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[AtomicPaperclip]

For me getting setup is the worst part. I like designing my fort and making designations but I hate the setting up workshops and making temporary living arrangements and such. Needing to irrigate soil just makes it that much more annoying, so now I can't just build a farm in the soil and get booze going. I hate managing new migrants and assigning labors to get stuff done.

Sometimes i wish I could bring a fort in a bin and just get started.

How do you guys set up shop? Do you have a set routine or do you just build as necessary? 

[Urist Imiknorris]

I generally build a long entrance leading up to my trade depot, then basically live in the entrance until I get the rest of the fort set up.

[existent]

I always build essentially a basic variation on the same fort, but I agree with you that all the temp building sucks. I like to designate and dig out the stuff I'll be using when my pop is 50, not build a bunch of crap then move/abandon it later.

For example, here is the housing level currently being dug out my my starting seven:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Overkill for my three miners and seven dwarves, you say? I disagree.

On an unrelated note, the reason I took this screenshot was because I have developed the ultimate Cure-My-OCD-Housing complex, and I wanted to hang onto it for future reference. Note the one-tile rooms on the edge, the bigger rooms closer in, and the noble apartments in the center, as well as the lack of a central staircase- with four corner staircases in its stead!

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I tend to lay out more or less the same base, adapted for location of sand, water, stone, dirt and magma.

I usually have an entrance hall for no reason other than to have one; it serves as my area for early operations, I'll just shove shops in a corner. From there I build the trade depot, with storage areas designated but not built yet. Early farming is done on the surface, if at all- with the right amount of brewing and boozecooking, I can last a few years without it*. My barracks get built early, as they're always next to the entrance, so dwarves sleep there at first. Industries are usually divided as follows:

Trapworks
Metalworks
Trade Goods
Fortress Support (furniture)
Agriculture (divided into plant and animal, plan possibly divided into food and cloth, with the animal section near trade goods)

I usually arrange these industries, down to specific shops, before ever breaking the surface, but I leave relevant hallways disconnected until I either have time or need. Rooms don't get built until after the first few waves of migrants.

Mind, I haven't played much in the new version... the presence of the underground will seriously mess with my design.

*in one glacial fortress I played, I had to build a bi-valved magma/ice melting chamber before I could have so much as a drop of liquid water on my map.

[diriel]

I like that living quarters setup. I just saved the link myself. Of course I may take a "few" liberties with it here and there for the sake of science

[blackmagechill]

I do entrance, work room, Carpenter/Mason/Crafts, living quarters digging wise.My wood cutter is cutting down about 15 trees on a moderately forested map, and seven on a sparse one. My farmer is gathering herbs, and my mason and craftsdwarf are building workshops as soon as they can. Goverment dwarf sits there and hugs cows. After it has workshops and an ample (thin) food supply I dig like mad for the caverns, military or not.

[Prepaid Lenin]

All my forts are basically one offs.

I pretty much dig things as I need them. A great big stockpile room, a meeting hall, a corridor with the depot that gets turned into a corridor of fighting later. Everything is piecemeal but I try to make it look good at the same time.

[Brewster]

Long hallway into the earth like everyone else... makes the best bottle neck. Designate food zone in the hallway, to get the food out of the elements. A three wide hallway allows you to build mason, mechanic, and carpenter workshops while still allowing dwarfs to walk through. I build a general 11x11 room, that I view as a wilderness room (just a room to get out of the wilderness). I create and build 5 beds, 2 tables, and 4 chairs in the wilderness room. Generally I move the food designation into the wilderness room. Then I'll build 3 wood cages, 3 mechanisms and trap the first 3 tiles in the entrance. I'll start with gathering outdoor plants for food and alcohol. Then it just depends what industry I want to start with and plan from there! Once I have a true dining room, bedrooms, and storage zones, I'll clear out the wilderness room and make it a barracks, since it's generally closest room to entrance of the fortress.

[Zaerosz]

I like to embark on the highest cliffs I can find, and I've modded my dwarves to essentially be [SPEED:0] automatons, so I dig a 2x2 stairwell down through the cliff. 2-wide hallways, 11x11 workshop rooms, couple floors cleared out for stockpiles. I be a dirty cheater, but I don't particularly care.

[Fistbeard]

Usually always something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some kind of moat if I'm able to make one, of course with a drawbridge. (Wish I had some bauxite.)
Since I'm a sissy, the cage traps are right there by the bridge. (Captured hydra optional.)
My barracks is always the first accessible room, with the trade depot harder to get to if you're an invading force. Then there's Huge Food Stockpile #1, which is usually all I include in the entrance floor. Outside, I usually put kennels (near all the cages) and archery ranges. I also construct wells in my outside areas.

