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[Sutremaine]

Since then, I've been designing everything with a far more defensive slant to reflect this change of thought, loopholes to fire from, stints to charge from. Even spider holes and small tunnels for my infantry to scramble through.

I just like to make everything die.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I appreciate the tactical utility of creating boltholes with airlocked passages, but I find the resulting tunnels to be aesthetically displeasing.

Below ground the fortress is a giant augur with bits thrown off as necessary.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Once it hits the magma layer it opens out into a couple of huge rooms containing a sprawl of ore piles, metal bins, and minor workshops like the carpenter's and jeweller's. There are no mineshafts because the flux comes from the depot and the iron comes from the barracks. I only ever dug out one cluster of magnetite.

[jamesadelong]

Since then, I've been designing everything with a far more defensive slant to reflect this change of thought, loopholes to fire from, stints to charge from. Even spider holes and small tunnels for my infantry to scramble through.

I just like to make everything die.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I appreciate the tactical utility of creating boltholes with airlocked passages, but I find the resulting tunnels to be aesthetically displeasing.

Below ground the fortress is a giant augur with bits thrown off as necessary.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Once it hits the magma layer it opens out into a couple of huge rooms containing a sprawl of ore piles, metal bins, and minor workshops like the carpenter's and jeweller's. There are no mineshafts because the flux comes from the depot and the iron comes from the barracks. I only ever dug out one cluster of magnetite.

If you don't mind, I'm incorporating your designs into my fortress. Kthx.

[Sutremaine]

Will you be including the pages of unspeakable gore? XD

[Shmo]

I like "office tower"-like designs where an aligned pattern is repeated across consecutive z-levels. I tend to be very vertical. I might have a 20x20 meeting area with symmetrically arranged corner-fitting hospital, barrack, boozery and dining hall. Below that I'd have 4-6 20x20 squares, all aligned with the meeting area, each with a big stockpile in the middle and workshops in alcoves on the sides. Below the boozery and dining room corners, lower levels have similarly shaped-corners dedicated to butchery, cooking, farming, plant storage, etc. One drawback to this design is that the waterfall through the meeting room has to go through all the workshop floors (where it usually drains into a power station).

My dwarves live in an  apartment tower consisting of 7 interlocked mini-towers, each with 4 rooms per floor. The only large lateral areas are the nobles' chambers, which I keep on the same floor as the meeting area.

[Seanp888]

or do you prefer tunnel fighting inside magma filled halls?

^This is what I do 
Aka I build my fortress next to a volcano and on every floor there is a lava stream running through the middle and its amazingly cool ,and some how through some kinda witchcraft none of my dwarfs have fallen in

[jamesadelong]

Will you be including the pages of unspeakable gore? XD

It would be insulting if I didn't.

[jamesadelong]

Will you be including the pages of unspeakable gore? XD

It would be insulting if I didn't.

no. just undwarfy.
this is why, when I do adventure mode and play as a human/elf, I beat someone to death. as beating someone to death slowly and painfully is a very dorfy thing to do.

So... you generally play as an Armok Cultist?

[lanceleoghauni]

Mine varies depending on where I am, But for the most part it's utilitarian, with building only every couple levels to allow for water/magma/power channels.

I Like machines

[Bleaktea]

I like pits and chasms - if I'm building an underground fort, the entry chamber is usually a pair of bridges connecting to a 5x5 pillar in the middle of a pit that drops down several z-levels.  The trade depot is, of course, on the pillar.  Often there are carved columns rising out of the pit, with waterfalls flowing out of them.  I like to imagine the columns have humongous gargoyle faces on them, mouths open wide to let the water through.

Residential areas tend to be a few z-levels above the workshops, with chasms dug down to the workshop level, so that the smoke from the forges can waft up into dwarves' houses and comfort them as they sleep.  Bonus points if they can end in magma as well.

Above-ground forts tend to be big squat castles of local stone, with the underground reserved for storerooms and sprawling tomb complexes.  My current fort is planned to be a castle for the nobles, with an attached above-ground village for everyone else.  In theory, levers in the castle can be used to seal off sections of the village in case of an attack, and - in a perfect world where I am not lazy - a second set of levers can drop those sections into a fiery abyss.  That will be a pain to plan along with a proper sewer system, though.

