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[Eggsnham]

Hello all, I'm new to these forums and Dwarf Fortress in general (though I'm getting the hang of it) and I decided that I should make a thread or something.

So here goes:

How do your design YOUR fort? I typically dig down and create a large room and have that level be my stockpiles, then make a branching room off of there and dig down another level or two to create bedrooms, dining areas and workshops.

It's pretty simple because I haven't really had more than thirty dwarves at one time before they all die.

Like I said, I'm still new 

[Jetsquirrel]

i cast islands in the sea and make big castles,towers and a prison which im working on now

[noodle0117]

For the most part, my fort is kinda just a bit boring....


Except for the 40 z-level underground water tower I just have to build to fuel my awesome water based defense systems.

[Kietharr]

Generally, I carve a 3 wide entry into the side of a mountain, make a spot for a depot and put a drawbridge up to wall myself off if the need arises. I then have a secondary drawbridge airlock at the back of the path and I load the hallway with traps.

Directly past this airlock, I dig down. First layer with dirt is generally mass dug out for storage purposes, it's just such a waste of time to clear the stone out of rooms for mass stockpiles. If I have easy surface water I farm on the first level down. If not, like in my recent freezing fort, I dig down to the caverns, wall myself off a nice section and farm/harvest down there. Directly around the main downward stairs, I put a barracks so my soldiers are generally in position to pick off random intruders before they reach the critical areas. Below that is a dining room which is restricted to militiamen. Another level down is the hospital, which can be locked off with a door if the need arises, forcing invaders to go to the other end of the fort to get down to its level. When I dig down into the caves I dig down from this area so if something nasty comes up the military meets it first.

A good distance away I sink a shaft for civilian use. I put a workshop level (with stairways to their respective stockpiles on the 'dirt' level), a dining room, and then a statue garden linked to residential areas. I build a cross around the statue garden and carve out 3x3 rooms along those halls. Generally do about 40 rooms per level (5 on each side of each hallway of the cross) , so about 4 or 5 levels of this is as much as I ever need to carve out. Below those levels I'll carve out noble quarters in a haphazard way.

Sometimes I'll get fancy, if I have an aboveground river and a cavern I'll use grates in the residential district to make a waterfall for the staircases and dump it into the cavern. I seldom seem to get magma pipes anymore so I generally have my metalworking done with charcoal/coal/lignite for a decent amount of time before I can start pumpstacks from the magma ocean to get a magma reserve large enough to start industry with it. For this reason the glass/metal industries generally end up getting moved from the general workshop area at some point to just below the housing area, because it would be too much of a pain in the arse to work around the preexisting superstructure to get magma up there, far easier to just move workshops.

After the fort is very well established I tend to start making external fortifications because they look cool.

[Tuxman]

Begin with a single 3x3 up/down staircase.  Build things 10-15 squares away from this stairway ONLY. 3' halls.

Only expand outside of 10-15 squares away when all squares (going all the way down) are taken. I like to think this is very efficient considering the maximum space traveled is significantly lower with central travel.

But if tghe invaders happen to have building destroyer... thats bad...

[Heavenfall]

It depends how I want to play. Most fortresses I just enjoy smacking goblins and other invaders around with military. That's a straight-forward cubic castle going down into the ground 5-6 z-levels. A very simple approach like that seems to minimize fps loss from pathing. Each floor has a specific use - ground floor is for training, clay floor is for stockpiles, first stone layer is a workshop floor, next one down is for magma plumbing, next one down is sleeping quarters, then a few empty ones, then dining room and other niceties on the bottom floor.

If I want to build a true fort I take the time to build specific areas for different modes of productions. The fortress becomes divided into sections, each intended to serve a certain production (metal, crafting, carpenting and so on). Food haulers make sure that food is brought from the farming areas to the other ones. Each section includes a local dining room, a small hospital and so on. These fortresses tend to be significantly larger vertically speaking than the military fortress. This will leave room for rooms that aren't really necessary, but nevertheless awesome to have - like breeding rooms, tower cap farms, prisons with lots of FUN, arenas and so on. Unfortunately, all this stuff means a dramatic loss of FPS, and as such I really don't enjoy playing them for too long.

Easily the most impressive fort I built was on top of a volcano that had once risen above the ground, but was now hollow to several z-levels below ground level. I proceeded to build my fortress on top of the volcano. The top three floors were all part of a defense grid where invaders had to dodge traps and marksdwarves while navigating across a grid of floors. If the invaders dodged or were knocked back by macedwarves, they would fall down into the volcano, or on built spikes, or into pits of scorpions, or ponds slowly filling with magma after they landed. Of course, the defense was equally deadly for my dwarves, and lots of fun was had.

[OcelotTango]

Usually I make a shaft down wherever i think is cool,a nd build a small walled in area around it on the surface. My current on is on a giant fresh water lake, and I have built a small waterfall down the center of my main stair shaft.

[Vercingetorix]

Going a little more in depth:

I usually dig out a series of identically-sized workshop rooms; the first floor contains farms and basic processing industries for crops as well as food/alcohol production.  The second contains intermediate goods as well as stone crafting workshops.  The third floor contains the tertiary industries like glassmaking, gem setting, other crafting and metalsmithing.  Stockplies are associated according to the work ongoing on their floor.

