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[Artiph]

If there's already a thread for this, pardon me, but I'd like some opinions.

How do you guys tend to lay out your fortress(what do you build, in what order, where, ect.)?  I can't seem to plan ahead very far and I end up regretting most of the early-game choices I make, so I was curious what you guys did for your building strategies and procedures.

The most I've really organized is generally just allotting certain tasks to certain floors, and I'm positive there's even some bad things about that.

What do you guys do?

[SkyRender]

I have a 36x36 (sometimes 35x35, depending on how lazy I'm feeling) design I use, which has each corner holding a 10x10 (or 9x9) stockpile depot, while the inner 3-tile region from there contains either rooms or workshops, and the innermost 3-tile areas form hallways.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 It works well, uses little overall space, and ensures you won't run out of stockpile room any time soon (especially not if you make it into an above-ground tower).

[Jace_the_slasher]

I usually dig/build a small starter base; complete with living quarters, workshops, farm, and depot; and then from there I'll plan out and dig my actual fortress.

[nenjin]

A few wiki links that might be good reading for you.

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Design_strategies
http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Bedroom_design

I generally start with a flat space with its back against a raised elevation (which tends to be hills because mountains have too much slope, which makes your starting area break over multiple z-levels). I dig my ramps, and do the long narrow choke point corridor. Barracks, training area, control center usually all go there.

If I need to, I dig down here to get away from the edges of the hill/mountain. The main tunnel then splits, putting the depot and crafting areas into their own area, and everything else takes the other tunnel. I try to keep the crafting area as self-contained as possible, so it eventually gets its own living quarters (for legendaries), food stockpiles, and is where the marketplace eventually goes.

Meeting area is the first thing at the end of the "other" tunnel, and living quarters, master dump zone, food production, ect....branch out from that as a nexus point. Later on I make smaller passages that connect to the two major hubs together. My tombs, prisons, and other stuff tends to shoot straight down from the heart of these hub areas.

I map out the majority of my fortress before I even let the game unpause after embarking. I make subtle adjustments for ore and whatever (going to have to make A LOT more here pretty soon), and just remove designation to build only certain wings at a time. My miners are legendary before they even get half done digging.

[Untelligent]

I usually don't plan ahead at all, aside from a general idea of what I'm going to be doing. There's at least one part of my fortress where I just slapped on random bits of architecture until I ended up with what I wanted.


The exception is when I'm doing some kind of fancy design that actually looks like something (like the thing on the back of this triangular building), in which case I'll sketch it out in notepad or something.
 

[SquirrelWizard]

typically I have a base fortress (think base camp but a tad more refined) where I house all my materials, my dining room, giant communal bedroom, and workshops. Typically I branch out from my initial dungeon into my true fortress usually with personal bedrooms, better designed workshops, fancier dining room.

My current fortress is gonna be an ocean derrick so my temporary fortress may just turn into a produce farm, as I managed to get the obsidian laid.

[Dorf3000]

If you're doing some kind of megaproject or theme fort, definitely go with the base camp idea, preferably in soil or somewhere you can collapse in afterwards.  If you're just building a regular fort, try not to close in an area with rooms, always leave a hallway or passage going 'nowhere' and/or space for stairs in the floors below.  Dig hugely wide halls and small rooms in a regular pattern, so you can dig out the dividing walls later if you need a big room there.  Generally try not to be efficient with your space at the beginning, because it will look cramped when you have 100s of dwarves.

[zwei]

Generally try not to be efficient with your space at the beginning, because it will look cramped when you have 100s of dwarves.

This is one of most important pointers.

Always leave space to grow. When in doubt, leave more space.

[Artiph]

So, what, just put my bedroom like five tiles back instead of immediately up against the side of the hallway or something?

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

So, what, just put my bedroom like five tiles back instead of immediately up against the side of the hallway or something?

Dig your hallways at least two squares wide is a good start.

[nenjin]

o, what, just put my bedroom like five tiles back instead of immediately up against the side of the hallway or something?

No, think "big picture."

Not "I need housing for 7 dwarves," but "I need to start housing for 200 dwarves."

So when you decide where you want to start putting bedrooms, look at how much space you have to expand before you even dig. Can you fit 3 z-levels with 50 bedrooms on each in the space you're looking at? Rough it out with the Mining selector if you're not good at visualizing. (I'm terrible at visualization, so that's why I draw my whole fortress out first.)

