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[NESgamer190]

So, I've been a tad curious in terms of fortress design, but in terms of workshops, I am curious as to how many instances of a particular workshop you would consider.

For myself, I generally have three of a workshop except for the following:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Five Wood Furnaces
• Five Smelters
• Five Forges
• Five Kilns
• Five Glass Furnaces
• One Ashery
• One Soaper's Workshop
• One Siege Workshop
• One Kennel
• One Millstone/Quern
• One Screw Press

I do wonder what you folks work with in terms of workshops.

[NullForceOmega]

One of everything except crafstdwarf shops, two of those.  Until I set up the Magma Works, then there will be between 4 and 8 of each magma workshop.

[Skullsploder]

Two of everything, with some exceptions:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• 2 craftsdwarves for each material (remains, stone, wood)
• 1 butcher and 1 tanner
• 1 siege workshop if any
• Tons of wood furnaces
• And then we reach the magma forges:
  
  • 5 forges and counting for the legendary smiths.
  • 4 forges for the general haulers and unskilled labourers to gain some insight into smithing so that they create a true dwarven creation when they mood
  • 9 furnaces to melt down the crap the casuals produce and to make more steel and smelt more silver for the legends.

[forsaken1111]

I usually do 4 of each workshop for completeness, with a small raw materials stockpile in the center for whatever materials they use. These small stockpiles are set to take from my larger stockpiles.

When I get to magma forges and the like I double up, so 8 of each.

[Immortal-D]

Early on, I run 4 Masons & 2 Carpenters to ensure ample supply of furniture.  Beyond that, really depends on what resources I have and if I am focusing on a particular industry.  For example, my current Fortress has Sunberries and a large variety of gem stones.  Thus I have 3 Distilleries working round the clock, plus 4 Jewelers for cutting and 1 dedicated Jeweler for encrusting masterworks.

[Niddhoger]

I tend to make several farmer's workshops.  One or two out in the fields to shear animals and make milk/cheese.  Another few by the textile stockpile/adjacent to the loom to make thread for cloth.  If I go crazy with butchering there might wind up one next to the butchers to process animal hair into surgical thread (I carefully control the hospital to make sure they only use junk hair).  The hair from cavern beasties I usually wind up selling.... it actually retains the x3/x5 value multipliers.  There are another few near the main raw-veggies stockpile to process quarry bushes and sweet pods.  I usually wind up with... oh 8-10 eventually?

The next is craftdorfshops... just far too many materials they can process.  At least two (sometimes up to 5) "disposing" of stone crafts and another two near the butchers.  I never bother with adding one near the wood unless there are no elves to trade with.  Wooden crafts are bogus to sell and spiked wooden balls sell -way- too much for how worthless they really are.  So if I'm not making wooden pots I feel no need to add one.  Besides, after I have bins and beds taken care of all wood becomes either ash or charcoal.  Even after you gain magma forges, that steel doesn't carbonize itself.  Ash becomes either soap or the occasional pearlash if I feel like fooling with that.  Fertilizer is a complete waste of time with trees and gatherers and trap lines for wild beasties. 

Mason is at least two- one to train masons on cutting blocks and one to churn out early furniture.  If I go crazy with megaprojects this will obviously increase.

I rarely make more than one of the glass or kiln shops.  I've never made a glass mega-project and glazed pottery is more trouble that its worth... I tend to just have one legendary of each just to say I have them.  If I decide to go crazy with blinging everything out with jewels, I might make a few more glass furnaces to churn out raw glass to use as gems.

Jewelers... depends on how crazy I get with mining gems and how many glass gems I make: 2, 4, or 6.

Making full-fort militaries to prevent item ware feels exploity to me, so I make all my clothes.  Thus I have 3-5 rows of textile buildings in a line... FW->loom->dyers->clothesmakers all touching each other and using the previous workshop as a stockpile (with a dye stockpile to the side of the dyers, ofc). 

If possible I always make a bee-industry.  This means I need an extra presser to handle the beeswax.  I press the spare rock nuts as well... no point letting those hit 200 and just fizzle away.  I need at least as many querns and millstones as I have dyer's shops as well to keep the dye flowing (I use underground "aboveground" farms to keep dye flowing year round)

I... I usually don't build that many forges and furnaces.  I train a couple of legendary smiths and maybe a couple of extra forges to groom scud-labor for a proper strange mood (NO DAMNIT! I do NOT want another artifact wooden mug!)

