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[PsyberianHusky]

I like to find places where a right angle or separate plateau of land connect and make the military complex initially separate from the for and then connect the 2 with a courtyard, I also am a fan of tunneling and making little bunkers that can only be reached  from underground tunnels. I also like making underground chambers that have a full square building inside of them. I can't wait for the underground to become more fleshed out because I also want a reason to put my paranoid security stations

[Grendus]

I always build a 31x31 micro-fort. They're easy to build and very efficient, which helps with megaprojects since you can use the extra labor not spent running across huge forts to do actual work.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-7725-treatysmokes is a good example.

[Roostre]

In my fortresses, only nobles ever get their own rooms.

You're all probably going, "Tantrum spiral imminent! AAH!" But, thing is, dwarves don't mind sharing a barracks with 20 others as long as that barracks is a really nice one. I always have them engraved and decorated with statues.

I know this method works, too, because checking Dwarf Therapist every season or so shows quite a majority of ecstatic folks.

[wagawaga]

My current fort is centered on mist. Every room of my fortress which is actually used, needs to have some kind of mist generator.
If I manage to, magma mist for execution room, instead of actual magma burning poor fellas.

[InsanityPrelude]

My forts tend to sprawl out over time, especially the living areas, as I don't really plan ahead. (I tried to, but I always seem to run into something that messes it up.)

[GrafZeppelin]

I sometimes stop mining out an area halfway through and then seal it off, and then make a pit from the top, and drop captives down into it.

Oh yeah, and I drop untamed animals of all sorts down it too.

[Particleman]

I'm weird about mobility and accessability. Like this.

http://www.dumpyourphoto.nl/files/upload_images/22037/22037.JPG

The lower image is one Z level up from the first. Yes I could have dug around, but those rooms are for soldiers, and having thier bedrooms lining the entry hall means they're less likely to be off wherever the hell if I get ambushed.

Bedrooms are a bunch of 3x3 rooms in a row. A row is seven rooms wide and two rooms deep. One Z-level up from the bedrooms is a hallway running perpendicular to the way the bedrooms are aligned, and stairs are built in between every block of rooms so dwarves don't have to go around. It saves time.

[sir_schwick]

I do not like grid style forts, so my hallways all follow the veins.  This seems pretty dwarfy as my citizens walk down hallways of engraved silver, tetrahedrite, and gold.  At the ends of veins or at forks are spiral staircases for further movement/exploration.  When two staircases are close from the ends of different veins, I usually connect them with hallways through inferior rock.  This means my fort is a large mish-mash of non-symmetric hallways.  All needed rooms are built a short distance off the veins, usually without doors.  Workshops and stockpiles share the same floor for easy evaluation of stockpiles and whatnot.

Defense is pretty simple right now, with all cave entrances being guarded by retractable bridges over a deep moat.  Also my depot stays outside at an auxillary gate that only opens long enough for the caravan to enter and leave.  Might change if flying baddies show up.

Also gem clusters are walled off and turned into the nice bedrooms/offices/tombs of my nobles. 

[Shoku]

We have so many threads abut this sort of thing- why necro one from 2009?

I'm trying to revise my style so I can have a grand hallway with lots of pillars. Usually it was just a winding path with rooms of whatever type jutting out of the side except in a few caes where I had a particular design, like bedrooms.

[Immortal]

I think the necro is fine, no need for extra threads. Plus the other styles above are nice.

I find myself much like the others, except I only enjoy building around weird features, currently a 30z level waterfall (seed upon request). It is a mass of bridges and spiral staircases around the waterfall. My barracks like the few before me keep it as the entrance point with the trade depot not far behind and separate from the deeper fort. I have lately taken a liking to leaving 3 tiles between rooms for the double smoothed walls and the undiscovered black line between. Also I have a desire to build several large joining drawbridges of gold for my entrance.

sir_schwick ~ if you have that on the DFMA I wouldn't mind taking a look.

[Max White]

I like to have, for every workshop applicable, a 3*3 room behind it, with doors connecting workshop and room, and a small passage around the back. This room is to act as an air lock, so if any dwarf gets a mood, I can controll EXACTLY what they get there dwarfy hands on.

[xczxc]

I used to build square forts, 1 z lvl for barracks, farming and trade, 2nd for workshops, 3rd for stockpiles, 4th for dinning room and offices and 5th for rooms. I tended to build everything small.

Since everyone of my forts were boring I became to improvise, heavily, trying to avoid any type of patterns, as a result my forts are now confusing and counter-intuitive, but awesome.

[Horizon9]

I tend to have a 3 tile wide hallway with stairs at the end that lead to the main body of the fortress. I tend to never build anything near the entrance besides the Depot and an aboveground farm. I also try to keep my stockpiles near the workshops that use the supplies inside of that stockpile or creates things that get stored in that stockpile. I prefer not to keep it symmetrical because I have enough problems keeping the fortress running. I don't want to use up any more time building the fortress so that it's symmetrical. Unless I'm making bedrooms. Then I make the rooms as symmetrical as possible so I can fit the maximum amount of bedrooms in the space I have mined out.

[Jordan~]

Everything laid out in 11x11 and 3x3 or 5x5 rooms with 3 tile wide corridors. Everything.

[cog disso]

I usually have the top two or three floors start as absolute chaos mish-mash, since a few years in they'll be hollowed out for farming and storage. The proper fort doesn't really start until at least three Zs down.

I have a personal quirk with multiple z-leveled, smoothed, engraved epic dining halls. They're usually large enough to build small castles in. I carve an enormous room ("enormous" is the only proper word), smooth all the walls, engrave all the walls, and then channel down to the next level and repeat. This goes for between 3 to 5 Z-levels. Around the central dining shaft are the circular bedroom and workshop facilities, punctuated by windows and porches into the dining shaft. Usually I cap the bottom of the shaft with multiple bauxite-built pure water cisterns, which are pumped in from sideways work shafts. THEN I build the large-ish underground castles for nobility, INSIDE the dining shafts.

Above ground, I encase the entrance with ludicrous towers and usually a moated city wall. And I trap every last square within the walls.

I usually have insane glass/metal industries going concurrently, because I believe in ostentation.