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[moghopper]

I'm curious to know how my fellow DF players make the entrances to their forts.
I always make mine on a flat patch of ground and build a bunker over it, with fortifications on the top and a drawbridge out to a cliff, so i can limit entrance at all times.

What do you guys use?

[jasonxfri13th]

3 tile wide path that curves around a few times and is covered with traps. Plus right outside the entrance there is a fort (3 tiles wide) with fortifications.

Right now the ambushes (have been 2) have only had 8 or so goblins. Once the fighting becomes more extreme I might make a draw bridge too. (never thought of that...)

[Vincent]

1: 3-tile wide tunnel into a hill or something

2: Trade depot

3: 2-tile wide stair corridor perpendicular to entrance
Channel out everything but entrance

4: Dig out the rest below ground save barracks

5: Add moat

6:

7: Profit.

[Peewee]

5-tile wide path with walls on either side.
First few rows have cage traps;
Then several 'kobold catchers' (horses/donkeys that I'm not butchering on chains);
--Donkeys can be some badass fighters, by the way. I had one that took out three axegobs before it finally fell.
Then another dozen rows of cage traps;
Two/three rows of weapon traps filled with serrated disks;
A turn to deter crossgob fire;
Then my war dogs... often over twenty;
Then another turn and the trade depot.

After the depot, there's usually a drawbridge or some other form of halting intruders... with fortifications a level up.


Yeeeeaaaaahhh I don't like using a large military.
If I get sieged and they don't go in my hall-o-doom for whatever reason, I start taking potshots with my catapults.

[Flaede]

multiple roads (of various configurations - I'm sure you'll get enough different descriptions of the road setups), the key is that each road each sealable at the far ends, so that the stuff left behind by hapless "invaders" can be cleared off, while a different road is opened up, thus keeping the supply depot open, but the workers clearing debris safe.

Also - a dumping hole striaght onto the depot, right at the "cleaning" exits, so that the saleable stuff "cleaned" off the road doesn't end up taking up as much hauling time. Just unforbid it, and SELL*!

[The V Man]

I usually tunnel into a hill/mountain side with a long corridor and drawbridge into a channel pit. Doors at the far end into my fort and line the far sides of the bridge/pit with marksdwarves.

I'm tempted to see how convoluted I can make my entry though - and how many automated death traps I could setup - like a switched waterfall at the top of a stairway, or a auto-sealing death chamber that drains itself...so many possibilities.

-V

[tacklemcclean]

From the inside out:

Second floor has the trade depot inside, with my finished goods stockpile right next to it (which feels awesome). It leads out up through a ramp to a VERY small courtyard.

The courtyard is surrounded 50% by ledges, dug out to remove the slopes (enemies sometimes still stand there firing upon me, which is kinda fun). The other 50% is the outward facing side, which has two ramps up on each side onto two walls which has fortifications. These lead outside in a 3-tile wide passage filled with 15 traps, and floodgates with attached levers.

The reason for floodgates is that just outside the main entrance, there is a big 8x10 building hovering 2 levels above the ground, filled with water. I have 5 pumps and 5 windmills powering this, and a lever to supply water into the hovering pool. The bottom of the pool is a drawbridge with another lever to it, so when someone is coming that I want to greet in a special way, I bomb them with water.
My dwarven way of saying hello/stay out combined, since the water doesn't really DO anything other than push ppl around for a bit.

[Demonic Gophers]

It depends on the terrain and the type of fortress I'm building, but often I'll build an entry tunnel three or five spaces wide, with a drawbridge/gate and a line or two of traps.  If the area around my entrance is flat I usually either build ramps at the end or construct an above ground castle with a big staircase in the middle.

[Time Kitten]

Usually i start by building a tower, with the depot on the ground floor, floodgate s three tiles wide to close in emergency.  Then as my fort goes on, other towers are added as redundancy.  My trade depot gets moved to a dedicated location with two cave in guillotine gates on a three tile wide path in front of it, and five two tile wide stone guilitines behind it on tripwires in case of anything getting through.  Later, when my woodcutter goes legendary, and finally defeats the forest, i close off all the towers with constructed walls, surrounded by bars and grates so no sieges safe spot behind one of my spires not overlooked by mini-towers itself.  as time goes on, I'm sure the path to the trade depot will get longer and longer, as nothing could possibly get in any other way as i seal everything but a few fortifications to shoot from.

Then i hit the HFS and die... but none of it can escape into the world!

