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[Endemonadia]

I was wondering if any type of stone is better for building outside walls for your fortress?

I guess what i mean is are any stone better than others for fortifications?

Do all stones have the same 'strength'?

[Telgin]

Walls are indestructible right now, and the material doesn't matter.  So, yeah, you can build walls out of wood, ice, sandstone or steel and it's all the same as far as the game is concerned.

I don't think there's any impact on climbing behavior either, so there's really no difference.  Just use whatever is handy.

[Luriant]

Constructed floors, walls, stairs and fortifications are inmune to all damage.
Use low value materials, or infinite clay, or cat soap...

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Construction

[Skorpion]

Whatever you have laying around in bulk.

Personally, though, I tend to favour kaolinite; it doesn't show the blood. For roads, I tend to prefer rough olivine because it hides the vomit.
Of course, then you have vomit-coloured roads.

[Grim Portent]

I favour a mix of wood and the various grey coloured stones cut into blocks. Since material doesn't matter I tend to just take the time to build a pretty building.

If I'm building an important room above ground, like a King's bedroom, I'll usually make the floor out of precious metals to save space.

[PatrikLundell]

If you don't care how it looks, use whatever is closest that you don't have a shortage of (on some few embarks wood can be in short supply, for instance).
If you do care about looks you can either go the "hide negatives" route mentioned above, or try to make it look pretty by selecting materials bases on colors.
Also note that paved roads retain the properties of their materials, so wooden roads can catch fire if ignited (floors, like walls, cannot be damaged, so ice, soap, and ash are a perfectly valid building materials).

[triskaideka]

Obsidian- not because obsidian is in and of itself a better material, but because the only way to make walls unclimbable is for them to be natural stone that is then smoothed by an engraver, and the only way to 'construct' natural walls is via casting obsidian into an appropriately wall-shaped mold. This is, of course, incredibly tedious and dangerous work, hence why most players just do the sensible thing and stay underground where enemies climbing over walls is not (usually) an issue.

[taptap]

Cast ice is really neat for thematic forts (in freezing climate), can be smoothed, engraved and does not require complicated molds.

[Wahll]

Obsidian- not because obsidian is in and of itself a better material, but because the only way to make walls unclimbable is for them to be natural stone that is then smoothed by an engraver, and the only way to 'construct' natural walls is via casting obsidian into an appropriately wall-shaped mold. This is, of course, incredibly tedious and dangerous work, hence why most players just do the sensible thing and stay underground where enemies climbing over walls is not (usually) an issue.

However, if you manage to cast your outside wall in obsidian, it means you have an efficient was to get some magma to the surface and magma happens to be one of the best cleanning agent after (or even during) a seige: not only it get rid of the contaminant but also all of the trash undesired thing your enemies might bring with them like their clothes, armors and body parts... (the only things remaining will be the iron suff, so don't use magma if you rely on gobblinite for other weapon grade metals like silver or if you want to feast on beak dog meat).

[TheHossofMoss]

Personally, I avoid magma-safe rocks or any flux stones for construction. Unless of course, I'm dealing with the blood of the earth on the surface.

[steel jackal]

i generally use wood if im in a place that has a lot of trees, or whatever unremarkable stone i dig up if wood is somewhat rare


although i did once have an embark with a volcano and fire clay, i made the entire above ground part of my fort out of it, though it took several years to actually MAKE the blocks for the wall

[Chief10]

Gabbro!

[IT 000]

Nothing says a high quality fort like a fort built from schist.

[mikekchar]

Virtually every old building in the south of England is built from chert (even all the roman walls are built from chert), so if I have chert, that's what I go for.

[NESgamer190]

As for myself, I tend to use whatever material I can get my greedy hands on if I need stone walls.  (Smoothing out the underground bedrooms is something I opt to do, and making said rooms look pretty...  isn't exactly practical.)

Roadwise, it tends to depend on what rock I have the most of...  So, if I had the most microcline blocks, and have no clue what to build with the microcline, then that'll be their repurposed work.

Flooring, it depends on whether we're surface flooring or underground flooring.  Surface flooring tends to get the log treatment, while underground (where applicable) gets the smoothing treatment.