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[Isngrim]

So,for about a year now I've used the same layout for my fortresses,namely Dwarven and Orcish.

I was hoping that others might have some interesting designs the could share,and that these designs would also help those that were new to dwarf fortress and MDF alike.

[Innocent Dave]

I'm a huge fan of cavern forts - building into the cave walls results in more interesting layouts than just digging into a layer of solid rock.  I'm currently combining this with a layout based on "guildhalls" - self-contained complexes where, for examples all of my masons, or metalworkers, can live and work together.

[Meph]

I often find little lakes with waterfalls to embark on, so you have 2 rivers that flow together with a third outlet... and I just dig out the "island" in the middle, give my dwarves rooms with windows and balconies, and make them run underneath the waterfall. Private wells are a thing, too.

[LMeire]

I like to follow mineral veins and either chain them together for thematic hallways or fill them with furniture for meetinghalls and noble-housing. (Metal-ore floors are treated as if they're solid metal instead of realistic streaking, so rooms like this quickly get high-value with less engraving.)

My process is like so:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hematite vein found!

Select the entire thing + some for a nice, caverny feel and some extra stone for masonry. (If it weren't rubble, anyway.)

"Round" out those edges, it's inefficient space-use, but it looks nice.

Repeat rounding, until all edges are no more than 2 or 3 squares wide in any orthogonal direction. Then once the designation is completed, repeat steps 2-4 until vein is uncovered for a good-sized hallway/bedroom/useless-tunnel-to-nowhere.

[Isngrim]

@Dave
those are fun (sometimes real !!FUN!!) ,done that with Orcs a couple times.

@Meph
Sounds more like a Dwarven vacation spot,lol.

@LMeire
cool.

*pre post edit: How does your designs hold up against seiges?


here's the layout i've been using the most:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Meph]

Fortress design has barely anything to do with sieges. Once the siege is inside, the design does not matter. Only the entryway is important. I prefer very long, very wide bridges. Very deep, too. Lets say 10x wide, 45x long. And at least 15 zlvl pit underneath, partly connected to something nasty, or just my butcheries/refuse piles.

[Jaso11111]

I generally try to change my fort designs but my damn OCD wont let me

[CptCrunchy]

I've been making a lot of large round towers recently, made of stone blocks for dorfs and bone blocks for orcs.  I tend to put workshops and forges belowground, stockpiles below the main floor and offices/rooms above.

[LMeire]

...
*pre post edit: How does your designs hold up against seiges?
...

Like Meph said, it's more important that the invaders never get inside to begin with, but if/when they do I ensure they only find confusion and frustration in my "fortresses".

I tend to make long, winding hallways that move up and down z-levels several times before connecting with another major part of the fort. The current state of unit-pathing being what it is, I tend to get a lot of starvation deaths in the empty bits, (There's always manually moving them out with squad-orders if they're caught in time.) but I also get invading armies that predictably get trapped in the same spots over and over, so drowning/magma/smoke traps in such areas are much more effective. Plus, since the armies are usually stuck in the halls, I rarely lose more than one fort-caste-section-burrow at a time, often with none of the other castes really noticing anything wrong.