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[Pabbicus]

Judging from the normal amounts of dwarves in a fortress, you don't generally need to devote more than 3 z-levels to living space, right?

In that case, is it best to have the first few z levels, including any upper ones, devoted to defense, with farming in the soil levels, then a few levels down you make 3 z-levels of living space, and a few floors below that you do the workshops and stockpiles?

If so, how many z-levels do you need to devote to workshops and stockpiles, and after that, what level should you begin exploratory mining on?

I'm kind of new to DF, and I've been tripping over myself trying to deal with overall design. Efficiency isn't king to me, though it is important, I generally prefer an overall good looking design.

Should I have a "Main shaft" of up/down stairs going the entire height of my fortress, or should I change it up and use the first set pf 3 stairs I dig for a base to mine out of in lower levels? I apologize if these are common questions. I just get tripped up a lot on certain aspects of DF.

On an unrelated note, my basic setup for my first 7 dwarves might need some advice. I usually go with 2 novice miners for the top 2 dwarves. The third is usually Novice Mason, Novice Engraver, Novice Stonecrafter, the fourth is generally novice woodcutter, novice carpenter, novice woodburner, novice woodcrafte, the fifth is usually novice metalcrafter, novice stonecrafter, novice furnace operator, and the final two are grower, novice brewer, novice cook. I sometimes put novice milker on one and novice cheesemaker on the other in case I get some cows with the migrants. I then pick one at random to put "Appraiser" on, and maybe novice organizer and novice judge of intent. After this I make sure I have some pig tail seeds and two cats for items, and embark. Is this smart? This way I have two miners, a stoneworker, a woodworker, a craftsdwarf and 2 farmers at the start.

[M.R. Siegal]

I don't have a consistent design.  My layout is dictated by the location of underground features/the general construction of the map/my whims and fancies.

My farming tends to be in upper layers but only because I favor making greenhouses.  Lots of times I make my housing units vertical instead of horizontal.  I say just let it rip.

[derekiv]

Might want to cut the novice milker, who can only milk wild purring maggots.
Currently.(40d16)

[Martin]

There's a lot more benefit to z-levels. It takes no longer to go down a set of stairs as to move one tile horizontally. The optimal design, from a hauling/walking perspective, is a perfect cube that is as many z-levels high as it is tiles wide and tall. My current experimental fortress is only 23x23 tiles, but is 13 z-levels tall, with provisions for another 10 z-levels. 200 dwarves will comfortably fit in that space along with all the other amenities.

Consider that at 23x23x23, it's 12,000 usable tiles (walls ignored). For a 3 z-level fortress to be the same size it'd need to be about 64x64 tiles, which is relatively large - about half each dimension of a 3x3 embark.

Now, a cube isn't very aesthetic, unless you're a Borg, but tall fortresses definitely help get things done, so personally I'd be looking at something a bit more vertical.

[Pabbicus]

There's a lot more benefit to z-levels. It takes no longer to go down a set of stairs as to move one tile horizontally. The optimal design, from a hauling/walking perspective, is a perfect cube that is as many z-levels high as it is tiles wide and tall. My current experimental fortress is only 23x23 tiles, but is 13 z-levels tall, with provisions for another 10 z-levels. 200 dwarves will comfortably fit in that space along with all the other amenities.

Consider that at 23x23x23, it's 12,000 usable tiles (walls ignored). For a 3 z-level fortress to be the same size it'd need to be about 64x64 tiles, which is relatively large - about half each dimension of a 3x3 embark.

Now, a cube isn't very aesthetic, unless you're a Borg, but tall fortresses definitely help get things done, so personally I'd be looking at something a bit more vertical.

Yes, going up stairs is the same distance as going one tile forward, but I do use a sort of "hotel" layout for my housing blocks. It's a "pillar" with a "lobby" at the center, with statues and such and less rooms than normal, and each stairwell is surrounded by 4 apartments. This can be any size I desire but I like making the rooms 3x2, and this makes 16 rooms per Z level(excluding the lobby) per hotel, with 12 rooms in the lobby. This means for a 4 Z level+lobby hotel block, there's 76 rooms, and I can surround a legendary dining room with 6 hotel blocks, which means that I can probably minimize space and get about 500 rooms close to the dining hall, without being more than 2 z levels from it at all times. I haven't ever gotten it perfect yet, but that's more than enough for a mature fortress I'd assume. I can reserve space for a (much) larger noble hotel if I ever need it, with 4 nobles to a Z level as opposed to 16 normal dwarves, though I'm still unsure on a few things.

