Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Akoto]

Hi all,

Firstly, I hope you all have happy holidays!

I'm trying to do something I haven't done before. I've dug countless fortresses, I've now made a successful megalopolis out of a natural cavern, but the one thing I've never managed to see through ... is a surface city! Buildings, towers, walls, roads, all of that magnificent stuff.

I have tried to do it before, as suggested, but I think I need some tips on how to manage it successfully and with less stress. I'm almost certain I failed because I was making it more difficult on myself. It seemed to me, for example, that I had to individually craft each and every floor tile individually to start a new building on the surface. It took a long while just to make one reasonably sized shelter that way, to say nothing of an entire city.

Has anyone done this, and if so, any hints to make it an easier process? I can envision some really cool surface cities, but not with the kind of tedium I've described! Thanks!

[Chief10]

I almost exclusively build surface cities, so maybe I can help!

My first tip is to always immediately build a small structure around your first food stockpile with a door or bridge, so your dwarves can hide from danger. I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten 3 years into building a metropolis, then 10 goblins show up and kill everything because I've been building a grand cathedral instead of a saferoom.

Secondly, always turn your rock into blocks, because you get 4 blocks per stone, and they are lighter so they are transported faster. Keeping this in mind, its usually better to put your mason shops in the mines, then the block stockpiles on the surface, for faster building. If you're using wood, I don't think blocks offer an advantage other than its more difficult for enemies to climb.

It seemed to me, for example, that I had to individually craft each and every floor tile individually to start a new building on the surface.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. You know you can make up to a 10x10 floor at once. Once you're constructing (b>C>f), you press u,m,p,h to resize the construction. Also, I always build walls first, and only floors where necessary, until the entire building is complete. Then you can go back and add the floors. It's faster this way because you often make last minute changes to the placing of walls, and then you have to go back and remove floors, which is tedious.

Lastly, you don't have to put everything above ground (unless you really want to). For example, consider building a workdshop building, with the raw material stockpile in the basement, 1 z-level into the ground.

I hope this helps!

[Random_Dragon]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. You know you can make up to a 10x10 floor at once. Once you're constructing (b>C>f), you press u,m,p,h to resize the construction.

I assume the OP means you can't have workers build multiple at a time like with roads or bridges.

Been doing a human fort myself lately, and I've been experimenting in some ideas. For one, testing a way to make a wall climberproof. If you build floors around the top of a wall as an overhang, it seems enemies can't climber onto the top. Evehn one wall or fortification will ruin this though, so place the arrow slits underneath. :V

[Akoto]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. You know you can make up to a 10x10 floor at once. Once you're constructing (b>C>f), you press u,m,p,h to resize the construction.

I assume the OP means you can't have workers build multiple at a time like with roads or bridges.

Been doing a human fort myself lately, and I've been experimenting in some ideas. For one, testing a way to make a wall climberproof. If you build floors around the top of a wall as an overhang, it seems enemies can't climber onto the top. Evehn one wall or fortification will ruin this though, so place the arrow slits underneath. :V

I believe this is close to what I was trying to describe, yes.

It was a while ago, but I seem to recall that I wanted to start a building on a clear field. I had to make one floor tile at a time in a workshop, until I had enough to make the entire floor. It's true that I could do the walls of the building first and then do the floor, but a floor first becomes a necessity if you're building a tower or something else with a second floor.

I believe that was the most tedious thing about it, and what prevented me from ever following through.

[Random_Dragon]

Yeah, you can order lines and squares of it built, but they'll still take a while and use up more material.

[Dunamisdeos]

When I built Blazecooks I had many stockpiles underground. Everything else was above.

Stockpiles need to be frequently expanded and rearranged and this is not feasible to do above ground.

[Random_Dragon]

That's what I'm doing too. Is hard to when you want the bulk of it to be directly under the mead hall though.

[King Kitteh]

A fun idea would be to embark on a mountain, build your towers into the mountain, and then shave the rest away. Leaving behind some nice natural towers!

[Ironfang]

I made a surface city when I started playing, I had not learned how the Z axis worked until after a year, said fort was killed off by goblins and were-beasts.

[Akoto]

A fun idea would be to embark on a mountain, build your towers into the mountain, and then shave the rest away. Leaving behind some nice natural towers!

Sounds like an awesome idea. I can't imagine how I'd go about it without having to involve subterranean building, but it's an interesting thought! Advice is welcome.

Come to think, I don't believe I've ever started on an actual mountain due to the difficult terrain. Building a surface city there would be an even greater challenge! Would invaders still be able to get up? I've kind of had the misfortune(?) of either having no invaders or having forts which could easily shut out invaders.

[Fleeting Frames]

You sometimes gets those spires that are in only 1 embark tile - very frequently with volcanoes. That could be partially aboveground and partially underground.

On climbing, also mind the jumping possibilities and trees. JSYK buildings are unclimbable. In that way, an ash bar palisade or raised raising bridge is more secure than a wall.

Though if you build enclosed buildings or multiple z, bridges as walls is not going to save you material as they need floor to be built upon.

Regarding cave adaption, only outdoor tiles actually reduce it, though inside ones don't affect it one way or another. Worth consideration, especialy when after certain size of your palisade it is cheaper in materials to extend your "tower" up to the top of the sky rather than floor it over.

Which is also more aesthetically pleasing:

"Sir, the keas are attacking!"
"Deal with them!"
"But sir, I'm a lowly mason! You need somebody with a crossbow to slay the keas, or perhaps a chokepoint."
"Nonsense! Build a wall to keep them out!"
"Keas fly over walls, sir!"
"Make it bigger. Make it the biggest, tallest wall that ever existed. The wall one writes legends about."

