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[StreetPizza]

This thread is for describing how you build your fort with respect to embark area, industry, trade, lodgings, and all that good stuff. I haven't seen one of these around lately, so I decided to start one!

Anyways, my forts are usually set up to have a three-tile wide entrance despite the fact that I don't need to build them that wide because merchant wagons don't exist yet. The entrance is filled with traps; the traps themselves usually consist of whatever my weaponsmith's training on--this usually means that I'll be embarking in a sedimentary layer for its richness in weapons-grade metal ores. Past the entrance is a trade depot and above the depot is the barracks. All of this stuff doesn't usually get built until after a while, though.

Instead, early on, I just have my miners, of whom there are about four, dig out the entrance, a workshop area and general stockpiles below the entrance, and a general living area consisting of rooms, offices, dining rooms, kitchens, and food stockpiles below the workshops. Then I hunker down and start making stone instruments for the first caravan--I guess that means I'll need contact with other civilizations too.

So, what are your favorite builds? Any self-imposed restrictions for great dorfness and whatnot?

[theMij]

I tend to have a small (1x1 or 2x2) staircase down from the surface, surrounded by cursory wall/channel/bridge sort of thing, then a short hallway to the central staircase on the bottom-most soil tile.  Farming is taken care of in the soil area, generally directly above my staircase if I have the space, and everything else is haphazardly arranged below.  Leaning towards using underground catapults more than traps for defense through a system of alternate tunnels, fortifications and bridges but that's because of the recent addition of the Fortress Defense mod to my game.

The first thing I focus on is storage space, usually tossed around the soil layers at first and then moved inward when more miners show up or are drafted from migrant waves.  Then a quick food and farm system gets set up (pretty basic with tiny 1 or 2x3 plots) and then the mason and carpentry buildings.  Past that it's very dependent on how much wood I have and how far down I think magma is.  Do date I haven't managed to get magma to the surface in .19

....  I need to fix this immediately.

[Talikmon]

I never go for anything fancy in the first few years.  Get all the essentials up and running with a few extras - basic square rooms, minimum wall building etc etc - very spartan.  Once max pop has been reached and I'm happy then the real fun starts

[Supercharazad]

A hash.

Really, I just put things where they fit with no plan whatsoever.


I do have a few basic things though, Farms always go beside food processing workshops and food stockpiles, barrackses go beside the entrance, the entrance is always long and 3 wide, laden with cage traps. 

I do enjoy dropping goblins and thieves down my death pit. (It leads to hell)

[Lamphare]

i dig down first, then wall the area off, creating protected trade depot.
living quarters are shared at the first couple of years, then i would start building a tower above ground, consisting mainly personal quarters, dining rooms, and grand meeting hall.

the underground part is extented for industry and storage. though some portion of the industry and stockpile is located in the less than top levels of the tower.
the top levels are reserved for the monarch, when it comes.

tombs are dug seperately in another location, near the main fort, with a smaller tower rising into sky, while most of its structure lie underground.

above ground farm is eventually sealed with obsidian ceiling, next to underground farms and argricultural workshops and seed, plant and unprepared food goods stockpile.

army is made up from mainly crossbowdwarves, defending the tower from the outer walls, as well as the fortification on the brim of the tower.
if they dont manage to kill every enemy before they reach the gate, a deep drop pit would serve the purpouse, in case i'm not willing to use cage trap.

oh, embark.
i usually embark on quare place from 4X4 to 6X6, anything larger would not do any good. unless i need a larger embark site to get all desiring elements, i.e. river, flux, soil, sand, metal and clay in case of .19.

i prefer argriculture and steel industry over the others. textile used to be my favourite, but it's much undervalued at the moment, since economy is turned off. in .19 it means i need to be more sensitive about grazer, in order to gather enough food and ensure variety, aside from exploiting huge farms. and so far food industry has satisfied, not only mantains my dwarves, also ensures huge amount of exports. my forts were renowned for their fine cuisine and tonnes of exports every year. only goblins needed to starve.

[Erkki]

I know it sounds boring, but a 35 x 35 walled yard with a drawbridge gate + moat, archer towers(I almost never use them).

5x5 stairwell in the middle, depending on how the different stones go, but usually 1 or 2 first levels for farming, below that 35 x 35 living areas(dining rooms around the stairwells, 86 rooms, grand dining room and still 150 tiles of stockpiles/level), usually reserving 3 storeys for bedrooms and dining rooms. Below that, 15 x 15 around the stairwell for stockpiles, all the mining shafts, workshops etc. cluttered all over the place where ever I can make them fit.

[Nameless Archon]

31x31 rectangular floor.
3x3 stairs in the middle, in a 5x5 cleared area.
The four corners "touching" the 5x5 room are each channeled to provide four separate garbage chutes.
the 5x5 room is connected by a 2x3 hallway to the "main floor" section.
1x1 stairs in four spots in each "corner", so that I can put 9 workshops (3x3 pattern) in each corner. Overflow stocks go between workshops, main stockpile floors follow same diagram.

Entry is down a spiral ramp to a lower level, after crossing a bridge/platform elevated 10+ z-levels above the bottom of the pit. The entry walk is filled with weapon traps, 10x iron disc or better.

Upper area above the spiral ramp is fortified, and becomes a marksman's tower.

Later development adds smaller guard towers all over the map, accessible only from below (within the fort).

My dwarves never go to the surface. The surface is brought to them.

[TherosPherae]

Embark with 2 miners, a woodcutter, a forager, an architect/mason, and 2 other guys who do just about everything else.

Dig a 1-space-wide tunnel as my entrance tunnel; dig out a space next to it to serve as the "gobbo-sniping" area. Do this while woodcutter is deforesting the map and forager is gathering every berry in sight.

