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[Zou]

Really, the only two I can think of are the common fortresses built in the mountain/underground, or the one I am building right now, which is completely outdoors, much like a village or small town. So I ask, how do you build your fortress?

[Internet Kraken]

I build my Fortresses on top of oceans. It's kind of hard to explain what it looks like, so I'll just post a picture.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's what the main floor of most of my Fortresses end up looking like, though some parts of it (such as the noble housing) are not built yet. The area to the left of the food stockpile is where all food related industries are built. To the right is the dining hall, and the sleeping quarters are located bellow it, while the hospital is on top. At the very end of the Fortress is the finished goods stockpile. That area is multilevel and contains most of the other industries, such as metalworking, carpentry, gem cutting ect. The only signifcant parts of the Fortress not located above ground are the farms and barracks. The farm is located in the caverns for obvious reasons. The barracks are located above ground because my military kept killing themselves in the above ground barracks (also pictured). They kept falling out of the barracks during sparring sessions, drowning in the ocean bellow. Even when I built walls around it they still fell into the ocean, somehow. So I just decided to keep the barracks below ground.

[timtek]

Dood kraken, that is friggan AWESOME! If you chopped off the connector would the rest still stay above water? You could effectively have a floating fortress.

[Internet Kraken]

Dood kraken, that is friggan AWESOME! If you chopped off the connector would the rest still stay above water? You could effectively have a floating fortress.

No.

Spoiler: This is what happens when the connectors are severed (or replaced with something that does not serve as a connector) (click to show/hide)

The entire Fortress collapses into the ocean. When you do it on purpose it is amusing. When it happens by accident, it is absolutely horrifying. Still, I'd rather destroy my forts by doing this than losing them to goblin sieges.

[timtek]

bwahahahaha! now that's FUN!

[Flaede]

I dig down - building 4 large rooms per level with ramp connectors - alternating CROSS/X/CROSS/X... etc.
I may branch off of these, but that is the plan that everything bases off of.

The central area of the cross/x serves for central plumbing. Also, I dig that down as the exploratory shaft

[minozake]

I usually build long, long entrance tunnels.  Then I, for some reason, like to build massive halls for the first stockpiles.  After that, it's pragmatic, especially when I switched to the 5x5 rooms for organization.

[Trekkin]

I build my fort by building a 3x3 staircase directly down from embark to the magma sea, then building up around it. When i find water, I pump it down through the middle (which is channeled) so that I have a fort sitting just above the magma with a waterfall through it. It allows easy access to magma for forging, water flow for power, waterfalls for morale, and water for wells, and allows the use of a single pump and some walls to make as much farmland as I require by sucking the water flow out of the falls. I can even drop a sand tile down the middle of the fort and have a glass industry with the magma glass furnace two steps away from the sand.

It's also extremely fun to leave the whole channel open and watch the occasional goblin/dwarf misstep into the increasingly red waterfall, since most fights occur on the staircase down. A map-high blood falls vaporizing on contact with magma- my tribute to Armok.

[SkyRender]

 I still do my standard "Greek cross" layout, with outer-edge stockpiles.  It's predictable, sure, but it's so damned effective.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[melomel]

This is what happens when the connectors are severed (or replaced with something that does not serve as a connector)

That is awesome and I approve.

Mine look a lot like SkyRender's, except less finessed.  I'm not quite at the stage where I can get artsy about it, so I substitute OCD.

[ungulateman]

I worked out how to make a fairly simple spiral staircase, so I use it in all my forts now. The first level is the farms and food workshops, plus the food stockpile. The second level is where the other stockpiles go. Third level is workshops, then the barrakcs and hospital go on the fourth. After that I have bedrooms and a dining room.

[smokingwreckage]

My answer is "more or less at random". I like to hollow out heaps of room in a soil layer or two, it takes no time and means you never really run out of space.

Basically: get farming up, hollow out some high-value stone or veins for future legendary engraved hall of dining ecstasy, muddle about with a metal industry, get eaten by monsters, curse self for not building where there was obsidian layer for razor traps.

[Osdeath]

The current one of which I am most proud is constructed off the sheer cliff of a volcano side, the depot is underground, with the quarries for the stone (Exclusively basalt built fort), with the staircase leading up 20 or so z levels to the fort itself, it follows the same design as the normal fort, 2x3 resedential rooms, 11x11 stockpiles, 3 wide corridors, nice big meeting hall.

It also has an artificial stream at the top which will make a waterfall, which should be working next spring, when everything unfreezes, it was going to be perpetual motion, but watermills were being...stubborn.

[Tsarwash]

I started off using spiral staircases and such, because they can offer much better security, but as so far I have never really had a beasty rampaging through my actual fort, I have moved to simple 2x2 x stairways. from my ground level entrance to my mamge forges just above the sea is only fifty tiles distance. I have walled off a large section of the first underground cavern and am slowly making this my central cavern. Most industry shall be on this level, or the one above. Small clusters of bedrooms are scattered around the z levels, close to the central stairway. I always keep my butchers and tanners above ground to prevent miasma. Masons workshops have no permanent home, rather they move to where the piles of stone gather. I try to keep production locations according to the flow of resources. I.e. I have wood burning next to lye making next to soap making.

[TauQuebb]

Currently an aboveground fort, while my dorfs work on the 30z obsidian casting that will make the fort itself, 15 above ground, 15 below, centred in a 44x44 lake 15 deep at the deepest point, going to fit underwater windows and a spiral ramp in the centre, along with a red lever of doom.

I have finished mining out the mold and working on the 40z level pump stack for magma. going ok dispite the few seiges making a mess..