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[Eduren]

Goddam modular design. I always have to make more workshop space than I will ever need and make the spaces so efficient and modular. Sometimes I wish I could just not care any more.

Oh, and noise, always noise. Even though the wiki says that workshops no longer create noise, I cannot stand having workshops next to bedrooms because it would make noise and wake them up. I always put bedrooms far away from everything.

[Hortun]

I usually build a little hallway leading to a big central staircase. Barracks are built right next to the hallway where windows will be installed if glass is available so that my sparring dwarves will react to any thieves or whatever without needing their squad to be activated.

Other than that I try for a vertical design, too. Usually workshops are built in a big open room, possibly with pillars to mark passages between workshops more easily. Workshop layers are usually speckled with up/down stairs to access the storage layers directly above and below the workshops.

I use one main dining room close to my entrance hall and build housing in a tower directly above and below that. Recently I discovered the wonders of using 3x3 rooms with a up/down stair in the middle for access. Saves me the work of making doors and hallways to access the rooms. Instead, dwarves just walk directly up to their room from the meeting hall below.

Since I don't play with the economy, I always have one and only one engraver who I skill up to legendary smoothing stone, then have him engrave EVERYTHING. This and training my masons with statues to litter the fort does wonders for the fort's happiness.

For the sake of less boring forts and mitigating traffic, I need to get used to making decentralized plans with several stair columns and organic shapes or tessellated rooms. Stuff to make it look more interesting. Like eduren said, I wish I didn't care about pathing distances and efficiency, but I can't seem to get past it. My forts are pretty bland as a result.

[Drinkwound]

I always start off by pausing the game and looking for the nearest easily fortified position or convenient flat bit of mountain.

I ALWAYS build some sort of stairwell going up and down, with some form of shape around it, typically its something like this:

Code: [Select]

WWW
         W.xx.W
         W.xx.W
         W.xx.W
          WWW
x=stairs
W=wall

I ustally have a barraks/still/farm as soon as I can. I never really build anything outside. sure theres the trade depot, the carpenters shop and the stone... but that it.

I always endeavor to give all of my dwarves a 3x3 room with engravings/bed/coffer/cabinet.

Also, if I can do anything about it EVERYTHING is as symmetrical as possible.


Edit: i cant code for some reason.

[PTTG??]

I always have 3-tile wide walls wherever possible. This way, engravings can only be seen on one side, and it looks awesome with my tileset. I just feels odd that my utterly impenetrable walls are a mere two-feet. I'd like them to be at least six feet.

Oh, and I put my Nobles in large chambers that are as low down as possible, which is more secure than the surface rooms, with hot and hotter running magma.
Incidentally, I put my tombs down low as well, sometimes isolated from one annother and sometimes in complexes, where the Dwarves can rest undisturbed.

[Skorpion]

Long, winding entrance passages, to defeat archers. Even if it's just two corners, it HAS to be archer proof.

Barracks by the entrance.

Elf drowning chamber, with seperate entrances.

[Sir Finkus]

I always try and fit with the lay of the land.  I dig into the lower area of a hill and use natural peaks as guard towers and such.  After I've been playing with the fort for a while, I like to claim the hill as my own so the only way to access any part of it is by going through the fort.

:edit: oh, in my current location I have 2 hill areas.  One hill is my main fort, and the other hill is reserved for tombs.

[labouts]

My plans often make it difficult to both make progress on my end goal and make the fort livable within a year or two. This is mostly because I insist on having my elaborate entrance and non-functional aesthetic rooms finished before building dinning rooms, bedrooms, ect. The first thing I always do is make a simple area away from the location of my main fortress for my dwarves to use as a temporary fort until the main fort is functional. This temporary fort later becomes a sacred area where I place the tombs of the first seven dwarves.

[Kilo24]

The main entrance is a 3-tile-wide passage riddled with traps going into a trade depot, and I carve out multiple layers along this passage so that marksdwarves can pepper intruders with bolts.  I tend to dedicate a given level to a given purpose and have about 4 stairwells centered about the place; when I expand I normally dig out higher and lower layers rather than digging horizontally and messing up symmetry that I don't have to.  The entrance way and a lot of things dealing with water are rarely symmetrical; the rest usually is.  I also always like to build a huge tower up centered on my fortress to the top z-level, and never finish it.

[HungryHobo]

I almost always build my fort around a 3x3 staircase down to the lowest z level.
I have to have hatches and doors everywhere that they can fit. I even include dividers in any long hallway every few rooms which have doors.
This has the happy side effect that magma/water floods have never been a problem for me as they only ever effect a small portion of the fortress and I go even more nuts with the hatches and doors in the vicinity of any fluid based projects.

I imagine it to be much like those films where an extra is running for the hatch as the water floods in and then someone else closes it and they bang on the hatch screaming to be let through.

[de5me7]

i always build what i call customs corridors at my entrance. i have a 3 or 4 wide corridor entrance, that splits in to three to five single square corridors with a door at either end and spikes linked to levers underneath. these corridors come out in my entrance hall. The idea is i can spike anything that comes into the fortress and thus control migrants, nobles, diplomats and cats efficiently.

i almost always put a portcullis on the main entrance corridor, and i usually build cloisters (mediaval walled gardens) around my fortress, although they are usually full of statues rather than plants.

[gtmattz]

Bout the only thing I do every time is that my first project after I get the basics established is to make the trade depot a drowning chamber fed by a pressurized cistern.

[lordnincompoop]

I always build a 3x3 staircase at the dead centre of the map, no matter what.

I always build the entire fort at once. This, of course, leaves me with a lot of rock,and I can't use the rooms 'til I clear them out.

I always build a smelter; second thing I do after the staircase. I don't really know why anymore; I just do it.

[Azkanan]

Symmetry.

If I don't have symmetry, or some sort of tessellation, then I fix it or abandon the fortress. I get picky like that, it drives me nuts.

I also have an OverTheTop respect for the dead, so every dead person gets a 10x10 burial, fully-furnished, bottom Z level.

Farms, stills, kitchens, tanners, butchers, leatherworkers, food stockpiles, etc + dining hall all go on the same level, cleverly interconnected.

If there's a river, my Fishery is built in a fisherman's hut with an adjoined room for the Fish Cleaner.

[Eduren]

Forgot the word... where everything fits together. Squares do, circles dont, sort of thing >_<

Congruency? Tessellation?

[Azkanan]

Forgot the word... where everything fits together. Squares do, circles dont, sort of thing >_<

Congruency? Tessellation?

Tessellation - havn't used that word since High school... 5 years ago already? Ugh... I want to die so I can reincarnate and go back to school :3