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[darthbrumbledore]

I'm still pretty new to DF and I tend to learn a few new important things in a playthrough and restart a new fort to apply what I've learned. I took this strategy with Rimworld and it worked pretty well to get me where I felt like I was good at the game.

I'm feeling pretty good about my recent DF play as well, but one thing that still has me feeling shaky are progression strategies. I've tried forts where i just dig and expand as needed to grow, which makes things pretty messy as far as layout goes. I've tried building a basic temporary fort and have my miners dig out my dream fort elsewhere. longterm that could be nice, but it takes forever.

No matter how I build, I tend to find I never feel comfortable enough to really start my industries until after the first year (that could be normal, most of my exposure to other players comes from kruggsmash).

I know in the end how I progress is up to what I want and somewhat the random nature of the game, but what strategies do you all have? How does a typical early-mid fort progress for you?

[towerator]

On a standard (normal place, steel available) map, my progression would be something like this:

-Early 1st year: laying down plans for fortress

-Mid 1st: first industries. A few spiky balls for the caravan.

-Late 1st: I dig to the cavern and instantly seal it. First defences with a wall surrounding the hole, and kickstarting of coal production.

-Early 2nd: as the migrant wave rolls in, I start producing iron and steel. Meanwhile other industries are diversified.

-Mid 2nd: Steel production is up and running; I make weapons then armor for my first militia group.

-End of 2nd: First militia squad (10 dorfs) up and running. This way I'm ready on year 2 when big threats start appearing.

-3rd and after: refinements of the previous step, second squad. Now that the bases are set, I can start the big projects.

[Salmeuk]

Step 1. Embark with peasants
Step 2. Forgo any attempt at meeting housing / farming / basic needs. Live off the shrubbery and pondwater.
Step 3. Force peasants to build thousands of stone blocks
Step 4. Construct gigantic curtain wall over the course of the next 2 years
Step 5. Lose interest in map
Step 6. Rinse and repeat

This has worked for many versions now. You can build some ridiculously large things in the first year if you just prioritize labor over the sanity of your dwarves.

More seriously, a typical strategy to counter messy layouts is to first build a temporary mini-fortress in the dirt layers while you scout out the perfect location for the ACTUAL fortress. You seem to acknowledge this, but it really is the best way to keep things looking nice and organized, since your ability to mine enough room to properly set up industries is hampered by a lack of dwarfpower in the early months. After that first migrant wave is a good time to construct and move into the actual fortress.

If you are playing mechanically, then you can ignore most of your dwarves needs for quite some time, if not forever after this most recent stress update. If you are roleplaying / playing for narrative, then well I imagine your citizens would like a nice room, somewhere to eat, and a temple to pray in, but of course that's up to you to decide!

[darthbrumbledore]

I kind of play a little mechanically with a focus on roleplaying. So, I just imagine the band of dwarves deciding to rough it for a few months while the place is being dug out. I've struggled more on the mechanics side than anything though, as it can just be overwhelming. For instance, there are so many plants I just haven't paid attention to much of anything but plump helmets and pig tails, so I tend to get a farm started day one and brewing going soon after. However, if I can brew most of the plants I get from foraging, and have my farmer help with the mining for a half year or so, that would be nice. Looks like I need to metaphorically dig deeper.

[NordicNooob]

Generally you see all these "wait guys, set up a temp fort or live off the land at first while the 18 miners I brought on embark do their work" ideas for people who like their grand, neat, and sprawling forts.

