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[NW_Kohaku]

I used to try that, but I found too many things doubled up or were useless as far as profession goes.  (Love the name idea Armani btw!  I might have to 'borrow' it.)  Of course, this was in a much older version that I tried it; maybe the info is more helpful now.

Actually, I had a rediculous number of weavers and clothiers, but that was when I had over 100 dwarves, and was just waiting for my queen to show up, anyway.  I wound up with 5 each of weavers, dyers, and clothiers.  (Plus an extra hundred or so tiles of farms).

I wound up having to sell absurd quantities of the stuff.  I didn't even ask for anything from the caravans, I just bought heavy things like rocks and sold all the clothes I could force them to carry away with them.  (HAHA! Take THAT, elves! In Communist Dwarf Fortress, dwarves dump their excess cloth on you!)

Much of my time in that fort was actually spent in just expanding my warehouses to carry all the surplusses of crafts I was creating.

Anyway, I did have a handful of dwarves who had no really useful preferences (liking layer stones that aren't in my embark, a silly metal like bismuth, and some rare gem like black diamonds) that I used as my "swing" dwarves to pick up slack or haul.  (I even named one of them "Swing" because of it.)

[Grimlocke]

This topic reminds me of this game having qutie a lot of playing styles. I for instance dont realy mind the dwarves personalities and preferences, often not even the labour the arrive with.

I realy only look into the dwarves that are exceptionally useful (legendary metalsmiths and such) and allow them to abstain from menial labour, mostly because of its tendancy to get them killed. The rest of the great masses either have masonry + hauling, farming + hauling or furnace operating (often just the ones that arrive with some lower level metalworking skill), and of course the military. They are just the means to build glorious architecture and machinery.

Which I do spend a disproportional amouth of time and attention on. Things that come to mind:
 -Most of my fortresses are either outside or in huge artificial caverns, leaving me to build tall constructed buildings.
 -Nothing has more surface then it needs, no 5-wide hallways, no 20x20 dining rooms, no 5x5 staircases.
 -Rooms are often more then 1 z-level high (kind of contradicting the above). The game cant recognise this I know, I just like the thought of great tall chambers. Dining rooms are rarely less then 3 z-levels tall, often they have some balustrades on higher z-levels with meeting zones on them.
 -Lots of recurring architectural shapes. By now I got quite a lot of variation there but I still allmost allways end up making the things symmetric.
 -No round shapes, few diagonal shapes. I just think they dont get along with the square grid and my small-scale desing.
 -Colors must match up nicely. Different fortress levels have one primary color, often black or brown. Different buildings have their own secondary color, special buildings sometimes have their own primary color, like a hospital could have white-purple while the rest of the fortress has black-brown.
 -Microcline and other obnoxious colors are mass dumped under the atom smasher, anything dug in there is replaced with constructions. Yes, I dont like bright colors much.
 -Any and all engineering projects are horrendously overengineerd. Lots more pumps than I need, lots more power than those need. It gets out of hand sometimes but I allways like the result.

Gee well that was more than I though. Still not as spectacular as Starver though.

[Reese]

Well, the only consistent thing I have is that every contiguous wall or floor MUST be made of the same material, and all permanent structures must be made of blocks

exceptions are made where there is an obvious change in building (the farming annex may be a different color than the main keep to which it attaches, etc) or spot repairs (raw native stone used to wall up the bit. coal vein that cut through my mass housing) and floors may be a different color than walls

Additionally, when I have time I try to make individual rooms sufficient to house all my dorfs, though they are not good about claiming rooms in the current version.

[wierdoom]

I never dig any part of a fortress out of soil. The colors don't matter, but I hate it when I can't engrave/smooth every bit of my fortress.

[Nyxalinth]

I have to give every dwarf a new name that has to do with their profession (or the profession I want them to have).  Sometimes this makes me really stretch my vocabulary.   My husband thinks I'm crazy to do it that way, but there is a method to the madness.

Also, I restart the game whenever a child dies.  Might be why I never get very far... o_O

I'm sure there's other things, but I can't remember them right now; it's 3:24 am for me.


Oooo, I just thought of another one.  I only chop down a tree if there's another tree touching it.

Lady, you are messed up.
Why didn't I meet you before you got married?

I jest, I jest!

Heh.  At least you acknowledged that I could be a lady and not just a man, since we all know there are no women on the internet.  

Is not a woman here, either!

Me, hmm...nothing comes to mind...oh wait. I love cats, so I wait until catsplosion is nigh before slaughtering any. Also, I look for certain dwarf traits (artistic talent, angers quickly) and if I don't get at least one, I keep aborting the game until I get it.

