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[Eoganachta]

I use to have all my squads fill with 10 dorfs in each. I then decided to lessen the number because 10 dorfs running around per order was not enough control so I reduced it to 7 per melee squad and 5 for a ranged squad. I think I chose 7 for the number of starting dorfs but I have no idea why I chose 5 for the archers. I also have to build something in each fort out of obsidion and an above ground fort/entrance of somekind that leads down to a long corridor where I can add traps at a later date (not that I always do). Otherwise I feel that the fort cannot be as good as it could have been and that kills the fun.

[Triaxx2]

Lately, I've found that I end up with a lot of rotten items, so I've taken to building enclosed, vented dumps and stockpiles for food, along with Butchers shops out of magma safe materials with grate roofs. This means I can seal them with flood gates and flood them with magma during sieges. Any fliers trying to come in through the grate roof is in for a bad day.

[Trapezohedron]

Making a staircase to the quarry near the entrance and trading post. The main entrance must be sealed with a drawbridge. Same goes for the trading post. The entrance to the quarry must have a separate room and a door.

Ever since I've been experimenting with flooding traps, all outposts must be outfitted with one ASAP. No exceptions. Bonus points if said flooding mechanism involves !!MAGMA!!

[wrwr]

Traps. Hundreds of them. Most of the early work goes to turning the entrance into a cleaving, piercing, smashing tunnel of horror the goblins fear more than their demon demigod. With no material worse than steel. And I always aim for self sufficiency, so no one has to go to the surface anymore.

[Doomchild-]

when i get a good surplus of stone i place stone floors on all soil tiles in my fortress which arent used for farming/clay gathering. i deconstruct workshops to place the floors down and even relocate massive stockpiles so can also pave those floors. reason: i hate plants growing in my hallways...

outdoor constructions, especially defensive walls, are always built out of wood, both as an insult to the elves and the fact wooden walls topped by wooden fortifications look awesome in stonesense.

i always try to redirect incoming traffic to a bottleneck a fair distance away from my fort and pave a road for merchants to travel over. if possible i try to limit the place caravans can spawn to a single location, iirc caravans only spawn on tiles from which your depot is accessible.

[Tanelorn]

No military.  All defenses are traps.

This, but mostly non-weapon traps. I prefer cave in traps, retracting bridges, drown or freeze traps.

I do have a lot of masons and mechanics. I make them the upper class in terms of room quality and so on. Not as high as the miners (those get the 5 stars treatment) but much, much higher than the other plebeians.

[MonkeyHead]

Corridors in prime number widths, allowing for efficient stacking of ballistae at corners and stairway complexes in the next lowest prime (3 by 3 in a 5 tile corridor). Sprial ramps MUST go clockwise from military entrace level down to magmasea and below. 10 x 10 farm, and 7 by 6 workshops - honeycombed when more than one is needed.

[celem]

Errrr.....nothing.  My fortresses have no recurring themes and I have absoloutely no OCD.

They tend to be random as I try new things all the time.

However at 15 years they all go to automatic

[Talanic]

I usually make it so that there's precisely one spot on the map where a caravan can spawn, and that there's a way into a tunnel that leads directly to the trade depot from there.  Caravans can't get ambushed that way. 

The tunnel, of course, is heavily trapped and has enough twists and turns that archers can't fire with impunity.  Also, the trade depot is on the other side of the barracks.

[Senty]

Captain of the Guard getting whatever artifact weapon/armor that's made.  All captains have to have leadership, soldiers cannot be rebellious or stress prone.  A proper barracks should have 10 bedrooms, with a bigger one for the captain, in addition to training areas.

I hate the random colors of dug out dwellings, and prefer to construct (out of crafted blocks) once I'm settled.  Sometimes these are stand alone multi-story buildings, other times they're just part of one huge structure.

When I find a married couple I try to move them to a bigger apartment, or build a second bed in the one they're using.

[Psieye]

I always designate two massive storerooms - one for food and one for everything else.

That's an oddity? I've been doing that for ages; finished goods, cloth and leather, precious metals and gems all go in one central warehouse just inside the main gates.

Well it's an oddity for me - I go by the no-walls approach to massive storage. Now corpses on the other hand, that's another matter.


All my forts start like this: dig down to magma, immediately - I hit it around the first week. Dig up from the magma by a differerent route. Wall off one of the entrances. Somewhere at the bottom in this 'U' shape architecture I have my kill zone - all sieges are to be killed specifically here so as to minimise cleanup hauling. Bonus if I rig up a magma plumbing system to help out with the cleanup, probably without water wheels since they kill FPS and I don't need the pumps running most of the time. The soil layer around the walled off entrance gets dug out in an unsightly huge manner and all my 'miscellaneous' storage is placed there. Trade depot is placed next to the magma forges. The walled off area on the surface gradually gets turned into a tower that keeps on growing whenever I have spare labour.

I'm considering making my next fort adopt a "no walls" approach to rooms as well as storage. If I like the result, it'll be added to my standard set of 'oddities'.

[Cabbagetroll]

All rooms (except bedrooms for the rank and faile dwarves) must be dug out in 9x9 squares, with only a space for a door separating rooms.

[Broseph Stalin]

My torture chamber, always 20 channels dug 9z down designated as a pit and the only animal stockpile. What goes in the bottom is spur of the moment.