What I do:
1. Strike the earth. Immediately. Next to the wagon. Dig two squares, one on the second dirt layer (first dirt layer might get treeholes in it) and one on the first stone layer.
2. Stick farms + food industry in the dirt square and more general workshops in the stone square. Dig dining hall, temple, and bedrooms into the walls of the stone square. If out of room, dig new square a layer down.
3. Setup more advanced industries like in-fort magmaworks, a hospital, a library, and a defense system, and make a little aboveground box to protect the initial staircase and hold a depot. Do as required or possible; magmaworks are normally the first of those that I do. These are all low priority in that your fort won't die without them, but they're all still practical. This all still works with the same square system, I typically devote the center of an entire layer for magmaworks, but recreation and things that aren't used a ton will get pushed into a side room.
4. Profit. Do whatever you really want to specialize in or dabble with. Might be a variant of one of the more secondary industries, like if you want to trade fancy cloth or become the world's metalworking capital or murder everything with a pointlessly elaborate defense system, but get your mildly important stuff done before pointless dwarfy extravagance.

It's a pretty fast way to set up a pretty efficient fort, though yes, the layout is very boring even with prettier designs like circles instead of squares or elaborate geometric patterns. I don't use the general scheme too much any more, since recklessly extravagant is superior to practically mild.

[anewaname]

My early-mid fort is usually about 1200 tiles of space (three circular 20x20 rooms in the soil layer and the foundation for a circular 20x20 tower on the surface), and a single staircase leading down to a magma-forge room. In that space, most or all of the industries are set up, animals are pastured in the soil layer, a bunch of beds are set up for whoever needs one, etc. This is the safe haven for the dwarfs while they build more.

[darthbrumbledore]

how do you all expand so fast? i've broken into the 1st cavern layer a few times, and once have seen the second cavern layer and a magma pool, but was nowhere near ready enough to actually build into any of it.

[Staalo]

I dig my forts in phases and tend to use a lot of temporary rooms as I progress. For instance, I might first dig an entrance tunnel and a largish room which at first will house stockpiles but will later grow into the grand entrance hall/defensive courtyard. Then a side alcove to act as a meeting/sleeping/dining area which will later turn into the trade depot access. A wide connected room will at some point be a visitor tavern or temple, but for the first years it will act as space for workshops and food processing. As I gradually get the real workspaces, offices and bedrooms finished, these temporary installations get dismantled and the areas designated for their intended use.

There's no shame in taking it slow. In my fortresses it might take until the third year or so until I get the last of the basics built. Cave access might take few years more. There's no hurry if no one is starving or going insane.

[wobbly]

My own start is a mix between a temporary fort and starting immediately. If you just make the entrance tunnel wide enough you'll have room for workshops. So mine is usually 31 x 11 (as much to do with shift+dir being 10 as any other reason). Default start gives 2 picks and thus 5 non-miners. 3x3 workshop is 5x5 if you leave a 1 space gap around it. You can set the mining priority to dig the workshop areas first. So 25+ long is 5 workshops for non-miners. Width is 3 (wagon) + 5 (workshop) + 3 (some stockpile space). Temporary workshops mostly build bins/barrels/pots or break stones into blocks, perhaps 1 is a still. Then I just take down the temporary workshops as I build more permanent areas for them, with stuff like the masonry mostly moving to where I've got stone to use up. Later on when the workshops are gone you have space in your entrance tunnel to do interesting stuff.

[DwarfStar]

Military doesn’t even have to be important early if you build a sally port of atom smashers, maybe with some other traps. I build a hallway with a series of raising bridges. Most of an invasion will fit inside, then when you raise and lower the levers they all disappear. That way you can build up your other industries which is helpful for the bigger challenge (for me), keeping your citizens happy.