Channel-stairs down a few z-levels, then start work on the real fort - a general storage area with a few max-size "anything goes here except food and booze" stockpiles along with all the non-farming shops, a farming area on a different z-level with the food stockpiles, booze stockpiles, and all the farming/butchering workshops. Add a dining room, and maybe personal rooms. Since most of the fort-digging is complete, designate a miner as the manager/bookkeeper. Give the architect/mason his own mason's workshop and have him start churning out rock blocks and furniture. Any migrants that show up get thrown into the "you guys do everything the miners and architect don't" group. Add military made out of the most useless of the general group. Start making stuff necessary for a comfortable fort.

Then start work on destroying it all.

[bucket]

I put down a general stockpile to hold everything while my miners get working on an entrance (usually involving a moat), a dining room/meeting hall and a dormitory. Once those are set up, I begin on workshop halls so I can start moving stocks inside. Second is my grand dining room and food production, and finally bedrooms and offices.

[plisskin]

Initial design is one of my favorite parts of the early game, because everything usually goes to shit and I have to rethink my future designs. It's really fun to take an embark and think "what can I do with this."

I always dig in with a long entryway for trapping. I used to dig out a lumberyard just indoors to be switched over to a barracks later, but I've recently begun experimenting with lumber dumping pits so that operations can be located closer to both the farms and the smith zone. It's annoying to haul wood all the way from skeleton infested woods to the deep sooty pits of industry.

At present, I'm trying to be as efficient as possible by making everything in the farming/"soft" industries/dining area flow smoothly:

XFX
SRS
XPX

This is the zone shrunk way down: farming is "F" above, ramps to dining are in the middle as "R", with the left "S" being a plants/drinks/fats/extracts/barrels stockpile zone and the right "S" being a seeds/meat/cheese/tallow/leather/cloth stockpile zone. Production is the "P" where the workshops and the butcher's shop. "X" are reserved unmined zones for future stockpiles, atom smashing and where the garbage chutes are placed. So, plants are farmed above, they're placed to the left, they're processed below, and any finished products are stored on the right where seeds are also pulled from. Animals are processed below and distributed to both. This way, I know which side has raw goods and which side has finished goods so I can easily take from either stockpile if needed. It's not a perfect cycle, but in general traffic doesn't collide.

Both dining rooms are connected underneath by ramped tunnels which also connect to the sleeping zone. The farms also double as a suicide switch since their irrigation from a river is controlled by a single lever.

Of course this only lasts for a couple of years or so because I stop making all of this crap once I've gotten my max population to save FPS. So the farm area kind of dies while the population slave away on something huge and unnecessary. Or they're all thrown naked at some skeleton camels and are hauled back to their gneiss bodybag.

Gotta do somethin' with all those migrants.

[ahonek]

I set up a couple identical levels (via macros) that are pleasing to the eye, with unnecessary pathways and alcoves that hurt pathfinding, that contain large rooms for stockpiles and workshops (one room per stockpile, multiple workshops in each "work room").

I try my best to keep these to the soil levels, so I don't clutter up my fortress with stones. When I need stones, I dig my bedrooms out of the stone layers below, or sometimes I obtain it by digging a large deathpit for the front entrance (10 z-levels minimum).

Usually I put a bridge across the deathpit in three sections. The outer sections raise a wall at the near and far ends of the pit, and the middle section retracts. This way even if a large invader ends up on the bridge, the outer sections will raise even though the middle section will stay put. The bridges are connected to levers near my dining room and meeting hall.

[Jelle]

Lately I've gotten to having my dwarves live in the caverns, where I pick a space with lots of those columns and narrow passages. I then hollow out those colums and use them as little houses. Makes  the underground city look 'organic'. Sometimes I start hollowing out multiple levels of the columns and make little walkways and bridges and such. And little marksman posts ontop for the archers to shoot nearby pesky wildlife 

[Pukako]

Find a cliff, even a small one, tunnel in, three wide.  Depending on soil/rock mix, dig out storage chambers if soil, to store all worldly possessions from outside stuff, and build starting carpenter/mason/mechanic here.

Then dig down, bedrooms on a design that gives 7 rooms per 'section' and tiles well.

Wide corridor a few levels up from the bedrooms, 4x4 alcoves for workshops (jewellers & craftsmen, and eventually mason, etc) on one side and a large storage area the other side of the corridor.

Farms near water, but don't need this for 19, which is strange...

By this stage, the metal industry should be starting - that's assuming you find metal in 19...

[Khift]

I used to exclusively build forts at the border of a mountain range and flat land. I would then dig into the mountains and construct additional fortifications jutting out of the range for added dwarfiness before pussing out and spamming traps everywhere. I typically have two entrances to the main fortress, one very close to the outside but separated by a drawbridge (the first that gets raised during an assault) and another all the way at the end of a massive maze of traps and through my barracks. I also tend to have a 'rear' fortress of sorts underneath my fort which acts as a fallback point from the caverns in the event of a bad FB (I refuse to wall off caverns; it takes all the fun out of it). Beyond that, I tend to have a ridiculously large dining hall and the rest of the fort radiates out from it, and that's about the only factor all my forts tend to have in common.

[Ace_Warbringer]

i have become enamored of the 6X11 room. two workshops tall with a space for a input stockpile, one tile entry way incase my near legendary pump operator goes foul. halways are straight and smoothed. entryway is a courtyard with curtain wall 4 drawbridges inv. and master controlled. archer towers are a late addition if i survive long enough.

embark is usually flux/steel/sand, im waiting for .20 to experiment with clay.