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[Shrike]

Huh. now I'm imagining sort of an archeological approach... dig into the dirt (ramp/channel) until you get rock, build a wall around the dig, and keep expanding the wall and dig. You could either leave a solid stone path for traders (and for cave-ins) or have constructed paths about your entry.

As you go deeper and larger, you build up your walls and constructed layers, add your flourishes (ex: gold block statue of something that contains a pumpstack going all the way down to the magma sea that oozes magma to your forges and smelters, or to that magma-based defense mechanism. To handle wall expansions, lay down some traps, deconstruct the wall, add doors, and then mass-designate the new walls to be built with the military watching. And in this way you end up with a lot of defensive options and burrows to retreat to if everything starts going south.
Don't forget roof over the top for your dwarves, don't want them getting wet and playing with magma!

[numerobis]

For the initial walls I usually make them out of wood.  For aesthetics I dig out a moat around them, and later on I build stone walls on the bedrock: I wouldn't want my castle to topple over into the swamp!  (No, there's no in-game physics for that, I know.)

Also, all or almost all my dwarves are carpenter/mason/metalsmith, but the workshops require at least novice skill.  That means I can put up walls very fast: pretty much any adult can build.  It'd be nice if there were a specific labor for building, to avoid this hack.  In a wooded site, I find I can build a wooden palisade around quite a large area by the end of the first year, even with no immigrants.

Flying things have never been a problem, but if there's flying titans, that might be problematic...

[Gus Smedstad]

I had my first goblin archer invasion.  They shot and killed a dwarf on the balcony of a third-floor apartment.  Clearly it's important to build tall walls all the way around if you're stacking structures.

 - Gus

[Hyndis]

I had my first goblin archer invasion.  They shot and killed a dwarf on the balcony of a third-floor apartment.  Clearly it's important to build tall walls all the way around if you're stacking structures.

 - Gus

Windows should work as well.

[Egregius]

For aesthetic reasons, sure.  But if you're talking about practical advantages, a pyramid doesn't reduce the amount of roof you need.  No matter what your topology, the roof requirement is the same.  First floor gets the floor for free, and requires a roof for every tile.  Floors above the first use the roof below as floor for free, but require a new roof, so it doesn't matter if they're built side by side or stacked.  The main thing that affects your total roof requirement is the corridor tiles you have beyond the minimum number of tiles required to hold your functional areas, since the corridor needs roofing too for security.

Actually, each wall equals a line of floors on z+1, so when you reach the top, you only have a very small area of floors to do. Or am I missing something?

[takaratiki]

More city than not, but I usually shoot for a cliff face, river, or lake to work off of. Drop a mine, start ripping out rock, and assign every immigrant to masonry. Cordon off an area from there with stone walls, build a snail entrance way and start working with whatever topography is available. Roads, apartment complexes, restaurants, zoos, museums, let the good times role. In between raids, expand the walls further and further or stay tight and build vertically. Skyscrapers baby, neo-Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's mad dwarven.

[darkflagrance]

I had my first goblin archer invasion.  They shot and killed a dwarf on the balcony of a third-floor apartment.  Clearly it's important to build tall walls all the way around if you're stacking structures.

 - Gus

Windows should work as well.

The problem with windows (and other see-through fortifications) is that they allow enemies outside the fort to scare dwarves in high areas. I remember I had a dwarf trapped in my sky dining room during a siege, because he would try to walk outside, see the goblins, and run back inside.

[numerobis]

Pittsburgh's mad dwarven.

Stone traps.  Subdivision built on a slag heap from the defunct steel industry.  Underground river.  Troglodytes.

It's got everything!

[Obibun]

Older thread but I'll add my thoughts anyway.

Just finished with a fortress (finished until it's patched properly for my military, anyway). I decided to play it "human" and did absolutely no below-ground digging except for the occasional basement/cellar and basement-level of a residence. It was on an aquifer, but heavily forested, so basically everything was made completely out of wood. Individual buildings linked by paved roads, like a human town.

Wall went up easily enough (probably at least 70x70 area covered in total) considering most of the construction wood was chopped down right near where the walls needed to be built.

It's a lot of fun and I'd like to try it again properly, but with the military bugs (ie no marksdwarves) it defeats the point of having defensive walls that archers could potentially shoot down from. The fact that a single dead fox and deer managed to turn my entire town into a bloodstained mess over the course of a year was also annoying.

Biggest problem by far was trying to deal with the later immigrant waves. When I hit about 80 I gave up because I simply couldn't build houses fast enough, even cramming them into 3x3 rooms in wooden apartment style buildings. Walls + floors for every single level just ate up way too much wood, which as I clearcut was getting progressively further and further away from my town.