I tend to play games by ear though.  I have a general idea for what I'm going to do (GIANT HONKING CASTLE! COlONIZE THE CAVERNS! BRIDGE THAT ISLAND!), but  I don't walk in knowing exactly how many of each building I'm going to go with.  If I have kaolinite, then I'm going to build more kilns and actually go nuts with pottery.  If I dont have any sand then I'm not running a glass industry on imports.  If I decide to go crazy live training my axelords on packs of cave crundles... I'm going to need a couple of extra butchers and craft shops to deal with all the organics.  If I wind up with olive trees then I'll press them for oil.  If I'm in a reanimating evil biome then I'm obviously neither bringing live stock nor butchering cavern critters to drown my fort in zombie hairs.  If I neglected an industry for the last few games I might run with it.  I don't like setting every little detail into stone before I play.  Instead, I like to take things a little more loosey-goosey.  Its more fun for me that way. 

[NJW2000]

Take no. of times I neede 1 more workshop than I had + no. of times I couldn't find one of these workshops. It makes the fort look... interesting, with workshpos squirreled away where they have no right to be.

[Albedo]

Yeah, very few hard rules, but some rules of thumb...

There are some workshops that can get "cluttered" - butcher shops are a classic. Mason shops rarely (w/ newer clutter math), but still not impossible, depending how (in)efficient your Haling is. Nice to be able to keep working while you designate a spare workshop for deconstruction, then simply rebuild it and have the items moved aside and be back in business.

Some shops are used for multiple diff tasks, as mentioned above - Farmers and Craftsdwarfs being primary, but the occasional Mason etc as well.

Also, quite often I'll have "training" shops for no-/low-skill Masons or etc. Keep makin' dem blocks, boyz! (These will often be dropped in the middle of a mined-out area, just for convenience.)  Also useful when mass-production is needed, such as for blocks, mechanisms, cages, trash trade goods (for example, stone mugs), etc.

For Glass and Pottery, you need maybe ~3 extra shops to have "Gather sand/clay" orders for every 1 active workshop producing products, to keep that in constant supply. (Note that these do NOT have to be "powered", so can be non-magma, np.)

For key workshops, I also like to have multiples in case of Strange Moods, so a dwarf claiming a shop will not bottleneck that production chain (and so I can lock the ones up front and force them to claim the one in the far back corner!).

And, depending on how much I'm micro-managing things like Levers for color and/or Beds by preferred wood, I'll drop a workshop immediately adjacent to that part of a stockpile while going for that goal just to shorten the hauling process for the craftsdwarf.

[NW_Kohaku]

1 of most things.  I don't need more than one soaper.  My soaper, in fact, is likely also my presser, milker, and maybe a couple other "unimportant, skill-irrelevant" jobs. 

I tend to have more than one mason, however, not because I need more than one mason working at one time, but because I tend to have segregated stockpiles and workshops just to handle specific materials.  (Unless I'm megaconstructing, in which case, I have 2-3 masons making blocks 24/7.  I also go through a freak ton of mechanisms, so I may need several mechanics.)

I also tend to have multiple craftdwarfshops because they handle every material under the sun, and I segregate out stone crafts from bone crafts (which are often set to making bone bolts on repeat for eternity).

I need two kilns (one magma, one not), and two glassblowers (same) if I have sand or clay, because I set one up as sand/clay collector, and then have them drop the sand/clay into the channel to the magma kilns/glassblowers.

For metal, it tends to be more, but it depends on the fort.  My current fort has no native iron, so I've got more smelters than normal to melt down all the anvils I buy into iron ingots.

In general, I've learned that anything more than the bare minimum is wasteful.  The only thing I might set on repeat are my brewers and cooks, and I use the manager for most other things whenever I need more than 10. 

[Bumber]

2 mason
2 carpenter
2-3 craft (bone/shell, wood/stone/leather, potentially one for strand extraction)
2 magma smelters (melting items, ore)
3 magma forges (armor, weapons, crafts/furniture)

One of most others. An extra workshop for gather jobs (glass furnace and loom.) No siege workshop or fisheries. I find a quern to be sufficient over a millstone for the hassle.

[Loud Whispers]

Newborn Fort:
1 smelter, 1 wood furnace, 1 forge, 1 mason, 1 carpenter
Everything you need to process embark raw materials into useful tools and basic furniture is covered.

Early Fort:
Add 2 mason workshops, 2 craftsdwarves workshops, 1 bowyer's workshop, 1 farmer's workshop, 1 mechanic's, 1 kennel, 1 leatherworker's shop and 1 loom. Everything you need to build up all other industries/an early military is there. Craftsdwarves make bone/wooden bolts, bone armour, cloth crafts (for trade) and rock pots (for mass storage). Leatherworkers provide a similar, more niche role, loom+craftsdwarf does what leatherworkers do and better (minus the ability to make shields).

