as workshop? Or there's something more to it?

Anyways, I really like the idea. Will probably try it sometime.

[Drazinononda]

that is actually planned out like a real medieval city

You mean like a... post-medieval city? Medieval cities were pretty haphazard, actually. For example, Paris:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris#Cityscape

And even those nice big avenues weren't there until Baron Haussmann's redesign of the city began in the 1850's. It was all tangled streets, as were the norm back in the day when people were just like "oh we need a building, let's put it next to this building" and there wasn't any planning.

[Azated]

I've done this several times before, albeit aboveground. I have a few fortress designs, ranging from communal, goody two shoes fortresses to class based housing to corrupt military control. One of my favorite fortresses had nobles in a heavily fortified interior keep, surrounded by an equally fortified military district. The peasantry were on the outside with badly designed and massively scattered housing and little farms of their own.

[Gentlefish]

I was thinking that all of the building's entrances would be on 1 z-level, With skyscraper-esque buildings, and the stone outside them is carved out, with the layer above the highest building almost empty. Given the way cave-ins work these days, this should be possible.

There would be one, and only one ramp, that allowed traders into your glorious city. This ramp has a solid, smoothed base and "guide rails" along the sides of the three-wide road that are engraved with the history of the fort.

Oh, yeah, all the building walls are smoothed, too. Even the roofs that you must manage to reach.

[Tally]

If you hollow the whole thing out before building (or plan out a very hollowed out town design otherwise), setting up a mass transit/hauling system would be very easy. Set up a water reactor somewhere in the city, and you're good to go. Just put all your tracks on the second level up, with your track stops either on the first or second floor (roof access for the poor folk perhaps).

I'm actually interested to try this.

[Uggh]

I like the idea of giving every dwarf a complete apartment with bedroom, living room ,etc.
Married couples and children share a bedroom, will they also share a dining room if you assign the table to an individual (claiming joined ownership)?

[Tally]

Giving each dwarf its own house with the workshop right in it also makes it really easy to assign very condensed burrows, especially for important workers such as smiths. I'm trying the base idea of this 'challenge' out, and my basic plan so far is to have most of the houses be 3 levels tall. Workshops and a small stockpile in the middle, larger stockpile on the top, and bedroom/dining room in the basement. I then plan to have minecarts for supplies on the top-level and dwarf-transit minecarts on the bottom level. Now that I think on it, though, I wonder why I'd need dwarf-transit carts anyway.