I'm one of those people who have to plan out my fortress from the start, designating all the areas to be dug before the first day is out.
However, I'm not that good at surviving long enough to find out what would be needed in a bustling high population fortress.
I thought I'd start this topic to ask a couple of things:
a) What kind of rooms will I need to have to keep my dwarves happy? (non-obvious ones, like a sculpture garden which I only just found out about in the wiki)
b) How do you lay out your fortress for efficiency and aesthetics?
I'll start with how I'm attempting to lay my fortress out at the moment, so you can point out where/if I'm going wrong:
I tend to embark to flat areas, with a brook and a soil/sand layer or two
My entrance is a small ramp onto a corkscrew pattern circling my central staircase, going down to the bottom z-layer, like so:
Floor 1:
Floor 2:
Once there, it leads onto my trade depot, which is next to my barracks, for ease of dispatching of kobold and goblin filth, should they attack. The barracks have large finished goods stockpiles on either side, so that my various crafts are at hand for trading.
I've split my workshops into two groups, one for farm and food related items, such as the butcher, weaver, and kitchen, and another for stone, metal and wood items. The first group is up in the soil layers, keeping my workers fed, and the second is on the layer just above my trade depot (with the actual workshops out of noise range of the beds in the barracks, obviously). The layer just below/above the workshop groups is reserved for stockpiling the items to be used, such as wood, stone, or unprepared food.
A couple of layers above the lower workshop stockpiles, I have my small bedrooms; 3 squares apiece, to hold a chest and a bed. I build enough of those for the majority of the population cap. Above those, I have larger rooms, for any nobles who decide to stay.
Below the upper workshop stockpiles, I have a large stockpile of prepared foods and drinks, and a large dining room. I try to let it hold at least 50 dining dwarves at a time, to be on the safe side.
Beyond all that, is there anything that I'm missing? And how do you guys set up your fortresses, anyway?
Many thanks for listening to my rambling, and I hope that I've not been blind and missed another post along these lines that I should have posted in instead