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[Mason11987]

I used to do the Shaft Of All Things style of building but now my layouts are more organic.  Basically sprawled out wherever things fit.  Messy as hell but I cant be bothered to make intricate designs.
I've experimented with spiral ramps and such but they are such a main to designate.


Been messing with a more decentralized design but havent got the hang of it

I've recently discovered macros and find it to make my 20z level spiral ramps to be MUCH easier to make because I start the macro, do a single loop up 4z, go back to the same spot, and stop the macro, then just hit ctrl-p several times, takes like 1/10 the time.

[Hectonkhyres]

I tend toward an aboveground fortress that is purposefully asymmetrical: Clusters of towers with hanging bridges between them jutting up from wide and low levels, the whole thing wrapped up around itself like some sort of insane ziggraut. Rooftop walkways and lakes and statue gardens. Generally I build sections on a whim and put them together however seems interesting.

[Fayceless]

My architectural style:

Step 1: I start my fortress with a basic, efficient, vertical shaft design, with plans to create something more interesting once things get going.
Step 2: Something goes horribly wrong.
Step 3: Repeat step 1.

[lowbart]

I tend toward an aboveground fortress that is purposefully asymmetrical: Clusters of towers with hanging bridges between them jutting up from wide and low levels, the whole thing wrapped up around itself like some sort of insane ziggraut. Rooftop walkways and lakes and statue gardens. Generally I build sections on a whim and put them together however seems interesting.

Do you have any 3dwarf screenshots or an archive link?

[ECrownofFire]

I want to see some of these forts. Saves or map archives are good, though I think most people would prefer a map archive.

[Retro]

I tend toward an aboveground fortress that is purposefully asymmetrical: Clusters of towers with hanging bridges between them jutting up from wide and low levels, the whole thing wrapped up around itself like some sort of insane ziggraut. Rooftop walkways and lakes and statue gardens. Generally I build sections on a whim and put them together however seems interesting.

Do you have any 3dwarf screenshots or an archive link?

I'm interested as well. This sounds quite nice.

[Deteramot]

I'm an extraordinarily boring fortress designer. Doing fun things is for people with more imagination.

I start with the closest soil wall. It has to be soil because this is where my stockpiles go. So I dig in and make a big room. Big and Huge. Then I find rock wall and dig into that, then dig down and spread.

My most recent Fort that I lost because of a stupid crash (grumble grumble) had two entrances. It was originally going to be one big entrance and one was just leading to my stockpiles, but then I found out that you can't put the Trade Depot too close to the edge of the map. You went down several z-levels to get under the brook, then you had a long hallway which lead to the great hall. I was in the process of making the bedrooms when the game crashed.

When I make bedrooms, it's always 3x3 rooms. I've never lasted long enough to be affected by the Economy.

[MacLeod]

I dig into a hill near the stream or river, three-wide, and then go far into the hill.  Another fortress had trouble with billowing smoke finding its way down the ramp, so in this fortress, I decided to ramp up before going down.  The upper ramp portion opens up to allow me to tie up my war dogs, and provides an initial place for my dwarfs to party (cave spider silk rope).  One ramping down again, I just make a turn and put in a trade depot, which will have an office and storage off to the sides. 

Eventually, the entire front half of the hill get cleaved off and all ramps removed so that I know which way the enemy has to come from.  Add towers, fortifications, and traps to flavor.

[NW_Kohaku]

MMmm... On one hand, I do like building my forts for efficiency, although rather than building one vertical ubershaft, I tend to segment my forts horizontally, rather than vertically, so that my industries are horizontally seperated, and they grow vertically downward on their own small sets of vertical shafts that are connected on a floor with massive hallways dedicated just to being a hub floor.

On the other, I rather enjoyed in 40d building my forts into the mountains.  One of my forts had a spire of rock that jutted up 20z levels from a flat plain because of being a single mountain tile that was isolated from the rest of the mountain ridge thanks to erosion.  I built my noble rooms at the narrowest, highest points of that spire, just trying to fill out the shape, and with some very odd, kidney-shaped rooms being made so that the rooms would be the right proportions.  I then had to carve off all the ramps on the outside so that the stupid nobles wouldn't hold their meetings on the mountaintop instead of inside their luxuriously decorated offices, but at the top, I made my duchess's dining room have nothing but glass windows, so that it was something like the Space Needle, but with residences inside.

