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[Twi]

Okay, so I embarked in this one area that happens to be really freaking cold.
It stays below freezing year-round. There's a river, but it is also frozen the entire year, though I may be able to remedy this with lava. It would help if I could see more of said river...

Surprisingly, I'm not dead yet. Sadly, however, the game decided to start me off on the other side of the map from the section with anything of immediate use (a taiga area: trees and plants), and it's a pretty big embark. Nonetheless, if I survive, I have a plan.

This plan requires a source of water, preferably an infinite one (underground sea). I will construct a cast somewhere outside where I plan to put the tower. The cast will notably have a roof, and that's extremely important. I may or may not construct the cast with a floor plan; it depends on whether it'll be easier to mine out the rooms or build it (from my experience, freezing water destroys ramps, and it probably does so with stairs).
Next, I will make a covered tunnel that pumps water from my reservoir to the top of the cast without freezing, powered by whatever the heck I can make work. Most likely, that'd be elevated windmills, though I could place some waterwheels along my pump system to power it as well. Whichever works... In any event, also note that I'll have a floodgate where the water goes into the cast, so I can prevent backups.

So, once I have all this done, I'll pump the water into the cast, and close the floodgate once it's full. THEN! I will deconstruct some part of the roof. The water is exposed to the outdoor temperature and boom, water freezes into ice. Hopefully, anyways. Get rid of the cast (painstakingly) and you have a CAST ICE TOWER.

Why am I doing this?

Simply because I'm hoping that I'll be able to engrave the ice. >_>

Is this even possible?

[mrtspence]

Don't know, but it seems manly enough that it is worth a try!

[MagmaMcFry]

See Frozenhalls.

[NecroRebel]

It won't work as you described, because what matters for freezing temperatures above ground is whether or not the tile is above or under ground, not whether it's inside or outside. So, the water coming up your pump stack will freeze as soon as it gets aboveground, whether or not it's got a roof over it, and thus you won't be able to fill your cast.

You might be able to get around that with some magma engineering; keeping lava directly below the output square for every pump, as well as below every square of any aboveground aqueducts you've got, would keep the water liquid. That would make filling the cast very difficult, though I can think of a way: build the cast 1 level tall, build a reservoir directly above that level of cast, fill the reservoir with magma, then let the water fill the bottom level of cast. Empty and disassemble the magma reservoir, then repeat the whole process the next z-level up.

Of course, the easier way to do it would be to switch temperature off, fill your cast with water that won't freeze since it isn't getting colder, then switch temperature on and have the whole thing freeze at once. It's a bit cheaty, but far, far simpler.

[Twi]

See Frozenhalls.

Cool.

It won't work as you described, because what matters for freezing temperatures above ground is whether or not the tile is above or under ground, not whether it's inside or outside. So, the water coming up your pump stack will freeze as soon as it gets aboveground, whether or not it's got a roof over it, and thus you won't be able to fill your cast.

You might be able to get around that with some magma engineering; keeping lava directly below the output square for every pump, as well as below every square of any aboveground aqueducts you've got, would keep the water liquid. That would make filling the cast very difficult, though I can think of a way: build the cast 1 level tall, build a reservoir directly above that level of cast, fill the reservoir with magma, then let the water fill the bottom level of cast. Empty and disassemble the magma reservoir, then repeat the whole process the next z-level up.

Of course, the easier way to do it would be to switch temperature off, fill your cast with water that won't freeze since it isn't getting colder, then switch temperature on and have the whole thing freeze at once. It's a bit cheaty, but far, far simpler.

Well damn. That sucks.
I might just have to do the cheaty way...but half of the landscape is already made of ice. This might be a problem.
Would the ice already there melt?

[ISGC]

you could keep it all underground and then expose it when the mold is finished
then, dig out all the sediment and you have a spire (though underground, unless you do it in a mountain) made of ice
from there you should make a huge twisting stair to the very bottom
there's a good circle template that you should use
it's possible to be done, but would require a lot of managing.

[NecroRebel]

Well damn. That sucks.
I might just have to do the cheaty way...but half of the landscape is already made of ice. This might be a problem.
Would the ice already there melt?

No, because temperature would be off; the ice wouldn't be getting any warmer any more than the water would be getting colder. No temperature means no freezing and no melting.

[Twi]

Ah. Good.

you could keep it all underground and then expose it when the mold is finished
then, dig out all the sediment and you have a spire (though underground, unless you do it in a mountain) made of ice
from there you should make a huge twisting stair to the very bottom
there's a good circle template that you should use
it's possible to be done, but would require a lot of managing.

That's a good idea...
Assuming, of course, that it actually changes to underground when I open it up. I think I heard somewhere that it wouldn't... Maybe.

[iceball3]

Why don't you use pit/pond and buckets?

[Twi]

Why don't you use pit/pond and buckets?

...
Where would the fun be in that?
I could see that working.
I could also see that not working. Who knows?

[Namfuak]

Why don't you use pit/pond and buckets?

 

Talk about Occam's Razor...  In theory, that would work perfectly though, and as an added bonus it would be pretty fast since 1/7 water freezing counts as much as 7/7 (IE, a whole square). 

As for your smoothing/engraving question, yes, you can smooth and engrave natural ice, but built ice is the same as a wall (and as such isn't destroyed by magma, which can make for some interesting setups), so it can't be engraved.  Keep in mind that natural ice CAN melt after being engraved, which will count as "art defacement," and can cause your engraver to go insane after one frame if he engraved the entire fortress and a wall is melted out.  I did this with a river that unfroze for a few weeks out of the year, thinking I could keep training him.  I was wrong (well, it trained him, but he went berserk and had to have his arms and legs cut off, his guts ripped out, and then got beheaded finally).

[NecroRebel]

Why don't you use pit/pond and buckets?

I thought I saw someone say that the water will freeze in the buckets, giving you buckets of ice that can't be used for to fill a pond. It's worth a shot, but don't be surprised if bucket brigades don't work.

[Patchy]

Actually it takes 2 bucket fulls to make an ice wall. The first bucket makes an icefloor and the 2nd makes a wall.

Also when filling the buckets, if the dwarf is standing in a freezing tile, the water will be frozen. If he is standing in a non-freezing tile the water will be liquid when he finishes filling the bucket. But once in the bucket, the bucket insulates the water from the freezing effects of winter. You can observe this behavior for yourself simply by going to a tundra with an aquifer. Dig a channel in the aquifer but leave the roof over it. Now dig out the roof on 1 side of the aquifer channel and leave the roof over the other side. Set up a water-source zone on 1 side to test and then delete the source and put a new one on the other side to test that. I did this by accident once and it took me like a season and a half to track down why my dwarves were making the expansion to my ice-keep so slowly.

[Fishbulb]

Wow, I'm glad you did all that research. I got curious along those lines when I embarked on a barely-temperate region that was frozen solid until mid-summer. I noticed some barrels hadn't gotten stockpiled, so I checked them out. They were the milk I brought with me for making cheese. It had frozen solid, right in the barrels.

[Max White]

*Break open barrel*
*Lick giant popsicle*