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Symmetrical

29 (20.4%)

Asymmetrical/I build as I need

59 (41.5%)

Even grid rooms

19 (13.4%)

I work with the rocks

12 (8.5%)

Who needs a fortress!

3 (2.1%)

Multiple

20 (14.1%)

Total Members Voted: 142

[Chaoseed]

Part of the fun of building fortresses is adapting your designs to the terrain.  I once built a fortress with a very long underground tunnel from the edge of the map to my trade depot.  I had to dig down two levels to go under a river, then up on the other side to get back to ground level.  A nice little engineering challenge.

[NW_Kohaku]

My forts so far have displayed organic development. I plan a few things, and then it grows so I plan some more, et cetera. Mixed in with that are some highly spiffy symmetrical constructions, like my housing complex, but on the whole it's highly chaotic.

Might try a rigidly fractal one next time though.

Probably comes close to what I do...

Aside from building with the land, and generally not wanting to disturb the general geography as I build my fortress as an almost entirely unseen subterranean ediface, aside from a sprinkling of windmills, a drawbridge, and a ditch to pull water from stagnant pools, I also generally try to map out where my different districts go...

But I always wind up deciding that I really wanted FIVE magma glass furnaces, instead of three, so now I have to dig another magma channel to feed some more.  And while I'm at it, I might as well get some more forges of other types, as well, since that way, I can segregate my forges by high skill job and low skill job as well as by what skill will be allowed to be used on that given furnace.  And even though I put my windmills in a nice line, it turns out that I'm now producing more longland grass than three millstones are sufficient for, so let's add a couple more of those...  And I keep running out of rope reed or pig tails, so let's make more farmland...  (What do you mean run less of your clothier shops?  Produce less goods for sale?  What are you, an elf?)

It generally becomes a challenge for me to find a way to cram more and more and more of everything within my ever-more-crowded pre-planned districts.

In a way, it may actually wind up resembling a real city more that way...

[RedKing]

I'm all over the map (literally...), but like many here I tend to try and build organically into the landscape. Usually I'll embark, save, then pull it up in something like Visual Fortress or Stonesense so I can get a better feel for what the site looks like, then plan based on that.

I also tend to enjoy the challenge of "undwarven" forts, like my current one---situated on flat land at the confluence of two major rivers (they flow together and then back apart), which created a natural peninsula, with rivers blocking off 3/4 of the map and forcing would-be siegers to come at me from one direction (at least until I build drawbridges)

So I brought a crapload of tower-cap logs, and build a wooden palisade, depot and a small handful of workshops topside, and started digging down to lay farms, living quarters and storerooms. I'm looking forward to once my fortifications are fully complete, and I have 3 or 4 z-level high walls with firing platforms and ramps behind them. There's also a magma pool somewhere down there...hopefully the alluvial deposits will yield some platinum and/or gold.

[Hobbie]

I always start out with intricately designed fortresses but as my needs grow I find myself just tacking crap on and that's when it gets messy.

[Dorf3000]

I like to plan around a major feature, or at least create a major feature to plan around, rather than stamping a cookie-cutter design into the ground.  I often go for the 'central staircase' though, simply for efficiency, but I'm trying to kick that habit.  If at all possible I like to leave the land untouched, so if I decide to move the magmaworks deep underground rather than on top of the obsidian cap, I can do that without leaving a mess behind.  This does however lead to a lot of 'temporary' solutions that become worryingly permanent.

Gems and ore veins get mined out and the space walled over, unless it's a particularly nice set of gems and it's close to where I planned to dump house the nobles anyway.  Sometimes I'll even copy the map and reveal everything if I want to place a particularly large and important room, because I find it incredibly irritating to put in a nice fancy designed chamber and get a bit of alunite in the corner.

[Jetsquirrel]

I build most of my time symmetrical, because i like it. And i heavly dislike the not symmetrical

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

I used to always just do a 9x9 grid with hallways between and up/down stairs at the intersections, for lots of little blocks of four 3x3 rooms, which became everything from workshops to bedrooms to storage to farm plots depending. It's massively dwarf-time-efficient, extraordinarily dense if you stack it, and really easy to lay out a dig plan with a macro. Problem is it got boring and it wasn't pathing efficient in terms of computer time, since so many dwarf paths to each spot meant a lot of calculation. Plus it just felt like my dwarves were living in cubicles.

. My next fort (with the new version), I'm going to use five or six of the fractal patterns from the wiki & the forum here that I've modified to fit around a central spiral staircase. Beyond that it'll be decided by terrain (i.e., which level goes where, the location of the entrance hallway, etc), but I plan on generating worlds until I find a site that fits the fort I want to build.

[mal7690]

I build my fortresses in large, sweeping, asymmetrical designs.

Mostly because every time I do otherwise I end up with pathing hell because there are 4+ ways to get everywhere.  The benefit though is I get a lot of value from engraving hallways.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yeah, I am building more and more diagonal hallways.  It makes the quickest route much more obvious, and tends to look kind of cool with square buildings inside diamond-shaped hallways.

[random51]

Organic.  My forts typically look like something built with legos while blindfolded after happy hour.

[nil]

Most of the stuff I build is symmetric, but I like to carve a big non-orthogonal area or two to mimic natural features.  Often, I'll then build more regular structures inside the chamber.

Needless to say I'm looking forward to the new underground.

[dornbeast]

"None of the above."

My fortresses tended towards a central area which can be used as storage, dining room, or whatever, surrounded by smaller rooms, with underground connections out so I can build similar constructs in the other eight map squares. 

(I played on 3x3 maps.  Once I get a computer that doesn't say "beeeeyyyyyoooooonnnnndddd quaaaaalllllliiiittttyyyy" when I start up DF again, I'll see how large I can make the map...)

[Malsqueek]

I build a fort that, aside from initial defensible entryway, is a vertical column that is identical on all levels for about 14 tiles out, then i have a symmetrical design for each type of floor that works pretty well, with the notable exceptions of plumbing and mama usage.

My central columns is designed with good pathways to all areas, with many doors for isolation if needed, and ensuring that ALL dwarves will walk past AT LEAST 12 nice statues on their way from one place to another. Make the fort very happy most days.

Of course, If I have the misfortune of placing my central column directly over an underground river or cavern, it REALLY makes me want to abandon my fortress.

[Yaddy1]

Asymmetrical, anything else is too much work.