I've started to refine my fortress builds after getting back into the game, so I'm building up some templates to use. Obviously, the dimensions aren't always perfectly the same, but I try to split things up into different zones or levels.
Here's a gallery to screenshots of my current fortress. It's a bit messy, but the basic ideas are there.
Here's the gallery without any labels on, and
here's the gallery with the labels.
EntranceI always like to have an above-ground courtyard.
- An archery tower overlooking my fort entrance so my marksdwarves can plink away at the invading goblins. The entrance is via underground tunnel.
- Two drawbridges to let me partition the enemies for easy portion sizes.
- An animal stockpile for the prisoners.
- Surface Farm plots.
- Above ground outdoor butchery, tanner's shop, and farmer's workshop for fast milking (with nearby bucket stockpile) and shearing.
- Block stockpile for surface constructions. Nearby is the initial wood stockpile. If I set the wood stockpile to give to the main wood stockpile, then this serves as a quick indication that more trees need to be cut.
- Ramp entrance to base, with nearby staircase to the fortifications on top of the walls.
Depot Level- Dwarven Bathtub
- Cage traps at the turnaround from the main entrance to the fort.
- Cage traps and hatch covers at the start of the main central stairway.
- Initial stockpile is set to "everything", then, as I gradually specialize, I set it to feed to other stockpiles. Tends to serve as my finished goods stockpile for the traders after a year or two.
- Entrance to archery tower.
- Secondary, trapped entrance to the fort. I'm wondering if I need to build it outside somehow to deal with possible miasma from corpses.
Farm- The bottom part of the dwarven bathtub.
- An underground farm very near the surface, with a seed stockpile right next to it. Recently expanded. Multiple 3-tile farm plots for efficient fertilizing, if I choose to do it.
Food Processing and ProductionThe top of this image looks a little empty. That's because that space is where I used to put my dining room in older versions. I
think a tavern is equivalent to the dining rooms, but I'm not entirely sure.
- Prepared Meals (main stockpile for fortress)
- Drinks (main stockpile for fortress)
- Goblet stockpile. I kind of threw this in after seeing that this version of the game actually has a use for them now. Not sure if it's really working.
- Workshops. Kitchens, Farmer's Workshops (for plant processing and thread spinning as opposed to the animal-focused one on the surface), stills, querns and a screw press. All close to each other.
- Useless food that must be cooked before it can be processed. Includes nuts, flour, sugar, syrup, etc. It's a hard, pain in the neck to get a list and select them from the hundred-odd plants and seeds, so this stockpile is a little underdeveloped.
- Stockpile for foods that can be eaten raw. I want to prioritize cooking the things that need to be cooked before they're edible before cooking things like peaches and fish.
- Overflow stockpile to account for overproduction of food. Feeds into other stockpiles.
- See above.
In retrospect, I could probably just turn off cooking and brewing in the kitchen screen for everything except what I want to be cooked, but the menu for that seems like it's missing something. I can't always tell if the cookable plant could be processed and made better. I'll say that I'm using it like an indicator on how my crop choices are doing.
Health Care / Well / Graveyard- Hospital
- Well
- Graveyard
Let's be realistic, this is the most used part of this level.
- Tombs for nobles.
Noble HousingNot much to say here. Just a simple, expandable web of 3 5x5 rooms for nobles. Smoothing out the floor or giving them a gold statue seems to do the trick if they're not happy with the room yet.
Regular Housing + JailsThis design is modified from an old "decentralized living" design I found a number of years ago. one full level can fit 36 rooms, with 4 chains for jail cells.
- Jail chains coming off the central staircase.
- Note that the halls aren't built into a dead end room. You can expand this design for exploratory mining, or making a big sprawling maze of rooms.
Tavern LevelOne dedicated level for the new Locations. It includes a tavern, library, religious area, and their rental rooms.
- Tavern with chairs/tables on one side, food/drink stockpiles and chests on the other, to maximize the dance floor area.
- I keep my Levers over here, since I expect this to be where idle dwarved congregate.
- I leave some space on the outside to add rooms where people can worship specific gods, if there seems like a need for it.
- The rental rooms. They're beneath the location that they're assigned to.
Workshop LevelNot much to say here. The workshops are in their own rooms, with a feeder stockpile surrounding them. Just two levels of these are usually enough for me.
- The outer squares are good for having an expanded feeder stockpile, or for transient workshops that will be demolished later, like the bowyers on the bottom.
Furniture Stockpile- The main central stockpile. I have another one for an internal supply of wood.
- Smaller offside stockpiles have specialized furniture that I want to know I have at a glance. Here, it's checking how many green glass armour stands and weapon racks I have. Checking for empty bags up top is especially useful.
These were dug to keep the miners busy, and because all the furniture in one big pile was a bit of a mess.
Military LevelI'm still working on refining this level, but I think I've got things that hit most of the bases so far. Note that I think it's always good practice to have one weapon rack on the surface for the military to train at. They're effectively stationed in case something goes wrong, and it prevents cave adaptation.
- First is a craftsdwarf's workshop with bone and wood stockpiles next to it. The crossbow squads are all made to do bonecarving, they they're continuously cranking out their own training ammo. That's the idea, at least.
- Ammo stockpile. All types of ammo, all in bins.
- Two stockpiles. One for armour, one for weapons and trap components. I'm having trouble filtering out the non-dwarf-sized armour, and the "usable, non-usable" filter isn't really working, so it's all one big mess right now. It's probably because I've got humans, elves, and goblins in my military and civ as a result of having the taverns open.
- An underground weapon rack / armour stand, so that all the squads can have a place to train that's close to their equipment.
- This stockpile is made for training ammo, and it's supposed to take from the workshop and the main ammo stockpile. No bins, so no canceled jobs from dwarves trying to grab ammo from the same bin at once. That's the idea, at least.
Prisoner Pitting ArenaThis is the upper level of the arena. Just a standard mass pitting zone with hatchcovers surrounded by an animal stockpile. Cage traps on the route out if any prisoner excapes, and a nearby garbage dump for faster equipment confiscation.
The execution floor. Fortifications included if I want to train marksdwarves on live targets. It's messy because this was an old ore vein I cleared out.
- Where prisoners fall.
- Where I station the squad before I begin.
- The route away. Hatch covers in case they escape. I need to add more cage traps.
EndAnd, well, that's what I've got so far. There's a lot more streamlining to do, but I think this is a pretty good mix.
Writing this took longer than I expected...
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Topic: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics (Read 8804 times)