Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[moghopper]

I've been looking at everyones fortress designs for awhile now, and I've realized something:
My fort design is 100% different from everyone elses.
If I knew how to take screenshots I'd show some of my forts.

I've noticed that:
- Most people's forts have large, fortified courtyards
- Underground areas are very open and cleared out, as opposed to my more cave like designs
- Most don't use all the z-levels/ use levels for multiple purposes
- living areas are just... odd to me, mine are more like living pods
- most don't use "shaft" style forts
- My idea of defences are totally different from most others

I'd like to hear about other people's styles and some pros and cons (so I can steal all your good ideas)

[Heron TSG]

howsabout you say what yours IS like?

[moghopper]

howsabout you say what yours IS like?

Because stealing my own ideas is lame

[Heron TSG]

then how do we tell how ours are different?

[Augustus]

Everyones forts need more



<---- Cows

[Lord Dullard]

What Barbarossa said. It's hard to give someone design tips if you don't know their current approach to things. Upload your fortress to the map archive and post a link.

[moghopper]

then how do we tell how ours are different?

Check the list above

But if you insist...
Mine are straight shaft down, right to the bottom
Third from bottom is bedrooms, second from bottom is food and dining rooms, bottom is tombs
First soil layer is workshops, all shops are in lines of 7 in a 11x4 room
farms are either on first or second soil, are farms are separate 5x5
all layers below are mines.
What Really sets mine apart from the forts I've seen is the layout.
All my levels are made of 4 3x3 tunnels going north,south, east, west. all straight.
most other people's forts are also more open inside, like greathalls and such. I NEVER do that.

Not very descriptive I know, but if i could post pics I would

[Erlend]

i only make rooms and long corridors,

[Raz]

Not very descriptive I know, but if i could post pics I would

Click

[Smew]

I suppose it all depends on how people think dwarves would live.
I imagine dwarves to be a proud race, with over-the-top mountainhalls, complete with 5 story high dining halls, an XBOX-HUEG room for the king/mayor/nobles to sit/attend meetings.
Basically, I imagine that dwarves all fancy themselves to be kings.
And I kinda base my fortresses around that.

[Luraien]

I try and find a mountianside made from sand, so layers one and two are stoneless and saves a load of rock dumping. It's also easier to store things quickly because you don't have to worry about dumping things first, but before building I make sure I've non-economic rock to build with. I spam cage traps at the entry and have 3 wrestlers finish off survivors. Very basic but effective.

[Untelligent]

Raz, you're doing it wrong.

Not very descriptive I know, but if i could post pics I would

1) Find the printscreen button (prt sc) on your keyboard.

2) Go to the place you want to take a screenshot of and press alt-printscreen.

3) Open up your favorite image editor (ms paint works well) and paste the screenshot. Shrink the canvas if necessary. Save your image as a .png file.

4) Find an image host site. Photobucket and tinypic are the best two (I use photobucket, tinypic is simpler and doesn't require you to make an account there but I'm not sure if it keeps your images handy for you). Upload your image there.

5) If you use photobucket, you should receive several links. Copy/paste the IMG link into the Bay12 Forum text entry. Post as needed. Alternatively, copy the direct link and put it inside  tags. I'm not sure if Tinypic gives you an IMG link, but it should give you a direct link. Do not use any other links they give you.


Finally, if you feel your image is a bit large for this forum, you can put it inside a spoiler box.

[Nitrousoxide]

I suppose it all depends on how people think dwarves would live.
I imagine dwarves to be a proud race, with over-the-top mountainhalls, complete with 5 story high dining halls, an XBOX-HUEG room for the king/mayor/nobles to sit/attend meetings.
Basically, I imagine that dwarves all fancy themselves to be kings.
And I kinda base my fortresses around that.

This is how I approach my fortresses.  My entrances are carved into the mountain side, are several stories of smoothed rock tall, and have giant 4 tile pillers leading up to the roof of the main entrance.

Imagine the inside of Mines of Moria from the Lord of the Rings movie with the giant pillars.  Yeah, that's what my dining hall should looks like, with streams of water flowing down from 4 stories above and a clear glass pillar in the center where magma flows down, giving light and heat to the room.

My dwarves ought live in rooms fit for a king (I turn off rent).  The king must have a giant hall, again, several Z-levels tall, with giant engraved pillars either made out of marble or obsidian.

There should be a giant shaft that leads all the way down to the depths of the Earth at the center of which is a giant 5 tile wide piller around which stairways lead to the bottom.  Across this pit there should be giant 5 tile wide and 10 tile long bridges that can be retracted to separate the levels off from the main stairway.

At the bottom of this pit there is magma

This is a fortress fit for dwarfs.

[Naze]

Large Obsidian tower from the bottom of the map to the top, massive moat, like four or so of the minimap tiles around it, all the way to the bottom of the map, every wall on the outside of the moat bronze. The moat wouldn't be filled, it would be empty 99% of the time.

Lava would feed into the moat via a mass relay of "Triggers" which would be essentially prison cells that filled with lava, killing the occupants and setting off plates that unleashed the tide unto the pit, which burned away huge amounts of the dead matter that was down there.

 I had hundreds of bodies at one point, some of them goblins that were still crawling with broken legs from the fall, others were humans (I play human civs.) that had fallen and since I never use health care professionals were left in the pit.

This causes some problems from an ethical stand point, I mean, I had a few  custom creatures that were basically toned down dragons. Unleash them into the pit and basically anything left alive was munched on.

The interior of the fortress was rather lackluster, I had alot of one tile wide walkways that went between some of the latched on towers that hung precariously or were perched onto small outcrops.

Throne room was about 30 tiles from front to back, 15 tiles wide. It was also the entrance hall with a nice little pool and a view of the other side of the fortress. Workshops were in the SUB basement, a little above the SUB-SUB basement which had an arena and other various beasties that I could either unleash into the "pit" or let loose into the no man's land.

Of course eventually this place got overrun whenever I collapsed my entrance bridge with probably three dozen goblins and my soldiers, alot of the goblins lived through the fall and managed to clamour into this place while there was a show going on. I could have stopped the arena match, but the show must go on, even in war.

Individual bedrooms were no more, barracks woot! No real beauty besides the bloody brass statues that lined the battlements and walkways.

I gotta remake my Brass Blood Castle.

[Heron TSG]

Mine is (going to be) underwater in a dwarf-made lake, so I'm going compact and functional.