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[Flaede]

I hear some people have problems with mining out a tile and then not being able to 're-hide' the revealed portion when it clashes with their design, and going to ridiculous lengths to keep things even.
Or using magma-created obsidian instead of constructed walls solely so they can engrave everything evenly.
I've heard of folks adding (useless) capes to their armour schemes, and even going so far as to specify the colour or material of said capes.

My personal nonsense is the content of engravings, encrustings, or other decorations. I try to make my levers have decorations relating to their purpose (a wave -> important floodgate lever. A monster, duh, use it for holding back monsters. The god of fortresses, with dwarves praying to her? The "SHUT THE GATES" lever). I even try to make all floor engravings relate to important historical events, not the symbol of my civilization - I do this by building over them (destroying the engraving) if it is a useless stupid engraving and trying again.

I know this is ridiculous, but it amuses me, so I do not care. I'm curious what else players do that is convoluted and nonsensical.

[Dorf3000]

Welcome to the Obsessive-Compulsive Perfectionists Club.  We have many members here. 

I have to admit to avoiding wall engravings because they can't be removed and done again if it happens to be a picture of cheese, or the mayor surrounded by cave spiders *again*.  It makes room value suffer a bit but I think it's worth it.  Statues etc. get dumped if their subject is common and they're not masterworks.  I'll occasionally keep a statue in an odd material (oh, forgot to mention, all statues are made in special mason shops with their own stone piles, usually obsidian or marble if I have it), but only if it's a rare or amusing subject.  I've stopped decorating with bones since the bonecrafter seems to like decorating random sand bags and furniture rather than the items in the finished goods stockpile surrounding him (grrr), I'll have to make some tests to see if burrows work in a sensible way for decorating jobs.  If not then I'll have to go with the 'Decorators Dungeon' design I have planned, where I just dump in the materials and food and they never leave.. 

Oh, and capes aren't useless for armor, they do catch some blows from goblin archers and spearmen.  But mostly it's because it's cool to have your team of elite warriors striding the halls in their distinctive uniform, even if you have to imagine it.

[Flaede]

I just remembered my favourite (not this fortress) decorative statue.
I was building a 100z level tower, just after we suddenly were able to (2010). An accident glitched falling masons to stick up in the air.
I built out to them, still stuck in time (falling forever) - so I surrounded each of them in statues of flies, dragonflies, butterflies, birds, and bats.

[brucemo]

I don't like to get things stuck in places where I can't retrieve them, even rocks.  A rock dropped into some water drives me crazy, so whenever I make something involving water, I have a plan for emptying it.  I also don't like to get dwarves killed, and I've been known to scum-save because a cat was injured.  I go crazy trying to avoid trampling seedlings when they sprout underground.  I'll scum save if I get a better idea about how to make some thing after I've already made it, and I tend to scum save once I figure out where the magma is, so I don't have a lot of exploratory tunnels everywhere.  I've made forts where I don't use stairs for any reason.  My current fort has 16 dabbling armorsmiths (resulting in two suits of extremely bad steel armor), so I don't waste strange moods getting metalcrafters.

Having said that, I'll mine out a vein and put a constructed wall back in (or not), and I don't care what color the floors are.

[Mechanoid]

My most recent OCD behavior was digging 4x4 squares of up/down staircases (aligned to the nearest map corner) either 4, 8, or 12 tiles in height. Why? So i could rebuild the floor and ceiling with a uniform rock type of constructed walls. Why? Because constructed walls totally block all cave-in effects. "But cave-ins don't happen as long as there's a tile connected orthogonally to support!" Yes, i know.
Then, with the carved staircases still in place, i'd build those ceiling and floor walls (which forced me to continually expand to get walkable space) and then construct the actual side walls. All of it out of the rough stone that was mined, so if i changed my mind or needed a rough stone, it'd be easy and reversable; if i want a valuable room, i'll build it out of valuable metal bars. If i wanted art, i'd put in a dyed and decorated cloth rope "carpet" and statues. Once the area was finalized, the up/down staircases that remained were channeled from below, top to bottom so none remained.
Unless it was a totally mechanical or useless corridor (ore mineshafts) in which case i left the place alone and empty.

The highest anything got was 12z for the entrance. Normally, often used paths and rooms were 4 or 8 high, with an optional 4 high sewer beneath that often used pathway. Places that handled water would dump their used water into the sewer; fountains, waterfalls, drowning chambers noble mandate processors. The sewer, being in effect a giant empty unpopulated room, was also the refuse pile.
Staircases were treated like they were ladders and not actual stairways. Ramps were used in both straight and spiral to move dwarves vertically; ramp incline did not exceed a 1:4 ratio.
####^...V---
####^@..V---
####^...V---
####^..@V---
A horizontally sliced OCD ramp.

And of course i'd dig down staircases onto the soil layer, then up staircases below them, then removing the non-border down staircases with a channel, then removing the up staircases without down staircases above them... [Then i'd do a ramp border along the remaining staircases so they didn't eat pathing cycles.] So the miner would be legendary before EVER touching stone because he altered each tile on each z-level two times. I needed every rough stone (and ore... and gem) i could get.

[Edit:]
- Starting 7 dwarves only. Every time.
- 4 female dwarves, 3 male dwarves. Every time.
- Absolutely no grudges between dwarves. Every time.
- Absolutely no barrels, bags, or any non-raw/non-consumable material/objects, because i HATE HATE HATE (This Item Came From Outside The Fortress And Doesn't Contribute To Your Fortress Value) items.
- No contact with mountain home for 20 years. Every time. (FPS death before this though)
- [SPEED:1][NO_EAT][NO_DRINK][NO_SLEEP] for most of those 20 years. Every. Damn. Time.