Mid Fort:
Add 4 mason workshops, 3 craftsdwarves workshops, 1 forge, 1 woodfurnace 1 mechanic's workshop, 4 kitchens and 3 looms. Really want to get that economy kickstarted.

Late Fort:
Add as many magma smelters and magma forges possible. The soap making workshops also tend to appear around about here.

And at any instant where higher demand/higher resources permit, add more workshops of whatever resource to cope. One workshop I didn't place in either of the Fort phases for example, is the distillery. Distilleries are always needed and the amount you need will fluctuate wildly with your population.

[RocheLimit]

My forts are generally ~80 dwarfs.

I have:

• 1 Farmer's Workshop
• 1 Butcher's shop
• 1 Tannery
• 1 Still
• 1 Kitchen
• 1 Mason's shop
• 1 Craft shop
• 1 Mechanic's shop
• 1 Loom
• 1 Clothier's shop
• 1 Leather-worker's shop
• 1 Jeweler's shop
• 1 Wood Furnace
• 1 Carpenter's Shop
• 3 Magma Smelters
• 3 Magma Forges, or more (I have 6 in my current fort)
• 2 Magma Glass Furnace

Once your fort is at capacity, I've found many of the shops don't have much use.

The loom/farmer's workshop pretty much run 100% all the time, at least until I get my cloth levels up to a point for several year's worth of clothes.
The still is automated through workflow, keeping my drinks between 700 and 900.  The kitchen is set to repeat Lavish meal; currently at 6000.
The forges are always running, getting all my hauler-dwarfs up to lvl 4 in either blacksmithing, armorsmithing, or weaponsmithing.
The smelters are kept constantly running, automatically melting the (non-masterwork) output of the haulers' training (at one point I had 300 copper battle axes and 400 tin buckets).
The glass furnace is always making blocks.  Why?  Because I like green blocks, that's why.

Everything else, like the mason's, carpenter's, etc., are only run when there is the odd strange mood, or when I need to fulfill something, like furniture for a new room or mechanisms for a new trap or clothes for angry, naked dwarfs.

[Mushroo]

I usually have 3-6 workshops (total, not of each type) in my fort at any given time. I build them specifically for whatever project I am working on, then deconstruct when done. So, if I am low on booze, I build a couple of stills. If I am low on clothes, I build a loom and a clothier's workshop. If I need weapons, I build a smelter and a forge. If a dwarf is having a strange mood, I build him whatever workshop he needs for his highest moodable skill.

Everything is near the trade depot, and I use quantum stockpiles, so you could say I love the efficiency and flexibility of having a small number of temporary workshops located in the very heart of my fortress, as opposed to giving each industry its own dedicated real estate.

The exceptions would be butcher's workshops (I always have at least one permanently constructed and near the refuse stockpile so meat doesn't rot) and smelters (I believe that if you deconstruct a smelter while you are in the middle of melting a bunch of metal objects, you can waste partial bars---correct me if I am wrong).

[NW_Kohaku]

(I believe that if you deconstruct a smelter while you are in the middle of melting a bunch of metal objects, you can waste partial bars---correct me if I am wrong).

Melted objects generate fractions of a bar down to a tenth, and deconstructing a smelter will result in those fractions of bars being permanently lost.  If you have to import iron and melt it to get your steel, this can be a major setback.

Although personally, I build magma forges where the channel to the magma is on an impassible tile to ensure no fire snakes can get out, so my magma forges tend to be permanent unless I did a B100 temporary magma forge and eventually put magma forges up nearer ground level. 

[forsaken1111]

I usually have 3-6 workshops (total, not of each type) in my fort at any given time. I build them specifically for whatever project I am working on, then deconstruct when done. So, if I am low on booze, I build a couple of stills. If I am low on clothes, I build a loom and a clothier's workshop. If I need weapons, I build a smelter and a forge. If a dwarf is having a strange mood, I build him whatever workshop he needs for his highest moodable skill.

Everything is near the trade depot, and I use quantum stockpiles, so you could say I love the efficiency and flexibility of having a small number of temporary workshops located in the very heart of my fortress, as opposed to giving each industry its own dedicated real estate.

The exceptions would be butcher's workshops (I always have at least one permanently constructed and near the refuse stockpile so meat doesn't rot) and smelters (I believe that if you deconstruct a smelter while you are in the middle of melting a bunch of metal objects, you can waste partial bars---correct me if I am wrong).

This seems like an awful lot of work for... no gain at all. Why do you break down workshops when not needed?

For example, I leave 3 stills up with standing production orders via workflow so my dwarves keep my booze levels constant. Rebuilding them every few seasons would be a pain in the ass.