[Terisuke]

I dig out a few 10x10 squares and set up workshops, then I designate the hallways as temporary stockpiles until I've cleared a larger area for them.  This tends to be enough to get my wagon indoors before something eats my food.  I normally like to build close to the surface so I have a sandy layer above my workshops for stockpiling.  Past that, I don't have many conventions for fortress-building.

[Xenoc]

I tend to follow the same pattern:

1. Set up refuse and wood stockpile by the entrance.  Designate 2 - 3 plots to be built if there is vegetation.  Desgnate tree cutting and plant gathering.
2. Hallway in (about 20-30 tiles long with at least two turns in it).  Designate the trade depot space, but don't dig it out yet as other things take priority. While this is digging, get my carpenter building a workshop next to the wood stockpile
3. Along that hallway I open up a 7x5ish room.  This serves as a dormitary, will later serve as a barracks, and very temporarily host my mason and mechanics workshops.

From this point on, everything I do is 'final' - there are no more temporary lcoations for things, and what I dig out now for a purpose will remain that purpose.

Next job is an updown stairway column stretching 2 floors down and one up.

z-1 - dig a food stockpile and a dining hall.  Designate them as soon as possible.  At this point the gatherer should also have picked up enough seeds to start the outdoor farms off.

Next up designate a finished goods stockpile and space for attached crafts workshop(s). 

At this point my craftsdwarf is unassigned from mining (he's been helping out the two pro miners up to this point), and get him chucking out stuff for the caravans.

I can now work on clearing out a space below a murky pool for farming operations.

---------------------
So basically I have a functional fort, and all of this is achieved by the end of the first spring.  The key is designating one job at a time for your miners, and ensuring your miners and craftsdwarf have all hauling labours turned off.  After this, priority becomes setting up food and drink workshops, furniture stockpiles, and the associated space for the permanent mason and mechanics workshops.  Rooms and burial chamber space is next, and then - if I have running water already - I set up  an underground channel system to feed a pair of wells - one supplying the great hall, the other the hospital.

[NewsMuffin]

I put a wall around my wagon if I can, but if I can't, I just build a wall somewhere with a single door entrance with another z level of wall above it. Then I dig down and make a dining hall, then a small farm with buckets, then dig out a large workspace for my workshops. Then I get building and make beds, chairs, and tables for my dining hall which doubles as my sleeping area. Then comes the hospital. From there it's a race to breach the caverns and find the HFS.

[jester]

I take a proficient herbalist with me, cuts out the need for farms until you have lots of dwarves, I build all the usefull workshops (carpenter, mason, mechanic, kennels and crafts) outside.  First thing dug is a large room for the food, then a dorm, then a statue garden to keep the animals in.  Trees are also designated for cutting on day 1.  Cap at least 1 pool with floors or drain it into a reservoir as well.
  While everybody else is moving the food the miners grab me a big bit of the outside by putting a moat around it.   The craftsdwarf then goes to work and doesnt stop for anything.  I dont bother with goods stockpiles until I have a few dwarves, just build another workshop right next to the depot, the first 7 should be busy.
  Herbalist goes out gathering and the miners go DOWN.  To the magma, wall off any caverns you come across and do exploring however you want, just keep all the breeches sealed.  once I have struck magma, I knock out a quick dining room, build beds, barrels and cages depending on need and start with the mechanisms.  Brew all the outdoor plants, cook all the seeds, get a few cage traps and a bridge over the moat and you will have a fort that can hold alot of dwarves while you work out where you want the real fort to go.

  If im embarking without surface plants I usually take a grower rather than a herbalist usually but I have made it work without by digging out massive soil areas and breaching the cavern for sporefed treefarms, or after exploring the caverns pick large areas to wall off with 3 or 4 masons.

  I usually regard my first 7 as the elite core of my fort, good mechanics, all metalworking skills, leatherworking (not so useful now) seige engineering (its fun ok?), cooking etc.  Their job is to get some food in the larder and work out where the food is going, also to NOT DIE.  No dragging logs to stockpiles though the wilds or living unprotected by good stone for too long, get them inside and get someone useful to train the war dogs (my proficient armor/weapon smith always does that)

[Shrugging Khan]

I first plant some workshops right on the surface. Then I go chopping, or gathering, while my miner(s) dig out enough space belowground to have the first fortress going. (The first, which will be abandoned and filled with traps as I start a second fortress...deeper down.)