[Urist McVoyager]

You don't need much of a floor on each level to keep building up. Do it scaffolding style, where you build just a one tile thick ring of flooring right next to the wall, with a staircase going up to reach each floor.

My only advice is to leave one wall tile open next to each corner until you get the corners placed, then fill them in with wall. Otherwise there's a good chance both walls right next to the corner will be built before the corner gets placed.

[Starver]

A fun idea would be to embark on a mountain, build your towers into the mountain, and then shave the rest away. Leaving behind some nice natural towers!

A long, long time ago (pre-caverns, as they are now) I set about digging out a massive complex out of natural stone, leaving pyramids and obelisks² undug, down to leave just one¹ remaining properly underground layer through which I had the underground access between the various inner spaces and across to beyond the 'city limits' where I was forced to create the required infrastructure to support the dwarves to supoort the megaproject.

It was a lot of effort. And a lot of 'waste' (probably turned into crafts and mugs!) needed shifting.

Done again, I might choosing a geologically 'pre-carved' terrain and planning around such surface features, with maybe any surface building needed to extend the rubble back up into structures beyond the original ground level, if I could stand it being 'faked' like that, to share the effort between intensive digging efforts and intensive building efforts...

Also, these days, I'd have to cater for a whole lot more dangers occuring whilst in the midst of the megaproject. That old project, I discovered the need to put a (one level) wall around the entire lip of the dig-site to prevent marauding archers from raining death/inconvenience down upon my army of quarrymen (as well as the well-practiced set of protected side entrances (at all cardinal and diagonal map-edges) down into the more traditional underground complex, where I had already added all my traditional anti-interloper tricks with traps (not then wagon-blocking) danger-route diversions and sally-ports aplenty).

More recent not-quite-megaprject versions of this sort of thing has had to incoporate at least a temporary roof across the workings to prevent flying hostiles, as well as the more involved climb-proof walls, etc.  Some of these features are verging upon the kiloproject scale, in ther own right, though. (One could just turn off invasions, etc, but I don't like doing that.)


¹ Or maybe two, I had reflecting-pools in the plan, which needed another 'Z-1' of space above the undiggable layer...
² 3x3 with hollow stairway cores leading to 'skyway' bridges (two 10x1 bridges, mostly, between the various obelisk 'tops', just below the actual spire roof³, just below the original lost soil layer that was the first thing to be strip-mined away.
³ While I insisted on natural (yet smoothed, wher not ramped) rock throughout almost every part of the potential necropolis, I replaced the spire-tips with electrum standalone ramps (and the 8-slopes the next level down for the main central pyramid).  It would have looked great in Stonesense! Although I never did use that back then (and not so much since).

[Salmeuk]

Until the ability to designate the entirety of a structure at once is added, large surface constructions will remain tedious and/or overly simplistic. I don't find it terribly rewarding to patiently guide my dwarves through the floor-by-floor construction of complicated overhangs, parapets, buttresses, any of that fun stuff.  Unless one is particularly inspired, of course!

If it was possible to designate in entirety, you could effectively copy-paste particular structures with the help of macros. This would also let you easily retain your most effective architecture for later fortresses, and make cities as described in the OP more feasible.

On the topic of city-building, I find it rewarding to create one or two specific design quirks that appear throughout your entire city. For example, you could only designate square buildings, no rectangles. You could always cut the corners away from buildings, or use double-thick walls, or two colors of stone, or color-coded workshops. If you stick with your chosen style it can really bring a flavor to your city. Especially if the style is an inherent design flaw haha

Yeah, the most important thing would be to use stone blocks for construction. Or wood, but stone looks nicer and keeps your dwarves busy.

The embark loadout, for my own theoretical attempt at citybuilding, would be


2 Masons
1 Herbalist
2 Miners/Soldiers
1 Carpenter
1 Administrator/Broker/Crafter/Misc.

3 picks
1 axe
1 anvil
100 units booze
50 units turtle
10 cloth
10 leather
As many blocks as you can purchase of your favorite stone

I would consider bringing bronze or better weapons for your soldiers, since it's very likely that your walls won't be 'feature complete' by the time all those pesky 'alpha testers' aka goblins show up.

You should mod your RAWs to force elves and humans against you, for a theatrical triple threat.

[Pirate Santa]

My current fort is an evil goo covered desert I'm slowly building all over the surface of.
Previously I built a peaceful little surface village though, and I still have some pics, though I've lost the save I'm afraid.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I challenged myself to build it human style, so all stone came from the quarry, and most buildings were wood.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wooden wall grates make great fences for your crop/livestock fields. Also balcony railings.
In these you can see the farms, kitchens, and the main workshop buildings.
The big fenced area full of trees is the orchard, where all of our fruit gathering was done. Foraging, fishing, livestock and surface farming provided all food.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I built small private houses for the mayor and the broker who beat up a giantess.
They featured private statue gardens on a balcony and fenced in yards.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Crown jewel was the Duchess' mansion. Double height ceilings in the grand dining hall, with overlooking balcony. A library as well as a chapel to her preferred god. Upstairs is lots and lots of her favored green glass, as well as a private workshop to produce her famous shell crafts.

I find the biggest challenge with large scale projects is motivation. Picking a theme or challenge is how I tackle this. Previously I challenged myself to put everything except cellars and crypts above ground, and limited my militia to 10 dwarves wielding spears for that drafted peasant flavour.

Now my theme is conquer the desert. I set up everything we need to live underground first, and now I'm planning a city of grand surface buildings in defiance of the horrifying goo that rains near constantly.