Would it be smart to put a decent sized kitchen directly above the dining hall and a food stockpile in the center? It would certainly save space and allow for more efficient dining.

[Derakon]

Kitchen, butcher, tanner, clothier, etc. should all be close to their input stockpiles, which in turn should be close to the farms, refuse stockpiles, etc.

In general, you want everything to be close. Hence Martin's cube.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

On an unrelated note, my basic setup for my first 7 dwarves might need some advice. I usually go with 2 novice miners for the top 2 dwarves. The third is usually Novice Mason, Novice Engraver, Novice Stonecrafter, the fourth is generally novice woodcutter, novice carpenter, novice woodburner, novice woodcrafte, the fifth is usually novice metalcrafter, novice stonecrafter, novice furnace operator, and the final two are grower, novice brewer, novice cook. I sometimes put novice milker on one and novice cheesemaker on the other in case I get some cows with the migrants. I then pick one at random to put "Appraiser" on, and maybe novice organizer and novice judge of intent. After this I make sure I have some pig tail seeds and two cats for items, and embark. Is this smart? This way I have two miners, a stoneworker, a woodworker, a craftsdwarf and 2 farmers at the start.

I generally just bring six picks along and an axe; I don't see a point in taking mining at the start, because it trains so quickly. Put your points in things that are relatively hard to skill up, like weaponsmithing and  armorsmithing and carpenter and mason and mechanic, and things your fort needs to stay happy, like cook, brewer, etc. Always train your guys 5/5 in two skills starting up, so you get the most bang for your training points buck. Why are you bringing woodburners and furnace operators? Again, those jobs don't take much skill -- with weaponsmithing and armorsmithing, skill makes a difference, so start off with a dwarf that has as high a skill as you can get. Appraisal also trains really, really fast, so why start with it?



This was my standard before, but i'll change it with the new release & need for doctor and a trained soldier to start:

Brewer/ Weaponsmith
Metalsmith /Stonecrafter
Carpenter / Metalcrafter
Cook /Armorsmith
Mason  /Building Designer
Grower/ Glassmaker
Seige Engineer/ Mechanic

put 5 points on each side of the / . It's divided up so you get most of the really hard things to skill up (so if you want to make a high quality ballista you won't have to spend two game years training a seige engineer to make high quality parts) and you get the best chance of having strange moods focused on those same hard to skill up skills (like weaponsmith, etc. -- no moods for brewing skill, so if that guy has a mood, it should bump his weaponsmithing). If you don't have sand on your map you might want to substitute leatherworking for glassworking.

Then i just have everyone mine for stat gains until the first wave of migrants shows up, at which point my real dwarfs do their jobs and the migrants mine for stat gains, until the next wave, etc. Sometimes I'll have the weapon and armorsmith be woodcutter and herbalist so their mining skill doesn't risk taking over strange mood potential from their smithing skills (a lot of people have their woodcutter be their carpenter, but then you can't set up an efficient supply chain for him).

[orbcontrolled]

General layout lessons I've learned after a couple months of play:
-If you want something that just works, make your production area large and open, like an enormous factory floor. Walls get in the way more often than they help. This does not apply to refuse piles.

-Put all of "hands-on" stuff (production, depot, barracks, stockpiles, control room, anything you need to work with frequently) on the 1st-3rd levels. This minimizes the time I spend clicking between Z-levels.
(A cube would be more efficient dwarf-wise, but I find 3 or fewer production floors to be easier on me as a player.)
Hands-off stuff like bedrooms, tombs, and other build-and-forget stuff can go on lower levels. Bedrooms get the bottommost level (or Z-16, whichever comes first) to make absolutely sure they are insulated from noise.

-I'm not quite sure how to word this but... If you are building a cube/factory-floor fortress, and you want to have stockpiles of items that you don't want dwarves using in a workshop (for instance, if you want to keep bauxite away from your craftsdwarves), then be sure to dig out a cavern a large horizontal distance away that you can put them in.
Because of the way dwarves choose the "nearest" item, a craftsdwarf will take a piece of bauxite in a stockpile 16 Z-levels down at the very bottom of your fortress over a piece of granite sitting 17 tiles away (and he will gladly walk thousands of tiles to get that bauxite if he has to). It is much easier to put items "out of range" on the xy plane than it is to put them out of range on the z plane, because you generally have far more tiles to work with on the xy plane.
So moral of that rambling advice: Make a cavern a large horizontal distance away from your workshops, and use it to store stuff that you're reserving for special projects/moods/etc. The cube generally will not suffice for this.