For my Queen, I made a giant dining hall just to be below the balcony of her throne room, complete with four waterfalls.  Her living quarters were her own marble tower filled with statues to make up for the lack of engravings.

Now, with the new caverns, I honestly think that I'll try to start building into the caverns as a challenge.  I'll tweak the worldgen to make the caverns have broader chambers, and I'll try to build with the caverns as much as possible, expanding, cleaning mud, and walling off as I go.

It's actually much more fun to play with housing and social services like dining halls than industry, though.  I'll probably still just make large rectangular "sweatshop" rooms out of the furnaces or the textile mills or the farms, directly below a giant warehouse made out of a soil layer.

[Star Weaver]

The guy who mandated organic architecture probably influenced some of what I did in my current fort. There's a lot more blather in the POI on there. I'll upload a more completed one later if I don't get my face eaten off by goblins again ^_^.

[HatfieldCW]

Shaft here.  I dig an entryway and a couple rooms for workshops and storage and farming, then behind that a short hallway leading to a 3x3 up/down stairway that serves as the core of everything I do.

I go down a ways and put in my living quarters, way off to the side to avoid noise, then I build specialized zones for various crafts and activities, with a well in the hospital.  Once that's established I hollow out the original mini-fort and make it my barracks, so all intruders have to get past my training military in order to penetrate the fort.  I take the stairs up to the surface and wall in a secure courtyard for refuse stockpiling, animal management and vomitorium.  I sometimes build this into a large above-ground megaproject, using a custom stockpile and a handful of low-skill-only mason's shops to crank out matching stone blocks.

I always plan on using burrows to segregate my dwarves into profession-based castes, but by the time my population reaches the point at which that would be effective my FPS is awful and I abandon.

This rarely falls to invasion, but I've been surprised and smashed by megabeasts or underground features if they get at me before I'm ready for them.

[Shrugging Khan]

This time, rather than my usual organic all-goes-into-mined-out-veins approach, I designed all rooms and stockpiles with no concern for the natural environment whatsoever. Large, clear-cut angles, lots of symmetric niches, very wide hallways, central staircase. Boo hoo, for shame: It's less FPS-efficient than the organic shit-goes-where-it-fits style

[darkflagrance]

I tend to build a lot of above-ground stuff. But because designating all those blocks to be constructed is a pain, I tend to go for space/designating efficiency and rectangles. My buildings tend to have lots of windows, although light is not a factor and in tall buildings enemies can scare dwarves through the windows.

For the underground, I prefer to have multi-level halls carved out of the rock, lined with huge, engraved pillars, preferably with balcony or bridge structures overlooking the empty expanse. My throne rooms are always grand and multi level.

I used to build central shafts after I heard about them on the forums, but I'm planning to build a fort with only one main layer in 31.11 when it comes out for the sake of fps.

This is my last 40d fort: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-8953-whitegold

[Vercingetorix]

I usually don't plan mine outside of the basics early on; from there, it just sort of sprawls and changes as needed with only a few major planned areas to serve core functions.

[moki]

It just sprawls out from a central staircase or spiral ramp.
First thing are farms and storerooms in the top layers. Dwarves also sleep, eat and live there until I find a nice place for bedrooms. Next comes a food processing area with food-, booze- and refuse-stockpiles and a big hall that'll become cluttered with various workshops and stockpiles - whatever is necessary at the moment. At this time, survival is relatively secure and the work on megaproject-ish plans can begin. Currently, that's Moria-like halls, 5-15 levels high with giant smooth stone pillars and bridged chasms leading down to the magma seas.
I really like multi-z-level rooms... everything but the smallest bedrooms and offices and the most unimportant hallways are at least 2 levels high. Anybody can dig a hole in the ground, but we, sir, are dwarves!