[jamesadelong]

I like pits and chasms - if I'm building an underground fort, the entry chamber is usually a pair of bridges connecting to a 5x5 pillar in the middle of a pit that drops down several z-levels.  The trade depot is, of course, on the pillar.  Often there are carved columns rising out of the pit, with waterfalls flowing out of them.  I like to imagine the columns have humongous gargoyle faces on them, mouths open wide to let the water through.

Residential areas tend to be a few z-levels above the workshops, with chasms dug down to the workshop level, so that the smoke from the forges can waft up into dwarves' houses and comfort them as they sleep.  Bonus points if they can end in magma as well.

I experimented with the idea of a modern prison design (concept of modular design, lockdown and central defence was the intention) by digging down about 10 Z levels, creating a loop of space around a central shaft, making a simple supporting peg, then digging out underneath and dropping the central peg down a level. From there I created three interlocking drawbridges to seal the access to the surface and a number of retracting bridges from the central pillar to the workshops, sleeping quarters and other facilities around the edges o. I used the central shaft to form the barraks. By dropping the central shaft down as opposed to digging the first layer off, you kept the soil layer which allows you to create a large courtyard on which to build a trade depot. By restricting all access to the edges via the central shaft, you ended up with an easily defended fortress that didn't require anything more  than directing the fortrees mayor to pull the lock down lever to restrict everybody to quaters and workshops with the army sitting quite happilly between the only access from the caverns below and the surface to them This cut down on both the orders I had to give (due to it's passive defence design) and the total losses (by forcing them through the chokepoints located at the central staircase). Overall it was a solid design with the failure lying in the lockdown switch location. That and flying creatures.

[Bleaktea]

By restricting all access to the edges via the central shaft, you ended up with an easily defended fortress that didn't require anything more  than directing the fortrees mayor to pull the lock down lever to restrict everybody to quaters and workshops with the army sitting quite happilly between the only access from the caverns below and the surface to them This cut down on both the orders I had to give (due to it's passive defence design) and the total losses (by forcing them through the chokepoints located at the central staircase). Overall it was a solid design with the failure lying in the lockdown switch location. That and flying creatures.

My fortress defenses are usually pretty rudimentary - there's a lever, and pulling it seals the entrance and that's about it.  The airlocked trade depot mostly just allows me to keep the fort sealed all the time - trying to use it to move defenders outside just results in dwarves standing on the exposed pillar and getting shot full of arrows.

Much like a beehive, once you get past the entrance, you're pretty much free to wreak whatever havoc you like.

I should play around with lockdown systems like the one you mentioned, though - at the very least to reduce incidences of my defenders rushing out of the fort to bravely vomit in front of the oncoming horde.

[shadenight123]

first i dig a hole in a virgin mountain.
A tiny hole.
Then i remove the ramps next to the hole.
Then i wall it off and close with a ceiling.
a tiny 3X3 thing.
then i dig.
and dig.
and dig.
i dig till the caves are mine.
i dig till the magma is mine.
i dig till next to the candy.
and then i go back to z level one and dig in wide and far.
and i repeat until i have an enormous underground complex, filled with narrow corridors and 3X3 rooms full with ballista.
then i widen the hole to become 3X3.
and destroy three walls to make them pass, the merchants...
the merchants come in the hole, walk to the depot and then leave.
and there's only a tiny door between the trade depot and the rest of the fortress, usually.
and sieges come in...
but they never come out...yes...i am THE DARKNESS.

[Sutremaine]

Overall it was a solid design with the failure lying in the lockdown switch location.

Could you have solved that problem with burrows and a design that would keep burrowed dwarves from pathing through the non-burrowed areas?

[Crazy Cow]

Your architecture

Can be best described as a "hole in the ground." I'll often expand rooms to fit into cliffs, along veins of minerals, and other natural features. It makes it look nice, in my opinion.

[Lagslayer]

I just throw together some rooms (or often just a huge room) and redisign later as needed.