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[Washcloth]

Ive been playing df for quite awhile now, and ive tryed both the horizontal approach (most of the fortress on one z level) and the vertical (usually a long vertical stairway with off shoots for rooms). Now, each has obvious strengths and short comings. The horizontal style makes jobs alittle slower due to pathing, while the vertical can be faster. Althought, a vertical stairway fortress has no inner choke points for defense (as access is granted to all rooms and z levels via the stairs) but a horizontal has many, which can help in combat or walling off safe zones.

I like Horizontal forts (like boat murderd of yore) just because it looks cool to see everything at once. and it makes for interesting designs rather than abuncha rectangles connected to a square shaft.
How about yooooooou?

[Organum]

I tend towards vertical forts with one shaft of 3x3 rooms with a single up-down staircase in the center, but recently I've been trying to have more creative designs, with any shafts being composed like

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This past fortress has only three shafts, for the entrance, some tree farming, and for magma. All the main city services are on one z-level, and below that is the mega-farming complex.

[Gyvon]

Althought, a vertical stairway fortress has no inner choke points for defense (as access is granted to all rooms and z levels via the stairs) but a horizontal has many, which can help in combat or walling off safe zones.

Simple solution.  Have a long hallway from the entrance of your fort to the main staircase.

[abadidea]

Vertical all the way.

As mentioned just prior, I start with a long, staggered (so arrows can't fly) trapped hallway to the main shaft. The shaft is shaped like a four-leaf clover, with some floors having fractally offshoots of bedrooms. I find it to be efficient, pleasing in appearance, and highly defensible (I use an identical hallway leading to the caverns)

[DuckBoy2]

I prefer the diagonal fortress.  No stairs, only ramps.  Spiraling ramps are okay, as when you poor water down them, its like flushing the goblins away. 

[AutomataKittay]

Vertical all the way. Makes for much more efficient stockpiling space and laboring. Access problem can be easily handled by having multiple vertical shafts, all sealable from each other and not crossing over

I does have my fortresses with multiple sealable parts during 'late fortress' time ( when tree farm and obsidian factories are established and running efficiently ) with separate shafts down for civilians and military, the military one opens in barracks in caverns and surface, the civilian one only opens into store-room for military supply and trading deport at surface.

[Alastar]

Stairs spanning multiple z-levels are hazardous as stairs won't stop someone who's falling; offset ramps are safer although they'll clog up more easily on the same space.
However, a roughly spherical fortress composed mostly of stairs is very traffic-efficient.

[Wirevix]

My current fortress plans are haphazard at best, and disastrous at worst.  No real security considerations (well, I've begun making a courtyard wall around the entryway to keep the badgers away from my alpacas, but the doors won't really hold up if a troll comes along), poor planning, no optimization.  It makes things Fun when I open up the caverns and crundles are running through my bird rooms.

I generally have wide floors organized on one vertical shaft.  One floor has all sorts of bedrooms, one has farms and dining and bird rooms, one has shops and stockpiles and the trade depot... in general, it's a mess.  Which is fun, but frustrating.  I am bad at planning.

[i874236951]

Althought, a vertical stairway fortress has no inner choke points for defense (as access is granted to all rooms and z levels via the stairs) but a horizontal has many, which can help in combat or walling off safe zones.

Simple solution.  Have a long hallway from the entrance of your fort to the main staircase.

Yeah, I like to make a complex horizontal "defense floor" somewhere between the main gate and the fortress proper, and have most of the fort itself expanding off of one or more central staircases.  You can either have this be the only way into your fort, which can take a log time to traverse for outside-workers, or you can also have an auxiliary, shorter entrance protected by some form of ambush detection and a series of bridges that can lock up whenever your want to force invaders to face you on the defense floor.

[ffaerie]

From my observations a single 11x11 room x3 deep is twice as much fps (940 to 1800) as 3 rooms 11 by 11 flat  even if they form a triangle. It's easy to test it too if you set up a vertical space for your drink stockpile. And before you go about the width of my hallways they're all also 11 by 11.

[RAKninja]

i go for a little of both, myself.

[Theifofdreams]

I personally prefer a 3 floor sprawl plan. Put in 2 shafts with a third offshoot for mining, and you've got plenty of room for all your needs.
Floor one has storage, non-magma related workshops, the barracks and the training hall, floor two has bedrooms, meeting&dining, food prep, and the hospital, and floor 3 has magma related goodies. The exact location of floor 3 is variable, though. Beyond that, a few other deep floors for the miners to excavate in the hunt for minerals.

[Deus Machina]

I'm a fan of roughly (very roughly) organized vertical fortresses. Recently, with empty levels between occupied ones, so that I can 1) make dwarf-washing troughs without leaking into bedrooms or something, B) dig shop- or area-specific rooms for stockpiles, and Isuzu) mine those levels without worrying about aesthetics.

My current fortress has a five-by-five staircase in the middle, from top to bottom. This will be channeled out in the center as soon as I figure out how deep I can go, so I can ultimately implement the GoblinClock.

Until then, there's just nothing quite like a cave crocodile or blind cave troll punching its way through your dwarves, only to have a dining miner boot the thing in the noggin and send the unconscious beast rolling down 67 flights of stairs.

[imperium3]

I prefer horizontal forts, mainly because I don't care too much about efficiency provided everything works (workshop areas tend to get storage areas above and below them anyway) and it looks much nicer to see most of the halls and rooms on one level.

[Dutchling]

I always do horizontal forts stretched over a few z-levels.