[dwarfish]

I've tried forts where i just dig and expand as needed to grow, which makes things pretty messy as far as layout goes.

this is the correct way to play it. Until you get to max population (your planned max population) you will be constantly renovating existing areas of your fortress and expanding them. If it's too messy then you aren't doing it right, try to minimize your digging of rooms and plan more early on. The only area that should be expanded to max size from the start is your central stair or ramp, design that with your max population in mind. renovate everything later; dwarf fortress gives you the ability to completely change an existing fort at the cost of materials and time and effort, use that

i think the only part of my fort that has seen the least change since the beginning other than the central stair was the tavern/dining room and bedroom

[Starver]

My 'template' is to always have one mining dwarf (at a time, switching between the 2 or, rarely, 3 who are so assigned) as "exploration" digger, sending down shafts to look for/pass by each cavern layer, in a framework of exploratory plumbings of the depths, leaving the other (or other two) to initially dig out the subsoil farms (and temporary storage) and then progress to interlink and infill the exoration stairwells further down as geology suggests, and/or (once the deforestation and plant-gathering is done on the footprint) dig the ground-trenches that are a heavy feature of my forts.

The dwarf that is the woodcutter (often also mason, as the need for more raw wood rarely overlaps with block/furniture stoneworking) and all the ones with nothing better to do than gather plants (includes the farmer, but once the planter is planting they are no longer used for 'wild' harvesting) keep themselves busy, with hauling of their 'harvest' and wagon-contents encouraged once the staging stockpile (perhaps later to be repurposed to the stockpile area that stages goods upwards to the Depot) is dug in the topmost stone-layed, near the entrance(s) that I plan (with future surface fortifications in mind - only one of which may actually be dug until I've made enough surface embellishment, though).

Once someone has gotten around to digging out workshop-worthy areas, I get my first (rock-built) mason's workshop and get a selection of chairs and tables queued up (for training and utility use) and arrange to get a (4-)block of each 'interesting' stone so far discoversd that will be the building material for the specialist workshops (masons (2 or 3), mechanic, maybe craftsdwarf if its a stone I shall be shifting significant spare material through for a tradegoods/mug splurge) that I will site within (or close to) the layer or intrusion of stone concerned. These areas will be quickly given high-priority for the non-Exploration digger(s).

Once I've decided where my accomodation area will sit within the geological column (usually between Cavern 1 and 2, but if I have found marble then I try to use that area for naturally high-value walls for at least the nobles' suites of four rooms - surrounding (in X, Y and Z directions) with the single individual/marital rooms, or at least the plans for them. By then I've got the designated carpenter spamming beds from all the logs I should now have, I can pick and choose a quality of non-wood furniture (masterworked marble, if the geology and crafting RNGs allow).

Meanwhile, I've probably also found time to completely dig out the subsoil farms (some to be converted into sunken surface-farms, once I've erected top-structures to let me de-ceiling them) and get the farmer to properly farm the imported seeds, getting both food and non-food crops rooted with my 'seed capital', and worked out where I'm sending the products, thus where the farmer's workshops, millstones/querns, looms, presses, kitchens, breweries, etc will be, plus intermediary stockpiles. These quickly get their rooms dug out, though the various workshops sometimes get left unbuilt until I actully see the need to press nuts/whatever.

By now, I've surely worked out where the magma is, punctured (ideally from the roof) all the other caverns enough to continue guiding my explorations at a more sedate pace, and maybe have the surface ditches (and walls behind them) sufficiently advanced to downgrade the priority of one or other of those activities (or even had a Miner Migrant, with their own pick) to let me rush into my usual design for Magma Workshop area (a twisty magmaduct below, an area above to array the various workshops over the holes into that duct, ore/flux/fuel/metal stockpiles above those), that is dug out, the duct connected to source, the stockpiles set to receive materials and only when needed do I remove the temporary floor over the duct-hole to put the workshops in.

I'll have probably also by now have had so many migrants that I'm further expanding the sleeping quarter array. Oh, and these days there's taverns, temples, libraries, etc, which I've prepared spaces for (organicallly installed, but systematically planned) somewhere around the base of one of the controlled entrances, I've set up the lever-control-room in the depths and connected it to all the surface bridges that form my multimodal/multidirectional access to (and egress from) the Depot, set up the sally-ports, bellygunner-archery-pods suspended from the mid-air, high-access enclosed walkways, or whatever my plans have evolved into by this point. Oh, and the aboveground (but sunken) farms and (non-sunken) pastures/apiaries/orchards are probably surrounded by walls, covered by rooves (partially retractible, also linked to the deep lever-room), etc, etc.


