It may be easier just to show you...
http://imgur.com/nFqwir7This is Breachedpages. I've tunneled into a volcano just outside a warm, tropical forest. No ground critters spotted yet, but the skies are full of giant eagles and grey parrots.
Playing with invasions off and vampires disabled to reacquaint myself with the game and to learn the new mechanics.
I use a 20x20 tile grid patten for my layout. (This happens to be two shift-arrow keystrokes when designating, so it makes it easy to keep things symmetrical.)
Legend:
1. This is the grid square right about my indoor farm. I've tunneled holes in the floor to bucket fill the level below for my plump helmet fields. After all of the farms are set up, this grid square will be filled up with kitchens, stills, farmer's workshops, querns and their related stockpiles.
2. My stables. Currently occupied by a dog, a pangolin, a jaguar and an orangutan. Waiting for the elves to bring me mates for the last three.
3. Magma smelters (under construction).
4. Stockpile grid square. Top half is for ore, bottom is for bars.
5. Initial magma smelters, forges and kilns.
6. Future sites of magma forges.
7. Reservoir. Directly above is the statue garden/well room and the hospital.
8. This was my first attempt at a climbing trainer. I lure eight idlers into the room with repeat level pulling jobs, then lock the door behind them and cancel the lever tasks. They have no option but to climb out. In retrospect, I made this too easy, because they only gain skill if they fall and grasp the wall on the way down, and rough walls are too east to climb. I may have to retool this with constructed block walls.
9. The reason I have to bucket brigade my farms (see #1) is because the "aquifer" turned out to be a tiny underground stream that fingers in from the bottom right. And it's only on one z-level. When tapping the aquifer for the reservoir, I wound up tunneling under it, missing it entirely. I had to dig a staircase upwards to actually reach the water. (Surprisingly, no miners drowned in the attempt.)
To do list:
1. Danger room & sparring barracks -- about to be built in the mined-out space between the reservoir and the climbing wall.
2. Build another magma-proof floodgate and get the bank of smelters set up.
3. Set up poultry operation.
4. Finish getting underground farms up and running.