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[KingKaol]

How exactly does congestion work? It seems like creatures have to slow down when they are forced to cross paths in single-wide passage. Is 2-wide enough to prevent this? Does the effect stack if multiple creatures are on the same tile?

I also wonder if it would be possible to make uni-directional stairways, down- or up-only.

[Niddhoger]

It actually depends on traffic, sometimes just two tiles is enough.  However, for 100+ strong fortress the area around your dining room/main industrial center tend to get very busy. 

From my experience, traffic designations and stairs don't work well together over z-levels.  I try to get it set up so that crafts will prefer the stairs right next to them to access input/exput stockpiles directly above/below them, but they almost always run out and go the long way around while haulers do the opposite (running into hte workshop and down the stairs crafter should use). 

[Borge]

Still under construction and excavation.

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[SimRobert2001]

Still under construction and excavation.

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I want to do that now, but i can only run 2x2 maps.how big is yours?

[Borge]

Still under construction and excavation.

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I want to do that now, but i can only run 2x2 maps.how big is yours?

3x3 but i have quite some room to spare, 2x2 should be just big enough.

[Niddhoger]

That is... excessive. I tend to make a similar hallway, but the entrance to the fort is right at the beginning.  In the case of attack, I close off that convenient entrance into the fort so that enemies must walk the long corridor of death.  This also ends in a danger room, but has several more bridges to serve as airlocks to help break up the stragglers.  I like to build a longer drop to the sides and make it a meandering 1-tile pathway over the drop.  I thend periodically place weapon traps to help encourage "dodging" into the abyss.  The abyss eventually houses a handful of captured FBs for !Fun! or is where I actually put the marksdorfs and their fortifications.  Putting the entrance to the fort 100+ tiles away from the entrance to the caverns/surface just makes it take -forever- to access the caverns and surface for logging, hunting, plant gathering, fishing, or just building megaprojects up there. 

If there is no proper hill/mountainside to build into, I can't very well leave the entrance to my grand fort as nothing more than an undignified hole in the ground, can I!? I then build a bit of a surface structure mostly to add some dignity to my entrance.  Usually this involves a walled in barracks (lined with fortifications) generally only accessed from below.  I say barracks, but this also includes dining room, archery ranges, sleeping quarters... a general purpose To one side is the quick ramps down for general comings and goings (including caravans) that has statues and paved roads- a courtyard all prettiful-like.  The outerwall has a bridge that closes off entrance to this, and instead routes enemies around to the other side of the barracks.  Here, they have to walk a long trapped corridor while under fire from the marksdorfs in the barracks before finally entering said barracks to do battle with the my soldiers.  If there is an aquifer/river I'll work in a drowning chamber.  I tend to put noble rooms stacked on top of these in a tower, with the king's room being on top and made of glass.   

If there is a hill/mountainside, there still needs to be a grand entrance hall.  I'm talking multiple stories with carved out/engraved columns.  All of this is carved from stone, ofc- dirt is for kobolds! Like above, this also features a bridge that routes enemies into a different direction- I can't have them toppling my statues! In this case, I typically utilize pit traps dug 10+ z levels down ending in FB/Titan lairs. 

[Dunamisdeos]

My entrance varies due to terrain, but I always build them unnecessarily large.

My defenses have certain common features, however. I usually have a two max-length-bridge long corridor, lined with crossbow perches on either side.

The bridges can retract/raise to be one tile wide, and span some sort of death-drop. My favorite thing is to pave the bottom with lead and also fill it with bears and crocodiles. At either end of the bridges, and at a 3x3 spot in the middle, are blade traps. If I expect heavy sieges, the far end will have a ballista battery that fires lengthwise.

Point is enemies will either be pin cushioned by arrows, or dodge into the abyss. This requires little horizontal space, which is always a plus. I generally have the melee troops wait out of sight to avoid fights occurring over the death drop.

And of course, past this is raising drawbridge, blocking all access in case of complete failure.

PS: There is usually a cage trap or two at the very front. I want to catch some prisoners after all.