Well, it is like that if I've not got distracted by a new configuration of subterrainean well/cistern complex (which always changes, as it depends on exactly what water I can use, and where), plus whatever effort I go to in order to give whatever Legendary Doohickymaker happens to wander in something useful to do, entertain Monster Hunters, intercept those with a devious bent, placate or replace nobles with particular demands, tustle with/isolate invaders via whichever defensive measure is easiest to employ, and handle whichever bit of whichever industry it is that I appear to have woefully neglected on this run, all the way up to the point that I realise I absolutely need it working ASAP.

[Vyro]

If there's anything of use I can offer, it is my 'STC' design I use habitually. Most of my forts are clusters of 11x11 (one shift-arrow) square rooms with two entrances on each side that needs them, lined along 3-wide corridors. Said rooms can house up to 9 workshops, either of which can be substituted for 3x3 mini-stockpiles for said workshops, all with walkways and in neat geometrical order. (For bigger linked stockpiles I make an STC room on a level above or below, and link them with stairs through one of the 'slots'.) Or they are big enough for a general-purpose stockpile. Or, with extra columns and statues, they become diners, libraries, temples, and whathaveyous. Or, by digging out just the outer ring, they can be a block of 10 matchstick-bedrooms looking in the opposite directions. And those are the variations that I still remember. Their main benefit is being able to quickly replace one another, so I just dig out a bunch and fill them up later.

In fact, I am so stuck to this system it is now more of a bad habit that makes all my forts boring, so I have to make conscious efforts not to dig 11x11 squares everywhere.

[Thisfox]

I dig an underground bunker, preferably 3-4 z below ground, with a ramp entrance going down into it. In that first room, I put the Trade Depot, and then a hallway to the side leading to a large hollowed out space which is carpenter workshop, food storage, meeting hall, and beds, while everything gets set up. It is usually in dirt.

Next, I breach the aquifer and make a smooth 2x2 shaft through the aquifer which soon doesn't leak... Unless it's a heavy aquifer, it takes very little time to do. I put in furniture storage, masonry, and start on a new meeting hall and bedrooms. I make a waste storage facility a few z-levels below the aquifer, with diagonal entrances from the main shaft, and put in the butchers and tanners with similar diagonal entrances to everything. I want those bones and horns and hair for later, but I don't want them messing up the place. I put in a tallow/lye/other food storage area, and a kitchen unable to take manager requests, so that it will just render the fat made from the butchers without being interrupted for cooking.

Meanwhile, I make a deep downstairs meetinghall/food facility with a pen for egg-producing fowl, and some fancy rooms for private rooms for nobles, and diagonal-doored rooms for fishery and cooking. Querns will later be installed. Food storage here is made unable to collect seeds, lye, fat, or other such things. It also can't contain milled dyes. I go upstairs and designate the upstairs first meetinghall and living quarters as a farming and seed storage area, and because I am OLD I make seed storage bags only: No pots (it used to be very hard to get planters to work if there were seeds in pots). Somewhere downstairs I make a new food storage area capable of holding dyes but again bags only: No pots. Later, that area around the dye will be hollowed out and filled with fabric, leather, and the workshops to match.

In this way, I slowly move downstairs. The area above that was once our first meeting hall is now used for planting, or if it was actually on stone, used for furniture storage. I can even wall it off if I really need to. No dug out space is wasted, though, so I rarely wall something off. My fort does grow a little organically, but with intent.

[Starver]

In fact, I am so stuck to this system it is now more of a bad habit that makes all my forts boring, so I have to make conscious efforts not to dig 11x11 squares everywhere.

Sounds like me.

