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[borderlands]

For the past several versions I have been experimenting with dwarves living humie-style. Personally, I like this style of play for the challenge and the aesthetic possibilities of a spread-out city. Whenever I start a traditional game, I get too caught-up on vertical fortress design and efficient stockpile/workshop layouts. The end result is a machine that is so efficient that I get 200 dwarves by year 4. Also, with the latest version that adds a lot of desirability to dwarves living and working on the surface, above-ground towns seem much more viable and immediately profitable. That's why I like above-ground dwarves.

I embark in a very flat, heavily-wooded area and proceed to make all my structures out of wood. Aside from my quarry, nothing can extend more than two layers underground. My more successful towns have had churches, several dining halls, and most industries with a relatively efficient work flow. However, all my towns have fallen to a single threat: gobbo ambushes.

The main problem lies in the fact that an open-air town is difficult to encircle with a wall. The amount of time and dwarfpower required to completely wall up a sizable town is considerable. I rarely manage to establish a secure perimeter, complete with patrolling soldiers before an ambush of goblin lashers massacre my dwarves.

Another problem is the miserably slow expansion rate. Dwarves construct things really slow and, especially with only your starting seven, you can't build any structure larger than 4x4 with a roof before your dwarves need a place to sleep. Besides that, the sheer amount of material you need to build a building adds loads to the overall construction time.

Anybody got any thoughts they'd like to share about above-ground towns? Any interesting layouts? What's a fast and easy way to secure a perimeter and keep your dwarves safe?

[PwndJa]

Work in layers, much like actual castles. Start with a decent sized area and wall it off. 10x10 is about right, but it's up to you. This will, eventually, be your 'keep' and it serves a similar purpose in the early years. Keep stockpiles in there, but not everything as it will fill up fast. From there, you'd probably be better off digging a dry moat on the border of where you intend to make your next layer. Goblins won't be able to get over it and it can serve(aesthetically if you never find a real purpose for it) as a general water system. After that you can train, set up industry, whatever. If you choose to do so you can build a bridge across the dry moat and raise it if an ambush comes.

[Girlinhat]

Treat it like a for-real town.  Start in a fort, a small, compact bunker.  Between sieges, you build a hut, and then a wall around it and the main fort.  Then another hut, tear down the old wall and expand it around the new one.  Soldiers guarding the work-zone is a must.  Just go one step at a time, and take each step outwards.  Your "castle" should be 2-3 levels, with an underground plump helmet farm, some dormitories, a still, and basic ammo-production.  The rest should be build in separate buildings as time permits.

[borderlands]

Pretty awesome advice. With these towns, I had always started with a fantasy of a small group of frontiersdwarves establishing a colony or something. A castle or keep strikes me as too militaristic, but resource- and safety-wise they seem like wise development strategies.

What are some good layouts for housing? I find tall apartment buildings to be the most space efficient, but they just seem out-of-place and generally ugly compared to the small-town feel of the workshop buildings and such. Any advice?

[Girlinhat]

Do it realistically, workshops IN the rooms!  Bed over here, with a table and chair, and a workshop and small stockpile on the other side.  Or the bedroom on the upstairs like a british shop.

A central structure is actually fairly accurate I think.  People would gather in the first provisional structure, the "town hall" that's a temporary cover-all structure, until specialized buildings are finished elsewhere.

[Flare]

The biggest problem with an above ground home is security.
Start with a manor of sorts with a small protective ring outside in case of titans and ambushes. Generally make it a safe haven that the dwarves can run to if trouble arises. As your population grows and homes, farms, and gardens are gradually fill up the area around the inner sanctum, build another wall to keep invaders out. A sort of layered defence. A good thing about this is that you will finally have a use for roads.

[agatharchides]

Build up, not out. Pack everything close together. It is actually quite historically accurate, medieval town buildings were frequently multiple stories tall and touching each other with very narrow alleys. Space within the city walls was at a premium.

