Most of the map has a shallow aquifer, so I'm playing around with some new layouts for aboveground structures.
I've done pyramids semi-regularly before, but usually just on a whim and don't really make optimal use of the space. This time i set aside a 9x9 core pillar in the middle with a layout reserved for a 4-workshop block on each floor, and raw materials and peasant laborers are stacked in the outer area. Crafts, clothiers, and jewelers occupy several of the bigger floors near the bottom where the storage area is still pretty spacious. The bottom most level is filled with hovels, the mid floors which are too small for production have nicer rooms for the priests and master jewelers, and a temple or two are going in at the top. The capstone will probably just be hide-root dyed crimson bricks rather than the "traditional" bloodsteel, but we'll see.
I have a simple "barn" that keeps the wool workers from freezing in the winter. Mumakil pasture intersects the barn's ground floor and wooly squigs up a ramp in the rafters.
Often use a little tower connected by tunnels so that archers can safely fire at chokepoints, like bends in the river. This time I build their firing range into an encampment at the tower base, instead of 100's of urists away back in the main part of the fort. Barracks are carved below in the single dry soil layer, complete with mess hall and an aquifer-driven well. I only recently learned that marksdwarves/orcs will store ammo in chests in their barracks, which is at least somewhat useful in this case. (this way the main ammo stockpiles can use bins without screwing up the rangers out in the boonies too badly). Some surface channels make it so some of the ammo from missed shots at the range can fall back down into the back of the barracks and be reclaimed, which is good, because right now they're pretty terrible and are missing a lot.