I tend to go for 2x2 array of 5x5 rooms within the 11x11.
- for workshops (that aren't 5x5 themselves, including 1x1 querns, etc), I centre them and surround with a stockpile; or a stockpile that I half undo to overlay another stockpile to 'ying and yang' to give either two handy type-specific inputs, or a handy input and a handy type-specific output, depending on the need. Or two outputs for butcher, especially, food-products and non-food products, to quickly stem workshop-rotting, even if I've set it up below an open-air chimney to negate that problem at source. Doorways are centred across each 5-length wall internal and external for maximum transit (may put doors up, when I can).
- individual rooms (blocks of four) are connected only by one door to the outer corridor, in strict pinwheel rotation, always doored, bed oposite wall from entrance, any additional furniture in strict order, smoothed all over
- Noble Suites are an "h" of rooms, one entrance to the office/dining-room (according to priority for role need), with the dining-room/office beyond, bedroom to the side and personal tomb off of the bedroom. Regardless of actual requirements.  Chair-table pair, bed or sarcophagus sit against the wall opposite the entry (or the undoored wall, in the entry room), furniture as required  (noble-needs and/or quality up-scaling) gets put into the corners. The walls and floors are smoothed all over, probably by the time I install a resident, but I prioritise doorways/door-jambs, room-corners and the defining-furniture spot ASAP (prioritising the "h" dig, then the remaining room).

Farms use the whole 11x11, with 11 1x11 plots (not optimal, I know) striping. Orientation flips between adjacent farms.  Large-room Stockpiles may follow this pattern too (especially the Depot-staging one, where I reassign the contents of each according to the latest trading whims/directives). No smoothing (farms are in soil, anyway), doorways are maybe centre-edge, rarely doored (if I do, these are wooden, the only exception to my all-stone system (maybe favoured-metal to match a paryicular noble's desires).

Very rarely I fill with a 3x3 array of 3x3 rooms, centre-edge doors all over, for certain stockpile options. Later on I may rip down the internal walls, but leave the revealed floor unused. Maybe external doors installed (3 per corridor edge), never internal ones, no smoothing.

(I may use 3x3 3x3s for individual worship areas, just dug out in the 'social' zone and then designated when I discover a need. The library(/ies) tend to be 11x11, modelled on communal Dining Room areas. I rarely properly set up a Tavern.  Oh, and I'll probably set up an archery-range by neglecting a cross-corridor or two to link up a couple or more 11x11s (and 3x11s between) to make a 'long room' over two Z-levels, to give five targets with my patent bolt-saver drop-offs to the layer below for all misses to be retrieved.)


The 3-wide corridors are initially dug as parallel paired 1-wide corridors, between 3x3 stairwells at intersections (expanded out from centre-stairways made during Exploration, terminated/masked/construction-walled according to what they need to do to pass caverns as they're discovered). I then set up rampways along the centre-division (diagonally-vertical travel) in a strict  "vertical slice herringbone pattern" that does not quite as much aesthetically as it does in my head. All centre-partition that does not support the ramp is dug away... eventually. It's basically my "this level is now done" signal, or at least that all adjacent blocks no longer need more refinement, even if there are outskirt blocks (from fingers of corridors, already dug) to infill/digout with detail. (Prior to partition-removal, the ramp-tile also acts as a possible cut-through between 1-wide corridors, usefully for shortening some same-layer hauling paths.)


Interaction with caverns, magma, water infrastructure, etc is treated as it needs to be treated (while maintaining the same general footprint beyond interuptions). The surface (and near-surface, where surface ditching/other undulations intervene) is a semi-projection of the subsurface. This tends to make it enough not-boring for me to not worry that I'm being too set in my 'boringly' rigid grid-system. There's plenty of other challenges to my pre-conceived planning. Worrying about how to vary my framework dig-plan more organically/spur-of-the-moment is not something I feel I need to crave. There's plenty of tween-grid variations needing to be made, as well as(/due to) other operational concerns!