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[Kagus]

Welcome to the UCC.

Find a castle with adequate documentation in either fiction or reality, and then try to replicate it in DF.  

First up, a few contenders from the Lord of the Rings:

• Helm's Deep
  
• Minas Tirith
  
• Barad-dûr
  

This thread was conceived with the thought of Helm's Deep (which always struck me as a little dwarven, no pun intended).  Making a  large wall around outdoor farmland (tree and crop), having an intricate system of ramped walls and several gates, a grate over a brook or other body of water allowing for water access inside (add a lever to make it "blow up" and let invaders in), and the large chamber at the top which serves as the entrance to the rest of your fort underground.

It allows for the defense of outdoor farms, treefarms, and water supply, as well as causing dwarves to go inside the "civilian zone" inside the chamber at the top during "stay inside" orders, since it's the only section of underground terrain.

Minas Tirith just had to go in for those folks crazy enough to make a multi-tiered marble fortress with the suicide jump platform to end all suicide jump platforms.

Barad-dûr...  Okay, so I've just got a soft spot for craggy obsidian towers that menace with spikes.  Bonus points for a magma-moat and stable bridge large enough to walk an army across above it.

Any suggestions or comments?  I can't think of any particularly interesting real castles offhand...  But motte-and-baileys are always fun, if you can find a way of properly sectioning them.  More goal-castles are always welcome.

There's probably going to be a shortage of challenge-takers with the soon-to-come update, but I'm putting it out there just the same.  Besides, can you imagine one of these babies in the army arc?

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

I was thinking about doing the whole orthanc thing with a giant circular outer wall backing into the mountain side. Having a multitude of deep pits leading to an underground fortress with lava channels crisscrossing every directions to fuel the forges of the white hand. And you can't forget the giant obsidian tower. To make it more authentic start in a forested area and then chop it all down to evoke the wraith of the Ents.

[Kagus]

Don't forget the dam and the lever for collapsing it.

[Othob Rithol]

Castle Edinburgh

What the image does not clearly show (or might for those with an eye for such things) is that the castle grounds are larger than most villages, and that the defenses roll around the crag (to the right back side of the image) all the way down to the ground level.

From my visit, I recall no less than 3 large platforms on the way up, and at least a half dozen gates. Defense in Depth at its finest.

[Kagus]

That looks very complex...   Certainly a contender for those who are more insane than most.  You wouldn't happen to know where to get the layout of it, would you?  It might be a bit difficult to build from that picture alone.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

Try find the layout of castle Edinburgh on google earth. If you don't have google earth search 'castle edinburgh' in google, click the maps tag and then the satellite tag. I haven't tried this yet as i am currently on a dial up connection and it loads to slow  :mad:

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

Some more LotR castles with enough description to improvise from:

The Lonely Mountain: Secret side-doors, vaults, treasuries... Just about the most dwarven castle ever.
Minas Morgul: Chasm, mountains, HUGE bridge. Put it in a haunted area and abandon for extra street cred.
The Black Gate and the Towers of the Teeth: Block access across the mountain pass.

Also, I bet a bunch of the castles in A Song of Ice and Fire have enough description to make a pretty accurate blueprint. I vaguely remember seeing that suggestion in another thread, but don't recall where.

[Metal Chao]

quote:Originally posted by bigmcstrongmuscle:
<STRONG>The Lonely Mountain: Secret side-doors, vaults, treasuries... Just about the most dwarven castle ever.</STRONG>

You could dig a big pit in the middle and put all of your trade goods, armour and weapons in there 0:
You know, as the dragons hoard.

[ April 05, 2008: Message edited by: Metal Chao ]

[grelphy]

How in the name of Armok has a this thread gone on so long without a mention of Moria?

Here's how to do it. Find a suitable mountain square, select the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE AREA on embark, set the dwarven pop cap to 10,000 (or something suitably high) and see if you can get the entire dwarven civ in your fort. Bonus points for mining and digging out the entire area available to you, nevermind the fact that there's enough space for dozens of "normal" forts.

Then breach the pits, die, go adventuring with a mish-mash party of elves, dwarves and humans.

Wow... I kind of want to do that now... dammit, where's my supercomputer!

[Xgamer4]

quote:Originally posted by grelphy:
<STRONG>Find a suitable mountain square, select the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE AREA on embark, set the dwarven pop cap to 10,000 </STRONG>

I think my processor just committed suicide at the mere thought. Thanks.

[grelphy]

I've actually embarked successfully with a max-area, uh, area?

Needless to say, it was slow and laggy as hell, and perfectly flat--nothing at all like Moria.

DF generally crashes when I try to embark on an area that big with cliffs. I'm not sure why, as I have enough RAM for that sort of thing, but whatever. Agreed that it would be complete overkill, but also totally AWESOME.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

How is the challenge going to work? We could turn it into a competition and then vote for whoever creates the best replica. That would be much funner than talking about what we could do. I would certainly join.

[Kagus]

I suppose,  but mostly it's just there to provide ideas for those who have gotten bored with their current forts and need an idea for some crazy new project.

I embarked on a full-sized embark area once...  It couldn't play worth a damn, but it looked really cool.  Gave me an idea for another succession-or-such fort.

[AlienChickenPie]

Dwarves are expert miners and mining is the easiest way to make shapes out of large amounts of rock. This makes rock cut architecture great for DF.
It could range from fancy facades carved into the rock (Petra is a nice example) to a large complex of individual buildings, courtyards and defensive structures, all carved into a mountain (Ellora is a jaw-droppingly impressive example).

There's one major problem inherent in rock cut architecture, and in any other kind of large building- Detail.
Architecture is quantized into units slightly bigger than a single dwarf. It means that a structure with a reasonable amount of detail would have to be huge. The end result would look like structure built by thirty feet giants and full of dwarven squatters.
Besides engravings (and engravings on isolated single tiles to imitate statues), I don't really see a way to increase the detail to a satisfying level.

[Kagus]

You could make chasm cliff villages.  Find a good serpentine chasm and populate it.