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[Maltay]

When designing my fortresses I continually debate planning vs. reacting.

My first instinct is to plan everything.  If anyone has read about AbyssDepths, my fortresses are very similar.  I go weeks without unpausing the game while I perfect my design.  I then unpause and try to make it all happen, dealing with the geographic and social obstructions.

Lately I have thought about planning only for the dwarves I have.  In contrast, designing a gigantic fortress that houses and employs hundreds of dwarves without ever unpausing almost feels like meta-gaming.  I wonder if simply designing for my current needs, as determined by population, would be more enjoyable.  At the very least, my fortresses should have a more organic design.

Thoughts, opinions?

[Wahad]

I usually go by a standard design for my workshop and dormitory areas. I have the plans in my head so they're easy to lay down. What's more, they're also easy to designate, so I can easily add, say, another 10 workshops or bedrooms with a few simple clicks.

My outer walls and dining rooms are more subject to improvisation - I make use of the geography and/or workspace - but have some planning laid out beforehand nonetheless.

The rest of my fortress is entirely subjective to the area.

[Vengo]

I generally have a cylinder shooting down from the surface that I dedicate to rooms, and I surround each floor with workshops, trying to get each dwarf's room as close to his profession's workshop as possible. One floor in the center of the cylinder is dedicated to an incredibly large dining hall, which would ideally have the farms near it, but somehow I've avoided farming on stone through my first four or five forts.

This plan is very flexible and reasonably efficient.

[Jakkarra]

i usually just go through the game with no planning.

it SUCKS!!

SOOOOOOOOO much annoying stuff, like, no more room for bedrooms, things having to be relocated, ppl starving due to bad farm placement, you get the idea...

Id say stick with the metagame, im going to start doing it soon, and its a good idea.

Love jakkarra

[Skorpion]

A mix of both. I have a set plan to work with, and generally improvise after a while. I find it much more fun when I have to frantically relocate things, or strain to rebuild things after caving in a few tiles down through the bedrooms.

It's fun, really.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I usually use the following layout

[Wild Goose]

Nice.

I've got...a mix of both.  I've got some standard local designs (use this pattern for hallways, this for rooms), and I try to group similar things together, but a lot of the time I just do what takes my fancy.

[Mephansteras]

I use a very organic style of fortress growth. My designs incorporate a lot of the local terrain, and my usual goal usually ends up being something along the lines of "Get defenses up NOW", since CivForge gets nasty quick.

Although I do have a lot of basic designs that get more or less repeated in every fortress. Standard bedroom designs, tombs, jail, that sort of thing. I just keep expanding the patterns out as needed.

It's the surface and top few z-levels that are the most variable, since they depend heavily on what I've got to work with (hillsides, soil layers, pools/streams etc.)

[Jurph]

I always assume that the in-game fortress leader (first bookkeeper / mayor) is a visionary settler, and that the reason he left the Mountainhomes was either

(a) the King sent him to establish a new county / barony / duchy
or
(b) he set out on his own to settle the wilderness and make it suitable for habitation by many dwarfs

...but either way, your lead dwarf is a Big Thinker.  I mean, if he wanted to dig a comfy little 5x5 hobbit-hole for himself and say "screw the caravans," DF wouldn't be DF... it'd be The Sims: Beers and Beards.

[Heron TSG]

I usually plan a huge fort, but build it as I go while having a crazy sprawl of a fortress to house my people while they build it.

In the case of migrants... I plan ahead for them, and dig more rooms out if necessary.

[InsanityPrelude]

Pretty much what Barbarossa said. I make stuff up as I go along.

[Maltay]

I usually go by a standard design for my workshop and dormitory areas. I have the plans in my head so they're easy to lay down. What's more, they're also easy to designate, so I can easily add, say, another 10 workshops or bedrooms with a few simple clicks.

My outer walls and dining rooms are more subject to improvisation - I make use of the geography and/or workspace - but have some planning laid out beforehand nonetheless.

The rest of my fortress is entirely subjective to the area.

I have gone through several standard designs.  I continually revisit them for greater aesthetics, efficiency, and modularity.  In theory, with enough practice, my designs will become modular enough that this thread will no longer be necessary.

[Maltay]

A mix of both. I have a set plan to work with, and generally improvise after a while. I find it much more fun when I have to frantically relocate things, or strain to rebuild things after caving in a few tiles down through the bedrooms.

It's fun, really.

I agree.  I find improvisation as fun as planning.  However, the more I plan, the less I improvise.  Whereas the less I plan, the more I improvise.  This may be an adroit way to rephrase my original thoughts.

[Maltay]

I always assume that the in-game fortress leader (first bookkeeper / mayor) is a visionary settler, and that the reason he left the Mountainhomes was either

(a) the King sent him to establish a new county / barony / duchy
or
(b) he set out on his own to settle the wilderness and make it suitable for habitation by many dwarfs

...but either way, your lead dwarf is a Big Thinker.  I mean, if he wanted to dig a comfy little 5x5 hobbit-hole for himself and say "screw the caravans," DF wouldn't be DF... it'd be The Sims: Beers and Beards.

I also append a context to the game.  Sometimes I imagine my founders in a similar fashion.  Other times, I imagine my founders in a manner similar to Captain Mayday and Nist Akath.

That said, the former would be a more appropriate setting to plan a fortress.  While the latter would be a more appropriate setting to simply build a fortress, reacting as immigrants arrive and events unfurl.  Though that is not to say that planning would never take the lead.  The roleplaying aspects of the game apparently comes to the fore in addressing this contrast.

[dornbeast]

Well, there's the Plan, which has eight 4x4 bedrooms around a 6x6 square, with access from above, and the occasional bedroom replaced by a hall going out.

Then there's Reality, where one bedroom becomes 12x12 as I cut around the gem clusters that I want to save until my miners get better at their job.

None of my plans are, pardon the pun, set in stone.