I don't like to get things stuck in places where I can't retrieve them, even rocks.  A rock dropped into some water drives me crazy, so whenever I make something involving water, I have a plan for emptying it.

This.
Damn PTSD flashbacks to 2D channels filled with stone. Ugly, ugly grey 'o' sitting in the middle of a field of blue. AARRGGHH

[penco]

Every room and passage in my fort is at least horizontally symmetrical. I go to great length counting tiles on the ground level to assure that my fort entrance is in the center of the map. All my stairwells are 3x3 or occasionally 1x3. I never build any room or corridor with a width that is a multiple of 2 because then it can't be centered properly with the rest of my odd-numbered layouts.

Needless to say, each room in my fort is planned well in advance of me actually needing it.

[Artzbacher]

Every room and passage in my fort is at least horizontally symmetrical. I go to great length counting tiles on the ground level to assure that my fort entrance is in the center of the map. All my stairwells are 3x3 or occasionally 1x3. I never build any room or corridor with a width that is a multiple of 2 because then it can't be centered properly with the rest of my odd-numbered layouts.

Needless to say, each room in my fort is planned well in advance of me actually needing it.

I do this as well. Even if the exact middle is covered in water.

I'm basically obsessed with the SHIFT+DIRECTION 11-tile design. Meaning the meeting area, stockpile rooms etc. are always 11x11 in size. Same goes for castle walls and almost everything else.

I also never, ever embark in anything else than a totally flat area. It's not very dwarfy, but otherwise I'd had to channel down entire mountains for several in-game hours before even designating the down stairs.

[rephikul]

I also never, ever embark in anything else than a totally flat area. It's not very dwarfy, but otherwise I'd had to channel down entire mountains for several in-game hours before even designating the down stairs.

SPEED:0 player detected

[TheJackal]

Rough stone is never an option. All workshops and constructions must be made of rock blocks, glass blocks, or bars. As you can imagine this makes me bring a block or two with me from Embark for building my first masonry shop.

Secondly, I do not expand my fort, except for mining and apartments. When I arrive, I designate all the mining, channeling, and other burrow activity. Then set those dorfs to digging.

[Sutremaine]

I also never, ever embark in anything else than a totally flat area. It's not very dwarfy, but otherwise I'd had to channel down entire mountains for several in-game hours before even designating the down stairs.

SPEED:0 player detected

What's wrong with that? If all you want to do is make sandcastles, invaders are a distraction. Sure, you could have a corridor of traps with some war animals around the corner, but then you'd still either have to deal with the mess or leave all that irritating clothing lying about.

Personally I like to destroy any hilltops by digging them out and caving them in. This preserves the grass or boulders and therefore looks very natural. It also means you can build a hobbit-hole while the main fortress is being dug, and then remove it entirely later.

[zephyr_hound]

SPEED:0 player detected

I suspect he means several hours of sitting playing the game, not several hours of "in-game time". heh.


I'm another person who has to use blocks for everything. I like above-ground forts because I can control the colors of everything. Also, all furniture has to be encrusted with just one gem type. This means I have to make custom stockpiles near my jeweler and micromanage him.

I also try to ensure everyone will mood to weaponsmith/mason/something useful, and if that's not practical I'm not above arranging Unfortunate Accidents. Proficient woodcrafter migrant? He's making copper short swords on repeat until he becomes a weaponsmith. High master woodcrafter? Hey, congrats, you're now a wrestler, why don't you go wrestle that skeletal elephant over there? I'm sure it'll be fi--oh. Whoops. Oh deary deary me. Good thing he didn't have time to make any friends, eh? Oh hey, we've even got a spare coffin, fancy that.
...Yeah, I hate woodcrafter artifacts THAT much.

[TheJackal]

SPEED:0 player detected

I suspect he means several hours of sitting playing the game, not several hours of "in-game time". heh.


I'm another person who has to use blocks for everything. I like above-ground forts because I can control the colors of everything. Also, all furniture has to be encrusted with just one gem type. This means I have to make custom stockpiles near my jeweler and micromanage him.

We must have been separated at birth.

Also, every surface must be smoothed and engraved. EVERYONE. If its sand or loam, I floor over it with metal. SHINY METAL.

[Artzbacher]

I also never, ever embark in anything else than a totally flat area. It's not very dwarfy, but otherwise I'd had to channel down entire mountains for several in-game hours before even designating the down stairs.

SPEED:0 player detected

Oops. I meant several real time hours.

Other silly things i compulsively do:
Walls, floors etc. are made exlusively from blocks. I get many legendary masons in the process.
All armor and weapons must be made from steel, even shields, but not hammers.
Only two types of stone may be used for the outside fortress. One for walls and one for floors. Simply using stone that look alike, but have different names, won't do.
No traps if it's not a special theme fortress.

[Mantonio]

In my current fort, I REALLY want all the walls / floors to be Obsidian or Marble (haven't decided between the two), and I want all the furniture to be gold or silver.

However, I'm on sedimentary rock, specifically claystone. So while I have loads of iron and coal, I have none of the other things. So I must dig down, and down, and down.

Plus, I just REALLY REALLY REALLY want Toady to implement you being able to specify what you want goods to be made out of. That would help me so much you have no idea.

[lowbart]

In any RTS I compulsively build walls as my outer defense perimeter, and DF is no exception.

I only designate something to be engraved once I'm 100% goddamn sure that's how I want it, because I only allow my legendary stoneworker to engrave, and I don't want him to freak out about a defaced masterpiece (everything he makes is a masterpiece).