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[Maltay]

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.

I laughed.  I was also reminded of when one of my fortresses was constructed surrounding a magma pipe.  It was not, originally, by design.

[piesquared]

Hrm... I usually cheat slightly by sending a team of miners ahead first to discover all the useful/inconveniently placed features (so I don't find a bottomless pit where I planned to put a dining room, for example) then regen the world so I get a useful set of people and no holes all over my fortress.

This approach makes planing a little more reasonable since I'll know roughly where underground features are, and if I have iron, bauxite, etc that I should plan to use.

After that I tend to sort of "roughly" plan out where I'm putting workshops, storage, bedrooms, dining, etc.  Then I lay out the entire bedroom area large enough to fit my set maximum fortress population and a decent number of nobles, and usually decide on some sort of initial minor project (a waterfall, a magma trap, an automatic drowning chamber, or something) and plan that.  Exact placement of other things comes on an "as needed" basis.  I think this makes sure I don't have any really serious issues while allowing lots of room for evolution.

Though I must admit I pretty much plan, for my next fortress, to hole up in a corner or something and dig out a fully-planned semi-epic fortress and completely outfit it before I wall off the temporary one and open the "complete" one to the light of day, so to speak.

[Ter13]

I think everybody here knows exactly where I sit on this debate.

Unfortunately, you would be wrong. AbyssDepths is my first BIG fort. I've worked on a lot of reactionary fortresses. My God Dam fort was quite reactionary, and my first fort was a lucky world gen. It was built into a peculiarly straight chasm with a magma pipe dead center in the design, and a minor river (again, oddly straight) about twenty tiles west of my chasm, perfectly parallel. It was a fun fort, but I didn't know what I was doing, and didn't know I could regen the world using the seed at the time. I'd love to find a similar site again. Except for the aquifer, it was perfect.

[Aldaris]

I have a modular basis ( Nice entrance, depot, industrial layout, appartments.) that I fit together in whatever way works best for what I want to achieve. And fill that in with whatever I need.
(Noble housing with windows overlooking the various big bridges criss crossing the chasm, including the entrance and the magma tunnel. Fancy Underground River Place Thing/ stuff, The endless power transfer mazes...)

[LordBucket]

In theory, with enough practice, my designs will become modular enough that this thread will no longer be necessary.

This is pretty much where I am. Other than the occassional "experiment," pretty much of my fortresses since about a month after the Z-axis was added all look the same. I build a staggered, ramped central shaft from ground level to stone, then start carving out a standard 17x17 grid with three-wide hallways. The grid is 3x3 (of 17x17) on each level, and I simply build downward when I need to add something. Additional stairs are carved into each extreme corner of the grid. Farms are both aboveground, and in the subterrnean soil layer. I build two concentric walls above ground, one sized to my screen size, and the other even multiple of it away, and then build walls connecting them on one side to create a path for caravans and goblins to walk through, adjacent to my archery range and barracks. Trade depot sits behind a drawbridge on the top-most stone level of the city grid. All housing goes in the east side of the grid is housing, all workshops in the west, and everything that isn't a worhsop or a house is a stockpile. Then, finally, I start digging out the entire map starting from the bottom and work my way up.

[Skorpion]

Hmm. I sorta see my forts as being a rebellious few leaving the mountainhome in protest against the nobility, corrupt labour practices, and lack of defenses.
It works well in my current world, with goblin babysnatching having been a problem to the point of half their local leaders were dwarven.

It also fits with my general fort designs and ethics, where skilled jobs are done by only one or two people with high skill, and with as few manufactured goods are sent home as possible, with priority being given to bone crafts and goblin clothing. We import the mineral wealth of the mountainhome and the human lands, relieve them of their food, and wage a passive-agressive war against elf-kind.
By drowning their caravans.

I just hope the titan didn't kill the dwarven liason.

[dsi1]

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.

If I'm not mistaken, gems are always mined out. (they are for me)

[Fossaman]

I've gotten the basics of running a fort down well enough that I like to have some special theme for any new forts I try.

So, I dig a small temporary fortress that will support my starting dwarves while I construct the real fortress. I typically try and make this temporary fortress as small as possible, usually fitting into an 11x11 column.

[Volfram]

I have a modular basis ( Nice entrance, depot, industrial layout, appartments.) that I fit together in whatever way works best for what I want to achieve. And fill that in with whatever I need.
(Noble housing with windows overlooking the various big bridges criss crossing the chasm, including the entrance and the magma tunnel. Fancy Underground River Place Thing/ stuff, The endless power transfer mazes...)

This, effectively.  I have a basic design for my housing, dining, workshop, farming, storage, watering, and merchant needs, I have a few idiosyncracies I generally go with, and everything else is reactive.

Of course, it's often reactive to things which haven't happened yet, but I know are going to happen, such as building more bedrooms than I need right now because I know when the migrants show up, I'm going to be out of room, or digging a channel for magma even though I don't have magma-proof stone to create floodgates with yet.

I would argue that it is also this approach which allowed me to handle having my entire fort get flooded without a hitch.  I think I lost two dwarves(wolves) and all my stuff, but I just started over, dug around the old fort, and later went back and reclaimed it by draining the water out.

Then I accidentally flooded it again.

[Foa]

Well, I just place the basic guidelines, then set down a module ( one hexagon, usually the farming district first ) , which will eventually become a basic complex ( seven hexagons, it does look cool when you can see the whole thing ) .

[TettyNullus]

Mostly reactive for me, only planning I really do is to make sure that nobody can shoot down my dwarves from outside  Though, I'm not sure if my planning is just reacting in advance to possiblity that's been experienced in older fortresses. (Damned goblin archers running around to shoot through open walls.. )

[Lord Dullard]

I don't plan everything from the beginning. Instead, I plan large projects as I go.

This prevents two things from happening:

1. It keeps my fortress from looking shabby, because the undertakings are big enough to be impressive and I make it a goal to try and keep the architectural 'flow' intact.
2. I don't do everything right at the beginning and get bored because everything is done.

Number 2, I find, is the main reason to avoid pre-planning EVERYTHING.

[Volfram]

I find that when I go to plan everything out, I often have to go back and cut sections off so that my miners don't go off and dig out stuff I don't need yet instead of the main farm/bedrooms/workshop facility/dining room/irrigation canal.

This is usually with 3 of my starting 7 as miners.

[Aldaris]

It's probably easiest to see what I mean in the various stages of Pillarshot.
http://mkv25.net/dfma/usermaps.php?fortressName=Pillarshot

[Hyndis]

I usually use the following layout

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hmm...thats actually very nice! I might borrow that for my next fort. Its slightly more efficient than my current general layout, which is a single grand hall with with different wings. One is industrial, one is residential, and the other is for food production/consumption/boozing, so the general look of the fortress is like a giant T.

My only suggestion would be to swap the locations of blocks C with blocks B and E. That way your military will spend more time guarding the front door while sparring.