[userpay]

Often I have two courtyards directly out front, the outer one being the largest, so I can catch and kill as many enemies as possible. Then a tower usually goes on top of the inner courtyard and I either put military in there or have a very long drop for pitting. I also like to have some kind of war animals in cages ready at a pull of a lever to cause mayhem. Then into the hill/mountain side a bit filled with traps then ramps into the underground. After that its two turns with guard dogs to catch sneakers and then trade depot in a good sized room before the rest of the fort. Theres also various floodgates/bridges to I can lure and catch enemies. I can post maps if ya want.

[Fugue]

If it's into a mountain, I'll dig in deeply and make a barracks 1z up, all my production and such 1z down, but leave the area directly above the entry level clear on all z levels, so I can later channel it into a natural opened entry for ballista death to invaders. Size varies from 3 wide to 15 wide with marksdwarves on either side for gauntlet of death style entry.

On flat land I'll dig down and shift all the stone up to build a fort with the trade depot above ground, and just wall myself in during non trade seasons until I have enough military to fend off anyone that comes after me. The fort just keeps getting walls knocked down and extended (or just extended) until I own most of the map. Underneath most of the real work goes on as normal.

[GlyphGryph]

I have an twisting tunnel four to five tiles wide descending (usually spirally) into the ground via ramps down for three or four z levels, accompanied by a "river" one or two tiles wide I've diverted from my water source. This long tunnel has subterranean lakes on alternating sides, upon which I put islands with fortifications facing the tunnel edge and entrances to my fort, though they aren't connected to the entrance tunnel, and holes above some of the islands for above ground farming. There are various bridges going over the the river as it zigs back and forth, though I think drawbridges are unfair so they're just regular bridges. Finally, there's a large cavern with my trade depot, fortifications on either side, and four 2 space wide tunnels heading off at various directions into my actual fort.

This is sometimes improved with sections of water and lava traps.

[Martin]

My current fortress has a gatehouse with a 2 tile moat around it, filled by channel from the nearby river. In the middle of the gatehouse is a 3-tile wide ramp that goes down 3 levels and goes about 30 tiles across a drawbridge that spans a chasm. The main fort is on the other side of the channel, so any sieges need to cross the outer drawbridge/moat, cross the 30 tile long hallway that has retractable spikes on a switch (I use regular traps very sparingly - more as alarms than kill instruments) then cross the inner drawbridge/chasm. The depot is just on the safe side of the chasm.

One of my favorite designs is a 3-wide ramp that spirals slowly down from the surface to about 8-10 levels down. In the center of the spiral is a 9x9 room with fortifications from top to bottom. Archers can stand in the room, shoot out in 3 directions at attackers, and then go down one level and do it again, etc. Traders take a while to get down there, but all the turns make it really difficult for gobbo archers to do much harm. For extra fun, you can install a ballista at the end of each run behind a fortification. With 8 z-levels to cover, that's 16 ballistas they need to survive. There's a tiny alternate entrance to the top of the fort with a drawbridge for the start and hauling in from outside.

My current fort design is comprised of 9x9 rooms in a 5x5 grid and I just drill down as far as needed - usually 16 levels or so. The most efficient path design is a cube with ample staircases (I reserve 4 of the 25 rooms per floor to put in 4 staircases each as well as food/booze/tables/chairs so nobody goes far to eat. That's on the safe side of the chasm. Under the gatehouse is the barracks, weapons stores, archery ranges, jail, animal training. The gatehouse connects to the main fort about 8 levels down.

[ElChad]

I have been enjoying making a 3x3 Down Stairwell surrounded by walls (starting off either 1 two layer thick or a few walls with a one square trapped corridor.) Usually I build the walls to exclude the Trade Depot (making a C shaped boundary, guarded by some towers) with a door for quick passage. so I can keep the Dwarves tucked in nice and cozy while allowing the caravans to come without exclusion of Wagons

[PencilinHand]

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-4421-pillarsnarling-sum-204

Entrance is only half finished, the fortress is about a third done overall.

I might restart from my earliest save for this spot knowing what I do know about the geography.

-----------

My primary purpose for the odd pattern at the ground level entrance is to force the pathfinding routine to always path the shorter route where I can station my defenders so they will be safe from arrow fire and still allow a caravan to approach.  I find the pattern does not cause traffic problems and makes for a nice choke point. 

Once the entrance is done, raising the draw bridges allows the dwarfs to continue the use of the dump above the entrance.  Below the entrance is the sparing and archery areas which when completed gobos would have to path below the the trade depo and through the sparing area in times of distress, at the moment there are no soldiers as I don't have the population for it.

The rows of catapults facing nothing are part of my "training and reeducation" program, by the time my dwarfs have completed their regime of training they usually have nearly maxed status(busy dwarfs party less...).  The purpose of the intensive training is to ready my fortress for a huge population influx by training 30 or 40 dwarfs really well in the necessities and everyone else gets to be commoners/soldiery/fun killing time.