[Eric Blank]

Your natural terrain is the real key here. Whenever you start an above-ground fortification or city, consider placing it atop a large plateau and removing all ramps to prevent invaders from simply waltzing in, maybe leaving some for an entrance early on. Chain an animal outside the entrance soon and build a drawbridge or whatnot to seal out ambushes it reveals. With this large area sealed off, begin constructing your city in relative safety. You've got time to build walls around the top of it to protect you from archers and construct a castle from that.

[borderlands]

Girlinhat: The problem with workshops in the rooms is the noise it generates. Generally, while a dwarf is sleeping upstairs or beside the shop, another dwarf with the same profession enabled will bolt in and use the workshop, waking everyone up and causing bad thoughts. Also, a church or inn has commonly been my first cover-all structure, but the problem of devoting enough dwarfpower to military still prevails. It takes a lot of dwarves to build things speedily, and those dwarves won't be able to buff up for when the gobbos arrive.

Flare: While it certainly sounds secure, that system of individual manors and walls sounds a bit complicated. Besides, dwarves will be running willy-nilly back and forth and whatever roads I designate will be full of haulers or craftsdwarves going about their daily business. It seems safer to me to build a big wall or moat around a whole bunch of structures rather than to have satellite estates to a primary castle.

Agatharchides: That actually sounds like a wonderful idea. While I like having a spread-out town, modeling my city after, say, 17th century Paris sounds like a fun compromise.

[Urist Da Vinci]

You can channel a 2-tile-wide dry moat around your desired construction site and remove the ramps from one side within the first year to provide the same ambush-channeling effect as a wall. It only doesn't protect against archers.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Noise
Workshops don't produce noise.

[Max White]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Use a river and a ditch to make a moat around the entire town!

[Flare]

Bah, have the moat go through the town. Make it look like Venice.

[borderlands]

Workshops don't produce noise.

Huh! That's good to know. They used to. Well, at least in 40d they did.

Edit: Nope. Not then either. My bad.

Ranged attacks is why I generally like building walls and fortifications rather than a moat. If this were a traditional, dug-into-the-mountain fort, a moat would be fine since all the civvies would be inside, away from the terrifying velocity of a gobbo-arrow. Also, I'm a little paranoid about having ramps on the inside of a dry moat since there's the possibility of a hostile falling into the moat and being able to climb out the other side. I've never seen it happen, but it seems like a possibility. Am I just being neurotic?

On an unrelated note, what are some good starting builds? I usually start with two carpenters/wood choppers, one mason/miner, one doctor, one leader/hauler, and two growers/cooks/brewers. No anvil, two dogs, and one cat.

[NW_Kohaku]

Seriously speaking, just plain building on a hill or mountain and cutting away the ramps up to you in all but one or two places is the easiest way to defend yourself.  Failing that, simply digging a big moat is easier than a wall, even if it doesn't stop the arrows or bolts or fliers.  Digging in soil is much faster than building a wall.  You can also do a strange mish-mash if you need to, and build a wall along one side while just digging a trench around the rest until you can manage to get a serious wall built. 

Once you have the brick or glass making factories going (clay and sand is infinite), you can start trying to build your serious towers.  I've actually considered making my next fort a completely aboveground structure, just so you could see it all in a visualizer, and it could look really impressive.  Remember, laws of gravity barely apply to dwarves, so feel free to make the building look like some sort of space station that attaches to the ground only with a single spindly "elevator".

Also, you should probably remove all the caverns and such to give you less lag, since those aren't going to be useful to an aboveground dwarf, anyway, and that puts you closer to the magma sea if you want to pull some magma up to fuel your brick or glass factories.

[Girlinhat]

Girlinhat: The problem with workshops in the rooms is the noise it generates. Generally, while a dwarf is sleeping upstairs or beside the shop, another dwarf with the same profession enabled will bolt in and use the workshop, waking everyone up and causing bad thoughts.

Workshop Profiles.