Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Start off with a cave and switch to open ground when you can afford it

Start with a cave and keep it

Start open ground and stay open ground

Start open ground and dig under after walls have been set up

Either, I rock at this game

[DarkHumbug]

I personally always start in a cave, but my forts never progress so I can't say which I prefer. It should be interesting to see people's answers

[Dave Mongoose]

By 'open ground', do you mean on the surface? or in the caverns?

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

I've not breached the caverns yet.

[Karnewarrior]

I avoid the caverns when possible. I prefer to build my fort inbetween the surface and Cavern 1.

[CrossBolt]

Depends what you really want, sometimes it's just awesome to have a 'top' floor thats just a wall holding out all the skelks elves

[Urist Imiknorris]

The skelves?

[Quantum Toast]

I usually just dig a tunnel into a hillside and expand out from that. I tend to have a couple of things like refuse piles in a walled compound outside, though.

[gtmattz]

I usually start on a small (3x3 or smaller) completely flat area.  First thing I do is set up some sort of fortified area encompassing most of the aboveground vegetation with an airlock/drowning chamber/trade depot provinding access to the outside.  After getting this set up I then move down and set up my fort proper in the layers above the magma, leaving a small detatchment to watch the upper gates.

[takaratiki]

In transition. In 40D I would set up rolling above ground architectural festivals: starting with bare minimum hovels, building infrastructure, erecting rowhouses and pubs, then going bonkers and trying out other styles (japanese tea houses, Yemeni mudbrick apartments, favelas, Usonians, Catal Huyuk, etc.). 40D really sucked me in to the possibilities of architecture. Since DF2010, it seems that all of the fun is happening below ground in the cave network, changing the focus of development. I'm a little torn given my attachment to building, but hollowing out the bizarre spires that occur in cave networks presents an interesting challenge and returns the game more to its early version roots, just on the vertical plane. I'll likely be bouncing back and forth between styles for the forseeable future, they scratch different itches.

[Renault]

In transition. In 40D I would set up rolling above ground architectural festivals: starting with bare minimum hovels, building infrastructure, erecting rowhouses and pubs, then going bonkers and trying out other styles (japanese tea houses, Yemeni mudbrick apartments, favelas, Usonians, Catal Huyuk, etc.). 40D really sucked me in to the possibilities of architecture. Since DF2010, it seems that all of the fun is happening below ground in the cave network, changing the focus of development. I'm a little torn given my attachment to building, but hollowing out the bizarre spires that occur in cave networks presents an interesting challenge and returns the game more to its early version roots, just on the vertical plane. I'll likely be bouncing back and forth between styles for the forseeable future, they scratch different itches.

I share the dilemma. I typically built soaring castles with medieval villages around them, and its sort of hard to commit myself to  towers and crafthouses now that the underground has so much to offer.

[silverskull39]

I'll do either depending on the situation. Recently I've taken up only embarking in savannah or tropical grassland and building a "tribal village" style surface fort entirely out of one type of wood and one type of stone, but only using stone if there is a kind that is brown. This tends to waste a lot of wood, which makes me happy because it pisses off the elves. For the structure, I build related workshops near each other and then build a series of small huts nearby and assign the associated dwarves to them. Once I have enough dwarves to keep the industries going without the work-dwarves leaving those areas I make them into burrows. I'm particularly fond of the cloth industry at the moment for some reason, but w/e. I then dig down, but in a meandering fashion that kind of resembles a natural cave, with several offshoot branches. I like to think that my dwarves didn't dig the fort so much as arrive and have the ground get the hell out of the way when they try to dig. The ground then attempts to placate the fearsome dwarves with blood stone sacrifices of their brethren, which is the resource stone left behind. When the almighty dwarves search for more resources, the fearful earth tries to trick them by leading them into caverns populated by mighty beasts. Then the dwarves are either summarily slaughtered, or declare war on the surrounding stone and any living thing they find, even especially the elves when they arrive for trade. The dwarves then fight until the earth gushes blood (magma) and they begin building a larger aboveground settlement out of the earth's bones (metal).


....so yeah, kind of both?

[ISGC]

I usually just dig a tunnel into a hillside and expand out from that. I tend to have a couple of things like refuse piles in a walled compound outside, though.

this is what I do.
and then I make an airlock with copious amounts of cage trap abuse.

[Vercingetorix]

I try as much as possible to build between the surface and the first level of the caverns, and then dig a separate shaft to penetrate the caverns for their resources as well as the ability to grow underground trees/shrubs in the rest of my fort.

[CppThis]

In transition. In 40D I would set up rolling above ground architectural festivals: starting with bare minimum hovels, building infrastructure, erecting rowhouses and pubs, then going bonkers and trying out other styles (japanese tea houses, Yemeni mudbrick apartments, favelas, Usonians, Catal Huyuk, etc.). 40D really sucked me in to the possibilities of architecture. Since DF2010, it seems that all of the fun is happening below ground in the cave network, changing the focus of development. I'm a little torn given my attachment to building, but hollowing out the bizarre spires that occur in cave networks presents an interesting challenge and returns the game more to its early version roots, just on the vertical plane. I'll likely be bouncing back and forth between styles for the forseeable future, they scratch different itches.

Dude, you should totally build your villiage in the caverns. 

As for me, I'm going for an upper fort a few levels underground, and (when I get to it) a mine/lower fort to get me down to the goodstuff.  Should make defense a lot easier.

[Kazang]

Strike the Earth!

All my forts so far have been underground, I envisage my dwarfs as tolkien-esque so they develop downwards.  Once I get the main underground base started I start building/carving above ground defences and a gate house that is suitably imposing.

I always try to use the natural lay of the land to influence the forts design, so I embark on big maps with very rough terrain and as many features as possible.  Then use those features as the basis of the forts layout, like building it into a cliff face, inside a very tall mountain or on a natural delta.