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[Araph]

I'm trying to plan out exactly what would be required in my next citadel (because I insist on building fortresses with stone block walls around the entrance and an above-ground castle) and this is the list I've compiled so far:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Defense
- Wall
- Drawbridge / Gatehouse
- Guard Towers
- Barracks
- Training Ground
- Archery Range
- Officers' Quarters / Offices / Dining Rooms
-- Captain of the Guard
-- General
-- Hammerer
- Safehouse (for civ alerts)
- Jail
- Dungeon

Agriculture
- Farms (Above and below ground)
-- Food Plots
-- Drink Plots
-- Cloth Plots
- Orchard
- Pastures
- Food Processing Facilities and Stockpiles

Living
- Housing
- Taverns
- Temples
- Hospital
- Mausoleum
- Library
- Cisterns

Administration
- Living Quarters / Offices / Dining Rooms for...
-- Book Keeper
-- Manager
-- Chief Medical Dwarf (not necessary, but I'm gonna plan for it anyway)
-- Mayor
-- Current Noble (Baron, Count, etc.)
-- Liaison
- Throne Room

Industry
- Workshop Areas (each with associated stockpiles)
-- Masons' Hall (gotta churn out those stone blocks)
-- Craftsmen's Hall
-- Forging Hall
-- Woodcrafters' Hall
- General Storage (massive stockpiles for currently unused resources)
- Trade Depot
- Roads

Ostentatious Displays of Wealth
- Above-Ground Cathedral
- Hall of Splendor / Trophy Room / Vault

I'm planning on constructing a massive octagonal wall within which the surface buildings will be built (planning on having a handful of taverns, ornate halls filled with statues, soaring buttresses, and other unnecessarily elaborate displays to flaunt our dwarven wealth) while the actual living quarters (except for the military, who will have barracks both above and below ground) and workshops are underground.

What else would you all recommend adding to the list? I want to make sure I know exactly what I'm going to be carving out and building right off the bat so I have to rebuild as little as possible.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Library?

[nimbus25]

Honestly, besides the aforementioned library, that's probably MORE than what you need, so just random stupid very important things like a lava moat, giant statue, minecart testing ground, etc.

[Immortal-D]

All of those are good projects, but style is everything.  For example; rather than a simple farming area, have your farm stockpile linked to the kitchen 20 zeds down via minecart, so your food/booze creation is directly next to the dining hall.

[King Kitteh]

Are you ever going to have a King/Queen?

If so you could make a large Throne Room.


Also make sure your temple has a sacrificial altar.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Always ensure your library has a pretty open space with desks for scholars and an evil twisty multiple floor maze to keep your bookshelves. Make one wing a seperate library that doesn't allow visitors to add intrigue (and ensure that at least one part of your collection stays in place).

[NW_Kohaku]

You might consider a "foreign quarter" with segergatable housing and tavern accommodations. Also, it might be useful to have separate "jail" and "dungeon" for collecting monsters and/or prisoners for potential use in an arena or just plain live-training the troops.

For security reasons, I also like to have an entrance covered by GCS, although this is mainly my cavern entrances filled with webbed traps to collect interesting visitors in cage traps even if they are TRAPAVOID. You might have cause to set one up aboveground as well, however, especially if hunting for werecritters.

[Dunamisdeos]

I always set up a vault, deep, deep under the earth. It has absurd levels of security and anything that is hostile, immortal, and fits in a cage gets thrown into a cell.

[AlBravo]

Ground level:
Lumber yard
Garbage dump / Refuse pile
Fishing camp
Orchard
Spider holes for quick evasion
Lookout towers
Roads
Moats
Wind farm and/or water wheels

Below ground:
Lever room with optional immured vampire
Well room(s)
Waterfall / grotto
Back entrance leading to trapped labyrinth
Arena
Zoo

Deep:
Magma furnaces/forges
Dungeon

[callisto8413]

Hospitals.  Not one big one (I have made that mistake in Tongsburns) - small ones here and there that can be walled up if need be and don't forget a small pile of food.  Just in case the walled up Dwarf is NOT cursed and needs food to survive the testing.  And more than one well.

Glass buildings?  Tall ones that make useful bedrooms for Dwarfs you don't like.  Forget dungeons - glass towers is how you deal with bad little Dwarfs!

[Sanctume]

I love above grounds constructions.  Blocks will be your bottle neck.
And if you want to view it in a 3d visualizer, that colors might clash if you just use random blocks.

Walls, can be quickly erected if you don't have too much large stockpiles that compete with construction jobs. 
1z wall + 1z dry moat is enough to break los for those siegers, and can help funnel where they can attack, or where you can set your defense. 

And if you have lots of trees to clear, I find it a good balance to use up the logs for floors while using stone blocks for walls.

Early roads also helps make the building footprints easier.

I like making separate farm houses, 7x7 floor space, and 3z high at most with 1z basements.  I like to expose 3x7 then roof it with wood.  This way, I have the option to plant above ground plants. 

As for the farm houses, I make 3 separate one.  1 for plant for food and milling, 1 for brewing only, and 1 for cloth and paper making.  This minimizes large stockpiles.  Food: 1x7 farm plots for quarry bush, and 2 above ground.  Drink: plump helmets, cave wheat and sweet pod; and 3 above ground berries.  Cloth--depends on biome but I prefer hemp, then cotton, flax, and if no luck, then pig tails.

Indoor plumbing to feed multiple well cisterns.  I like lavish prison rooms with their own well. 

[Araph]

Alright, I've added a dungeon, an orchard, a library, cisterns, a throne room, and roads to the list and specified that farm plots should be separated based on the purpose of their crops.

Honestly, besides the aforementioned library, that's probably MORE than what you need, so just random stupid very important things like a lava moat, giant statue, minecart testing ground, etc.

The phrase 'too much' is not in the dwarven lexicon. ARMOK DEMANDS MEGAPROJECTS.

All of those are good projects, but style is everything.  For example; rather than a simple farming area, have your farm stockpile linked to the kitchen 20 zeds down via minecart, so your food/booze creation is directly next to the dining hall.

I concur, which is why I always spend a ridiculous amount of time carefully tessellating bedrooms and cutting stone blocks. It's easy to make a fortress work, but it's so much more fun to make it over-the-top.

Hospitals.  Not one big one (I have made that mistake in Tongsburns) - small ones here and there that can be walled up if need be and don't forget a small pile of food.

Duly noted. I've never had to make a hospital before, so I don't really know what to expect.

[Sanctume]

When I do hospitals, I think about preventing further contamination, so there will be separate rooms, soap supply, and even a mandatory bathtub path.

[bigjaredmonkey]

Build a clown cannon. Literally a tunnel straight from the circus to the goblin ridden surface that pumps clowns straight into a siege. Of course, the only problem you would have is getting wood after the clowns kill the goblins.

[gchristopher]

Build a clown cannon. Literally a tunnel straight from the circus to the goblin ridden surface that pumps clowns straight into a siege. Of course, the only problem you would have is getting wood after the clowns kill the goblins.

I just tested this for the temple game. Trap clowns in webbed cages, obsidan cast any webslinging clowns. Put them in minecarts. If you launch the clowns at max velocity, they have an effective 100% rate of exploding on contact with a solid surface, map edge, or map ceiling.

I was less satisfying than you'd hope because you don't get detailed combat reports for things dying from midair collision. You kinda have to infer what happened from the resulting spray of clown parts.

I think it might work less well if the clown hits another creature. Momentum might transfer and the clown might survive if it has a goblin to cushion it.