-Smaller barracks equal faster training. Smaller dining rooms equal more socializing. Adjust your plans accordingly.

-Speaking of barracks, sparring dwarves will drop clothes on the floor, and never pick them up, and they cannot be dumped. Thus any space you make into a barrack has a good chance of becoming useless for any other purpose unless you make provisions for flooding it with magma, or build some atom smashers on the floor directly below to drop clothes into via channeling. Design accordingly

-Speaking again of barracks, design your layout so that people entering/exiting the fortress have to pass through your barracks to do it.

-Finally, if you want to take the utilitarian cube fortress and make it better looking, grab the script by Rysith on this page, and turn your cube into a cylinder, or spire, or something. It keeps most of the advantages of the efficient-cube formula, but for me at least, it makes the fortress feel a lot nicer, more professional. I don't know why, but it does.

[Martin]

There's virtually no benefit to mechanic skill unless you are selling mechanisms, and the weight of them is usually counterproductive to trade. And I'd skip building designer as well. If you want to skill it, it's easy, just line up a hundred pillars to build down where you have a bunch of mine tailings, then send him around to dismantle them and do it all over.

I usually skip glassmaker as well since I find that I usually start my glass industry off with a bunch of glass blocks which take no quality modifiers, so there is little benefit to the higher skill. Mason could be argued to be the same, but I find that I want exceptional/masterwork doors ASAP. It puts the fortress in a good mood in a hurry every time they go through a doorway.

I usually put a single point in appraisal/negotiator just to make early trading go a bit smoother.

Really, a lot of this depends on how you usually build out your early fortress. I rarely put points in carpenter because I typically start out clearcutting the map and then making a decade's worth of bins and barrels. Get that out of the way before the ambush/sieges start. The miners make just enough space for farms and starting workshops and then I get that mason up to legendary ASAP making blocks, and the farms cranking out tons of plants/booze/food. I try not to trade food, but if you've ever run out of ammo on a map with few trees and no more bones laying about, you'll want to have that 10K in reserve to buy out a caravan's overpriced steel bolts.

[Martin]

-I'm not quite sure how to word this but... If you are building a cube/factory-floor fortress, and you want to have stockpiles of items that you don't want dwarves using in a workshop (for instance, if you want to keep bauxite away from your craftsdwarves), then be sure to dig out a cavern a large horizontal distance away that you can put them in.

Economic stone mod is a must-have for me. I don't consider it a cheat since any dwarf I can command to build 30 instruments should be able to be commanded 'But for the love of Armok, don't make them out of bauxite!'

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Yeah, you have a good point re: building designer -- I was thinking that over myself earlier today while planning for next release, and figuring out what I was going to cut to make room for a doctor. I like having an architect and a mechanic, though, because I tend to build a lot of traps, bridges, screw pumps, etc., and I feel like having some dwarves with high skills in those areas makes that all go faster. Having my fortress bridge be very high quality gives many, many, many happy thoughts, etc.

[Martin]

Turns out mechanic skill doesn't make for better traps or for faster built traps. It just makes faster and higher quality mechanisms, which isn't nothing, but considering that stone is usually in abundance, just setting a mechanic down to crank out mechanisms that you ultimately dump in a chasm isn't really a big deal.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Are  you sure it doesn't impact speed (at least the speed that gears etc. get connected up)? I thought I'd tested that, but it probably wasn't too scientific.

Hrm. Well, time for a reshuffle. Maybe I'll add in metalsmith and metalcrafter, since they're hard to skill up, but I generally feel I have better things to do with metal.

[Martin]

Yeah, I've never seen any benefit to higher mechanical skill when installing things. Metalsmith is pretty nice to add if you get a mood on that dwarf. Masterwork aluminum statues sure do cheer the place up in a hurry.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Yeah, I think you're right. I guess the real question is how the new release will reshuffle all this. Doctors take four skills! And it might make sense to bring a Soldier along too, to train the starting dwarves -- i always used to have everyone train wrestling just for safety -- but I don't know which soldier skills will be hard to raise yet, etc. Ah well, guess i'll findout.