[Nyxalinth]

The only thing I do, I'm ashamed to say, is give my starting 7 the same names, based loosely on their personalities.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I feel so ashamed...so childish...

...and yet awesome

Awww, that's cute.  Seriously

[NW_Kohaku]

You don't have to slaughter cats, just cage them all as soon as you see them born.  When you hit 50, they stop giving birth, and if they never leave their cage, all the problems with cats never occur.  Your first five or so cats will chase after the resident Crazy Cat Dwarf (Sunny was the resident one of those), and their kittens just get caged up and stuck in the zoo forever... at least, until one dies, then I'll let another cat out to adopt a new master.

[Eric Blank]

I've said it before, I'll mention it again.
I absolutely must make the dimensions of every room an odd number, even halls must be 1, 3, 0r 5 wide, and measured in odd-numbered lengths in ways that i can make odd-number dimensioned rooms out of them. the smallest rooms are usually 1x2 so that i can make them in sets of 2x5 stuffed neatly into a 5x5 block between 4 halls that are 3x5 with corners that are 3x3, with a 1x doorway joining them. the middle-class rooms are almost always either 3x5 or 5x5, and upperclass/nobles rooms are made from 11x11 blocks cut so there's a 7x7 dining room, a 3x7 bedroom, and a 3x11 engraving hall, seperated by 1x walls with a door leading to each of the other rooms.
Workshops are grouped in fours in a 7x7 room, except the farming related shops, the still, kitchen, fishery, butchery, and farmers' workshop, which I arrange in a 7x11 room in such a way as to leave as much floor space in the middle as possible. Stockpiles are always 23x23 or similar, usually stacked vertically.

All my dwarves must have labors turned on to make up specific classes, but there's even more detail here and I don't want to be charged with negligent homicide because your head explodes trying to understand how stupid I am. You can't.

[Mynoris]

I never dig any part of a fortress out of soil. The colors don't matter, but I hate it when I can't engrave/smooth every bit of my fortress.

I don't mind for the food workshops, but any of my rooms that are social have to be of stone floors.  I also go a bit nutty when I can't smooth and then engrave my walls.

[taro8]

Not much to say, as I only recently discovered awesomeness of Dwarf Fortress. Im still learning and thats why I keep clean save and use it whenever I mess something up. However my ritual is that I name all my fortresses Akgosbobluk "Clinchedbuttocks"  , its a name I once got when pushing "r", but its so damn funny I keep using it. Another "ritual" is that I always mess something up, flood the fortress, completely forget about farming etc.

[Mynoris]

You don't have to slaughter cats, just cage them all as soon as you see them born.  When you hit 50, they stop giving birth, and if they never leave their cage, all the problems with cats never occur.  Your first five or so cats will chase after the resident Crazy Cat Dwarf (Sunny was the resident one of those), and their kittens just get caged up and stuck in the zoo forever... at least, until one dies, then I'll let another cat out to adopt a new master.

I always just sell the extra kittens that I have in a cage.  I can't bear to kill them either.

[nbonaparte]

I never dig any part of a fortress out of soil. The colors don't matter, but I hate it when I can't engrave/smooth every bit of my fortress.

I do the same with the exception of stockpiles. It's just so much easier to not have to dump a bunch of stone early in the game. And my legendary miners can dig out a tremendous area in soil for stockpiles.

[NW_Kohaku]

Trying to plan out my entire fortress - designating areas for mining that are not connected to any passages for miners to try to get to them, just as place markers... before deconstructing the wagon.

[Zaik]

all my bedrooms are always 3x6, and for some reason i always make exactly 4 farm plots.

[Devonus]

i've only had the oppurtonity to do this on 2 fortresses so far (note i'm only on number 5 and i predict this will be a habit) but i MUST have a huge aqueduct system somewhere capable of covering my entire fortress, and i REFUSE to use cavern water, so i always embark by a stream/river etc etc.

further more i decided that i'm going to copiously desighn a multi level prison a few layers down with 4 levels (1 normal barracks style area, lots of beds, few wells in corners, etc etc, and upper class/talented worker area with a bed, chair, table, and individual well with a quantum food stockpile, solitary confine ment which will consist of 1x2 cell blocks for gobbo's, elves, and haulers idc about, which will have a hatch connected to a lever, dropping them into the 4th level which will be the carnage pit/arena/ FUN area) of course though i have it sketched out on paper, there are currently some issues (space on my current map i just realized, i dont have enough room between my lowest living/workshop area and my aqueducts) however if all works out i may just do this repeatedly ^^