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[jasonxfri13th]

My fortress has a drawbridge and then a little fortress with a pathway (made from walls) going around it into the side of my mountain where stairs are and a barracks.
Everything else is pretty unorganized... I build what I need where I need when I need.

[Myroc]

It varies. Usually when digging underground i construct it around a central staircase, which is either built in the middle of a field, or in a mountainside.

Sometimes i build above-ground fortresses. It takes a LOT of stone, so i usually give all my starting dwarves atleast normal skill in mining.

[Jetman123]

I generally dig a shaft straight down, hollow out a large area for workshops and storage space, put a few workshops outside and most of them inside. I build a large wall around the general area of the shaft entrance, and make a gatehouse, then surround it with a moat and put a drawbridge wide enough for wagons on the gatehouse. I then make the entire perimeter of the wall lined with fortifications and station marksdwarves at the corners in case of a siege.

Meanwhile, I dig several levels below and then start hollowing out 3x3 or 3x2 rooms, and offices for the nobles when they do arrive.

[pokute]

Start a basement with a basic farm/stockpile/beds/meeting hall (all in one room)

Channel a dry moat around a large area

Build a draw bridge

Start industries, excavate

Build wall behind moat, fortify wall

[Ancient Whale]

I tend to make very little impact on the surface, at least to begin with. For most of my forts, a human could theoretically pass very close by without suspecting a bustling dwarf city thrives beneath their feet. Admittedly, this only lasts until my fort's survival is pretty much guaranteed. Then I start making constructions above ground. Massive constructions.
In one fort, I made a massive wall to enclose the valley where the entrance to my fort, only reachable by a silver bridge, was located(sadly I've lost the save).
In another, I made a giant square over a small tropical(and rather boring, I'm afraid) lake which connected my fortress to lands beyond.
Now I'm making a tower rising out of a valley made by the convergence of two rivers, complete with a waterfall which I will build my dining room around. Too bad the rivers are full of skeletal carp...

[Skelodwarf]

I'm pretty new to DF, so far though, I have tried digging into the mountain a few times, but I have trouble with this and getting farms up due to the fact I like digging into OBSIDIAN mountains. Not much soil there, and I suck at getting mud.

At the moment, I'm working on digging straight down, with a tower on top of my fortress entrance.

So I have all my living quarters, catacombs, workshops and such below ground, and I'm going to have the barracks, archery range, and archer-posts for picking off people from the tower, in the tower.

I hope it'll work out well.

It's also surrounded by what is going to be a lava moat.

[darksergio]

I just dug a fox hole in the mountain whit a central commnd for the doomsday device and I wait for the orcs

[Greiger]

Wether I build into a cliff or down depends on the map, but I always build a defensive castle over the entrance.  Usually made to look good in 3Dwarf and lifevis as well as be functional. 

Once the baron shows up I work on expanding the castle upward to create quarters for the higher nobles.  If an invasion gets through the gate the gobbos slaughtering those worthless bastards might give me a chance to get the peasant army organised

[Foa]

I make a defensive keep, complete with 9 Catapults, many Hammerdwarves each with at least 10 War Dogs, which are supervised by the nearby Archery Lookout. If anyone makes it inside, they'll immediately be face to face with a barracks full of Dwarven Lords, and War Dogs, and then the fact that the hallways are stocked with turrets, full of Archers.

Afterwords, if they are that great, I'll set out the hounds, as I like to keep a few peasants, and many war dogs at hand.

[Minstrel]

I usually dig into a nearby hill and set up shop there: barracks, kitchen, dining room, farm, a carpenters and a masons. Then when I feel everything is sustainable, I dig out a central staircase and build the fortress around it, from top to bottom.

Mostly. I tend to get ideas so sometimes I change the layout, make additional staircases or, in my most recent fortress, I mined out a whole level and build an underground town.

I tend to make small castles around the entrance, though sometimes I take defences inside.

[Blakmane]

my last fortress was built around a chasm, with no area being more then 10 steps away from the edge, criss-crossed with bridges. I had my drainage system empty above the fort so as to create permanent mist in all the bedrooms/dining room.

And then I screwed up my draining of the cave river and then watched my dwarves get flooded down into the chasm....

[Skorpion]

Generally, I like digging straight down into a flat plain, with a brook nearby.

In the first soil layer, I lay out a pair of huge rooms flanking a 4-wide corridor, with stairs up at one end and down at the other. This corridor goes down until I stop mining out Z-levels for the main use.
One huge room is the workshops, the other the main stockpiles. The first rock layer is for the bedrooms, with noble quarters below.
After a while, I build a curtain wall around my original staircase, and add a secure main entrance to the fort and trade depot.
After that, I set up an aqueduct from the brook, and drive wells into it for a water source for the medics. Two farms underground, one above ground, and an archery platform over the main entrance, and all I need to venture outside for is wood and stashing goblin crap.
The legendary dining room is designated anywhere made of valuable minerals, and is engraved and has an artifact stuffed in there somewhere.
Other artifacts are used for instant room value increases.

My current fort has two soil levels, however, and so the lower one contains the barracks, the trade depot, and vast stockpiles.
The legendary dining room is in the first vein I found; malachite with a few gem seams through it. It's got a malachite coffer as the central artifact, and is dominated by the primary booze and food stockpile.

[(name here)]

I prefer sealing a canyon with a brook running through it, but when that's impossible i prefer an imitation cliff face.

[Razin]

I like to try out a different style for each as I haven't been at this long, but it always has to be built at least partly over a soil or sand area, and on top of or next to a hill/mountain.  I always hollow out a large series of storage rooms in this level, somewhere near where my depot will be which become my food storage and trade good storage, and I stick whatever workshops I need to start in one of these chambers.  These later get move to the specific areas I carve for them later: I tend to use tunnels and dug out niches for specific sets of shops, instead of a large, open general workshop room.  There's usually some sort of fortified structure over or around the depot, though exactly what i build depends on the type of fort I'm making on a particular map.

[Vattic]

If I am playing with a grand design planned, I usually start with a basic fort and then build my real fort elsewhere. Sometimes I start with a simple above ground fort and dismantle it once I'm done underground and sometimes the first fort is designed to be expandable and become the entrance hall or something for my designed fort.

When I build above ground forts with > 1 tall stone walls and fortifications and what not I make sure I build on top of a stone layer rather than the mud, I like how it looks when I'm done .