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[Gatleos]

Alright, so I embarked in a location consisting of a small bit of red sand desert, towered over by huge sheer cliffs. This place has the potential for an insane fortress, and I've been looking for a challenge. So, what are your suggestions for a megafort?

By the way, here's a link to the map.

[Terisuke]

Ignore the lowlands for now.  The top of the main mountain or the top of that smaller terrace midway up would be amazing fort locations.  In fact, I'd build on both of them and make an enclosed skybridge out of glass linking both entrances, then reduce movement cost for it so your dwarves move around in it all the time.  Bonus points if it's caravan-passable and you need to travel through it to reach your depot.  When you're a more mature fort, wall off and flood the lowlands, or use them as a staging ground for an epic megaproject - or both. 

[MaximumZero]

I'm gonna go with glass castle (made of desert sand) encompassing the mountainside. BONUS: Make two layers of walls, and fill the space between them with water and creatures, so that you have and aquarium castle. MEGABONUS: Fill it with Magma instead. Magma castle. Woot.

[Gatleos]

My main concern is that I have no idea where caravans, sieges, etc. will show up. Does the direction of the capital of a civilization from your fortress determine the direction they come on to the map from? If not, I'd expect the caravans to come from the low area or the summit.

I'll wait to see where the first supply caravan comes from, and if it's the desert, I'll remove the slopes at the base of the mountain and construct a massive spiraling ramp made of clear glass all the way up to the summit and my skybridge.

While I'm at it, I might as well build my glass magmacastle entirely over the pit, with the whole thing resting on the spiral ramp...

[MaximumZero]

Now that's DWARVEN. I like the way you think.

[Untelligent]

I wouldn't necessarily call those cliffs sheer or huge, but it's still an impressive spot.

Suggestion: Giant kangaroo statue.

[Gatleos]

Yeah, I was actually hoping for totally vertical cliffs. Does anyone know of a worldgen seed that produces crazy altitude changes?

[MaximumZero]

AFAIK, you have to set periodic erosion of extreme cliffs to NO in worldgen.

@Untelligent: On top of the magmacastle?

[Untelligent]

Maximize elevation x- and y-variances, turn off erosion, turn off all the reject parameters, and embark on a small or smaller world. On the embark screen, look for spots on the region and local maps where lowlands are next to the big light grey mountain triangles. Then change the local map to elevation view (the one with all the blue and grey squares) and look for an embark spot with a lowest blue square by the highest grey square.

I got a 100-story mountain in 40d with this method. Usually end up in the 50-80 range, though.



You will NOT get flat cliffs, though, even without erosion. The only way to get flat cliffs is to get a river or ocean in a spot with some decent elevation changes (I hear turning erosion makes rivers deeper) or switch to a version of DF from before the cliffs got all rampy.



@MaximumZero: No, put the magmacastle on top of the kangaroo.

[hailthefish]

Or, you know, just have your miners make some cliffs.

[MaximumZero]

How about a turtle, with elephants on its back, with magmafalls, and the magmacastle on top of the elephants, with the kangaroo on top?

Okay, now I'm just being silly. I need to stop that. </silly> There, that should work.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Massive Aerial Trap Field.

Have a lot of long, twisty, 1-wide paths with no walkways, high above the ground, that invaders have to cross over. Dig into the cavern layers from the surface, not your base, so *everything* has to come in that way. Line them with weapon traps, fortified outposts for marksdwarves and war dog pits- anything to make them dodge to their deaths.

Have a walled-off but unroofed area beneath the bridges- maybe the nobles chambers- where it will be a steady rain of goblings, humans, elves, troglodytes, giant cave spiders and forgotten beasts.

[Solace]

Well you do have two nice peaks on top of a cliff facing a desert, you could suspend your fort between them? Can't really think of anything else you couldn't do with any other map, if you like the location you need to preserve as much of it as possible, I guess.

[Gatleos]

So, a spiral ramp made of pure clear glass that goes straight through giant obsidian turtle/kangaroo statues, topped with a giant glass magma-castle, which is constantly dropping waterfalls of magma down onto the hellish gauntlet of lava moats and trap-filled hallways in the desert below?!

[MaximumZero]

Yes. This will do. Nicely.

Gentlemen?