Definitely a lot of fun but completely unfeasible after the initial few years. The first eight or ten buildings went up pretty well, I was able to house 30-40 dwarves, but after that, each successive level of house was eating a minimum of 30 wood and even for the high-density apartments, housing 10 dwarves per floor was taking 80-90 wood per floor.

Walls and gatehouse were fun, and also completely pointless without working archers.

Was just waiting for the first ambush to knock me out completely seeing as 3/4's of my population were making long ant lines to the wood source, and I had no military except for a half dozen archers who wouldn't be able to fight anyway.

Still. Next time, maybe with a few changes. Much prefer a glorious castle with ramparts and towers to a dark dingy mountain.

[Obibun]

Shot of part of the castle.. main square with trade depot, a few stands (butcher, kitchen, etc).. couple houses, workshop, "apartments" and the gatehouse.

[Gus Smedstad]

That's pretty interesting.  I considered going wood-only when I started this, but did not think of avoiding digging entirely, since ore refining is such a big part of the Dwarven economy.  How do you get steel?  Marksdwarves aren't useful now, but steel disc traps are vital for defense.

Those are not "high density apartments," though you may think of them that way.  I started off with 3x3's when I first played, but I've gradually moved on to 1 x 3's for everyone but the nobility.  A commoner will be very happy with a constructed 1x3 with a bed, cabinet, and chest.  Further, you could save considerable wood by changing the apartment layout to one where they share more internal walls.  Those internal staircases and corridors are taking up considerable space.  My apartments fit about 18 per floor into the space you used for 10, though I went with a slightly smaller block so they were actually 16 per floor.

It also helped that I only built more apartments when the unused ones started running low.  Currently, dwarves will happily sleep in a stranger's bedroom, provided it's close.  This means that many bedrooms end up being unclaimed, since no dwarf ever felt the need to sleep in them.  I could manually assign them of course, but that's tedious and doesn't help, since they don't sleep in their assigned bedrooms anyway.

 - Gus

[Obibun]

That's pretty interesting.  I considered going wood-only when I started this, but did not think of avoiding digging entirely, since ore refining is such a big part of the Dwarven economy.  How do you get steel?  Marksdwarves aren't useful now, but steel disc traps are vital for defense.

Those are not "high density apartments," though you may think of them that way.  I started off with 3x3's when I first played, but I've gradually moved on to 1 x 3's for everyone but the nobility.  A commoner will be very happy with a constructed 1x3 with a bed, cabinet, and chest.  Further, you could save considerable wood by changing the apartment layout to one where they share more internal walls.  Those internal staircases and corridors are taking up considerable space.  My apartments fit about 18 per floor into the space you used for 10, though I went with a slightly smaller block so they were actually 16 per floor.

It also helped that I only built more apartments when the unused ones started running low.  Currently, dwarves will happily sleep in a stranger's bedroom, provided it's close.  This means that many bedrooms end up being unclaimed, since no dwarf ever felt the need to sleep in them.  I could manually assign them of course, but that's tedious and doesn't help, since they don't sleep in their assigned bedrooms anyway.

 - Gus

Yeah, I know all this about housing but if I'm just going to go for maximum efficiency and game-beating-ness the entire concept of playing above-ground makes no sense whatsoever in the first place. 3x3 is just about the smallest I would be willing to go and feel acceptable with before it turned into an issue of playing to win (or not lose so fast) vs. playing for fun

[Gus Smedstad]

Well, if you were really "playing like a human," you'd find some way for them to live entire families in mud huts.  We've got some biases due to modern living conditions.  Of course, I do a lot of not-optimal play myself, like insisting that everything have proper rooms with walls, instead of the massive open-plan factories that some players use.

 - Gus

[Dwarf]

When I play, I usually play as if I would roleplay. Giant empty rooms strategy breaks the whole immersion for me, I do not play to win.

[Gus Smedstad]

OK, I tried the almost-entirely-wood above ground castle.  It sucked.

The main problem is that wood, while renewable, runs out pretty quickly even in heavily forested areas.  I'm not talking about housing, either, I quickly ran out of wood just getting up a wall and getting mid-level workshops up.  By the time I had a carpenter, mason, mechanic, forge, butcher, tanner, and kitchen up, plus a small apartment block, I was scouring the corners of my 4x4 embark for wood.  I don't know where all the wood goes, but it goes fast.

I just didn't appreciate just how much more plentiful stone is.  Even in the castle where I drilled through an aquifer to get to it, I could always get more building material.  Wood just isn't anywhere near as plentiful.

It's true that you can trade for additional wood fairly easily, but I don't think they ever bring more than 20-30 logs, which is not enough for a single workshop / input stockpile enclosure.

 - Gus