If you've got the room, then start building in a modular fashion. Dig 10 rooms right next to the corridor and then dig a corridor around them. Then mark off another 10 with expanding corridors. And another. And another. Mine out only as much as you need or think you're going to need soon...but treat the unmined areas as if they're already part of your fortress. Their space is not negotiable. 

Adding cross corridors ahead of time ensures  you don't end up with hallways 1/2 the length of your fortress with no turn offs and what not.

3-tiles is also the recommendation for corridors. Once your pet population goes up, 2 does not cut the mustard for traffic flow, and definitely not once you break 100 dwarves.

Lots of times, fortress design starts to look like....


.    .    .    .    .
.    .    .    .    .
.    .  ::::  .    .
.    .  ::::  .    .
.    .    .    .    .
.    .    .    .    .

Where the original part of the fortress ( : ), where everything important happens, is a warrens of tightly packed everything, And the rest of the fortress ( . ) is where the designer finally started allocating the space they actually need, both so things flow and so they don't have a seizure looking at their fortress. And because most people like centralized designs....the heart of the fortress becomes a traffic jam/breeding ground for problems spreading in a virus like fashion. (Fires, targets for berzerk dwarves, ect..)

So yeah, never stop thinking about the overall design of your fortress as you go. It's easy to get sidetracked from design because something happens that demands action RIGHT NOW, so you build emergency somethings which, because you're not thinking about design anymore, you end up building/digging into area you didn't want, then you have reorganize the design you were planning.

[Talanic]

I dig in a grid pattern, starting from a 5x5 or 6x6 central stairwell.

Hallways are usually 3 wide, and fortress 'blocks' are such that four workshops can fit inside with space to spare for a small stockpile if I want specific goods enhanced at those workshops.  Top-level blocks are accessed through their corners only; they hold my butcher shop and refuse stockpiles, and miasma is controlled because of corner-only access.  There are four blocks in each row and each column.

At every intersection between blocks, another set of up/down stairs exists - usually in an X pattern.  I find it aesthetically pleasing and dwarves have an easy time pathing around.  The same pattern is used on every floor below, with some alterations for dwarmitories and noble quarters; I'm not yet happy with the layout for the dwarms yet.  Might have to make the whole thing wider to accommodate them better.

My dining rooms and other non-standard structures are usually built jutting out of the side of the rest of the structure.

I usually build a wall on the surface that completely encircles the perimeter of a standard block.  My barracks winds up on this top level before the wall's complete; sparring soldiers usually catch thieves before they can get inside, and although I've watched for it, I've never had a problem with soldiers falling down the stairs.  When it is complete, sometimes I make downward stairs at the other stairwells rather than just the central stair, and I almost always make a statue garden or zoo on the daylight level (although sometimes I extend the central stairs up and up and up, then build a statue garden a half dozen z-levels up, as wide as the entire fort). 

Almost all mining is done from the inside.  Visible ores might get mined from the outside early on, but usually I'll just tunnel up to them.  I have the humorous vision of hapless human miners starting out, going "Oh boy!  A nice vein of gold on the surface...wait, huh?" as they hit my tunnel.

Also, I use strategically-placed pillars and channels to force caravans to take a single specific route into my fort; there's exactly one spot on the map that wagons can appear.

Once I made a 'siege alley.'  This was a winding maze, all constructed of block walls and converted into fortifications.  At the far left side of the maze, behind three fortified walls but not CONNECTED to the maze, I had three ballistae, masterwork, with legendary operators and a full stockpile of bolts.  I didn't bother to use them much, as the maze was a hassle to clean up after the goblins got pasted, but it was a fun exercise.

[doctorspoof]

Ramps down from the surface to a 7-wide corridor with pillars to the trade depot. Barracks near the ramps, corridor branching off, holding food stockpile, leading to farms. Another corridor leads to bedroom land. Behind the depot is all the random workshops.

But i'm getting kinda sick of it now, looking for a new system

[mal7690]

I use a sprawling design with long, large hallways and large amounts of space between each area, usually only using 1-3 z-levels.

Pros:
I usually don't have to worry about space issues and once I get some legendary engravers my fortress value explodes.

Cons:
It is nowhere near any idea of efficient, with travel times usually well over 100 tiles.

[Talanic]

Over 100 tiles?  Yikes.  I recall one time I assessed one of my layouts and discovered that the maximum distance any dwarf would travel to get from point A to point B inside the fort was something like 36.  Frequent use of Z-levels is extremely helpful in improving your fort's efficiency!