[TheFlame52]

Lately I've been going for walls with fortifications in front and a bridge the only way in. Around that is a moat, dry or not (Bastiongate's is lava). By year four I had ringed the entire 4x4 embark in cage traps, so megabeasts were no problem.

I also noticed that invaders would always come from the same spot on the map, so I built walls and bridges right up to the map edge to herd invaders through extra cage traps and some weapon traps, meaning the invaders are usually stalled long enough for my legendary militia to show up and clean up the dregs.

[Dwarf_Fever]

I'm curious about how people generally make their fortress entrances.
I normally just dig a three-tile-wide passage into the side of a mountain, with various smaller passages coming off that leading to things like farms, stockpiles, workshops, bedrooms, etc. Then I build rows of cage traps at the beginning.

For my last fortress, I built a looped hallway with three drawbridges, all having levers in the dining room: one to completely seal off the fortress from outside, one to shortcut and avoid the longer loop, and one to seal the fortress off from the loop itself.

Within the loop, there is a trade depot, and in front of this various war animals set to guard. Above the outer drawbridge there is a tower with fortifications overlooking all approaches from which approaching enemies are easily spotted and fired at. It is accessible only from underground, so archers can go securely and directly from the fortress to sniping positions.

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If needed, you could make the long hallway a trap corridor supported by open space and then more fortifications, but I have not found that necessary as my fortress is self-sufficient and the military crushes sieges.

[Niddhoger]

Just saying... aren't your guard animals a little exposed to enemy archers? They look about 20 tiles back from the corner of that loop.  You could build a partial wall there (tthat the caravan could still move around) to block line of site and force archers even closer to your guard dogs.  Or you could just move the dogs up closer to the corner.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Just saying... aren't your guard animals a little exposed to enemy archers? They look about 20 tiles back from the corner of that loop.  You could build a partial wall there (tthat the caravan could still move around) to block line of site and force archers even closer to your guard dogs.  Or you could just move the dogs up closer to the corner.

While that is an excellent tactical observation, in this case, my military takes care of archers. Just above the hall, there is a squad of 10 marksdwarves in full bronze armor watching the outdoor approach in a fortified tower immediately over the outmost drawbridge. In the level directly below, 20 spear- and hammerdwarves in full steel have their bedrooms and training areas next to the staircase access. They can very quickly hit any incoming enemy from the side, when I open the "faster access" drawbridge, or move up to said corner. The only thing the animals need to worry about, in general, are snatchers and thieves.

If the archers spot anything incoming that I feel I'm not ready for yet, I can close the outside drawbridge to soften enemies up with fire while I assign war grizzlies and dogs to squads, etc.

That being said, I do agree that they would be better positioned directly behind a corner and I think I will move them up.

[Zarathustra30]

My entrances are a whopping 7 tiles wide, to match world-gen roads. I then have a spiral ramp leading down into my great hall, where my depot is located. These trader folk are from the Mountainhome and shall be treated with courtesy and respect.

[Authority2]

2x2 stairway straight into the ground.  Once all the basic priorities are established(food, wood storage, barracks, etc..) I wall the entrance in and turn it into a small building then move on to making an outer wall for my farms and depot.  So the entrance sort of moves.  By the time I'm done the entrance looks like the entrance to a fortress.

I do this too.

[miauw62]

I generally build my entrance as 2x2 or 3x3 stairs down into the rock layer near a stream, then I build fortifications and a bridge over the stream, then I dig a moat so I'm entirely surrounded by water. The stairs go straight down to my grand dining hall, which probably isn't a very good idea.

[AceSV]

I'm a fan of ribbed corridors.  They are a compromise between 1wide and 3wide corridors, not quite as defensive or convenient as either, just somewhere in the middle. 



If you're not used to Phoebus, those are cage traps in green, weapons traps in red.  The ramp leads to a hatch, which cannot be destroyed from below if locked.  This one is unfinished/lazy.  In the face of a serious siege, there needs to be a way to shoot into the corridor, otherwise the invader AI will refuse to enter and just clog up the FPS, and of course, traps do nothing against forgotten beasts.  Also the entire corridor should be filled with cage and weapons traps, but so far, I've never seen an enemy try to force its way through more than 2 or 3 weapons traps.