Down below that, the main hall and the alcohol/refuse piles alongside it along with offices and the hospital, and below that the living quarters.  Barracks are distributed as needed; generally, I place at least one near the surface to respond quickly with others distributed according to whether or not we're using the caverns aggressively.

[lanceleoghauni]

Organically, I tend to not pre-plan, I aim for functionality, but limited by utility.

[thijser]

I usually start with a long 1 tile thick long tunnel which leads towards a farming area. When the farming area is set up I dug out a small stockpile/workshop area. When this is at least somehwat done I build a "legendary" dinning room. When this is done I expent the workshop/stockpile area. When this is larger I start setting up some simple square bedrooms. These are usually quite small but because when they are all smoothed (allong with the dinning room) I have a legendary engraver who can quickly make these rooms legendary aswell. When this is done I will probably have been producing a lot of mechanisms and perhaps a few cages so I can set up (/have been setting up) some defenses which then continue towards getting expanded. While this is happening I start working on my projects which usually include some kind of steam generator and or some kind of magma/fall trap.  military is definetly something for the endgame.

[lanceleoghauni]

I tend to use 3 wide tunnels for main throughways, simply because to start, 5 is too wide to quickly mine in anything other than a soil layer. Radial rooms are another thing I like, though they tend to be few in number.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I dig my fort in three levels:

My entrance -> barracks(weapon/armor/ammo stockpiles) -> trade depot
Workshops (cloth, leather, stone, wood, gem, etc. stockpiles), dining room/food storage, finished goods/furniture stockpiles (arranged in a triangle centered under the depot)
Bedrooms (under the depot)

Each area connects to all the others except the entrance(barracks), barracks(entrance and depot),  and the bedroom-depot non-link.

My workshops are arranged in alcoves surrounding a central stockpile of the material used by those workshops. My cloth and leather stockpiles are 7x7, surrounded by six workshops. The smelting complex is a 27x27 ore pile, supporting twenty-one magma smelters and in the center, a hallway to my metal bar stockpile/forge area

[Encased in burning magma]

Dig down to magma sea.

Fort starts here, with beds hopefully far from workshop, and barracks near the cavern entrance. If I dig elsewere, I seal up the caverns, and move the barracks near the next exploratory shaft.

The rest is built pretty damn much randomly, gotta keep the haulers busy.

I flood water down to get farms near the magma.

Trade depot can sit outside: chained animals and stonefall traps around it, but true fortifications/death machines between depot and fortress.

[AzureAngelic]

I'm kind of nooby, but I start by digging into a mountainside, or straight down if there is none. I like to be dwarfy and ignore soil, so I end up with a downward shaft of 1-4 z-levels, until I hit rock.

Once I hit rock I start digging out rooms for basic workshops, then dig down another level, set up stockpiles and farms, down another level, dining room and general space, down yet another level, bedrooms, and from there I just add onto it. Barracks near the top, zoo/arena/magma forges/extra workshops/general crap goes on the dining room floor.

Ideally I have my farmers with a staircase going straight down into food stockpiles and another to the dining room, each workshop vertically connected to a fitting stockpile, and as many extra doors and gaps as I can afford to punch in walls to speed up the fort.

Once I break into the caverns, I seal it up and dig out as much of the soil layer as I can when my miners have nothing better to do. This causes fungiwoods to sprout there, giving me an emergency indoors wood supply. I haven't really done much with magma yet, but I'd imagine pumping it upwards wouldn't be too tough by being clever with the tunneling.

Defense is my biggest problem, but I usually channel a moat as a quick deterrent, possibly flooded or only accessible by a floodgate-blocked dorf tunnel, and typically allowing a caravan to get in. The trade depot usually gets thrown outside; if the caravans can't defend themselves from silly goblins, tough shit for them. Hopefully I can get a better setup in the future though, since I like to set up walls behind the moat if I'm bored, and they never seem to do much.

[malimbar04]

The first thing I build is always a quick mushroom farm next to a river (or near a lake, though it means I have to see how much water is in the lake first). FAR too many times my dwarves have been decimated through starvation or thirst during the winter.

Second thing for me is to carve out areas to store food. stupid monkeys and buzzards like to steal it.

Third is a craftdwarf shop (or a mechanic shop, mechanisms are worth decent gold while also being useful for defense in various ways). with all the freaken stone, I should probably make a little money off of it.

After that, I probably should focus on my military and defense, but I tend to focus instead on making rooms for all the other crafts. 11x11 rooms are quick to make (shift arrow), while being able to hold a comfortable 3 craft stations on one side of the room, with a 4x11 space on the other side for storage of whatever they're making.

along with the crafty rooms I build a channel for water underneath every major room. Having a working well in every room avoids thirst from all but the most idiotic of dwarves. Be sure to have a floodgate near the river (to avoid water pressure build up), then flood the tunnels under the floor. To build the tunnel, I find each addition to the system requires one staircase next to a new well spot. It's still symmetrical and pretty.

those huge rooms are extra nice for when you start getting picky nobles. It's relatively easy to get an awesome throne room with a nice 11x11 room.

Of course, like I said... I should probably focus more on defense. By the time I  get 60+ dwarves, I am usually still struggling with 6 military dwarves that are sick of being on duty (or alternatively very poorly trained), and 3 of those are properly equiped. Lots of /fun/ defending that fortress.