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[Haedrian]

So, I've been playing this game for many years now. Generally when I build a fort, its very labour-centric. I use large rectangular rooms with a single 'type' of workshop and a stockpile of raw materials.

So my question is, what simple fort designs does everyone use generally? When I say simple I mean.. basic. So no SDTs or megaprojects or something. Just to see if a design inspires me. I had a friend who used to use circular rooms and they did look nice.

[Daetrin]

Megaprojects aside, hex-based is pretty cool (I use a 5x5 square with the corners cut off for each 'cell' in the honeycomb grid)

[Mickey Blue]

Courtyard (surface) - Butcher industry, refuse piles, walled in part ways (I leave part of it open for challenge, but this allows me to control where the enemies enter and allows me to attack from above with archers).  If I have a fishing industry I have that located on this level as well.

Soil Level (generally one or two levels under the surface, above any aquifers) - My forward barracks (starts as my early meeting room to get my dwarves out of the elements and gives them someplace to sleep and eat), my main storage (huge room to store most of my stuff, pretty much everything except for wood, metal and weapons), my food industry (two large rectangular rooms, the former having my industry-related stuff like kitchens, etc, the latter actually storing my food), my metal industry (again two large rectangular rooms, the former having workshops and the latter having wood pile).  Off my food is my farms which is a square with four farms on it and a small area to store seeds, and off my metal industry is two square rooms holding raw stone and holding charcoal. 

I put these in the soil level because a lot of it is used for storage and this way I don't have to worry about rocks getting in the way.

Stone level (usually the second or third stone level unless I want to dig deeper for some reason) - This is my main living level once things get going.  It has a large main hall where they eat and meet, a main barracks for my primary military, a room off this main barracks is where I store all my weapons, ammo and armor, when my military grows I build smaller barracks around the fort.  I have a hospital which is usually next to my main barracks, houses my hospital and my chief medical dwarf's room.  Then I have a dorm (large rectangular room with beds in it) which serves as my main sleeping quarters until people can get their own rooms.  I have wells build throughout.

Sleeping Level (usually a level or two below the stone level) - This is where my dwarf bedrooms go, a design of 3x3 rooms for regular dwarves and larger noble rooms.  I also usually put a smaller meeting-type area for dwarves to eat.  As my fort grows sometimes I have a similar level below this one until I can house all my dwarves in their own rooms.

Mining level - Below these levels I mine out what I need.  I usually build a bunch of long passages in many directions (channeling zork there..) until I strike a metal, then I mine it out.  If I have need for extra stone this area suffices too.


Although my specifics in design change up sometimes, the basic organization is always the same unless I'm deliberately changing it for some challenge related reason.

[Haedrian]

Megaprojects aside, hex-based is pretty cool (I use a 5x5 square with the corners cut off for each 'cell' in the honeycomb grid)

Cool, hexes tessellate so it might be awesome. How does the pathfinding handle it though? When I tried a fort made of squares the pathfinding went crazy.
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I'll try Mickey's suggestion I think. I generally spread a lot of stuff across many levels.

[kirrian]

I have been trying to get away from my usual straight-hall-square-rooms design and have small rooms or small groups of rooms off natural features like veins.  But it ain't working out that way.  It is really hard when it is so easy to designate squares.  And veins aren't really consistent of course, so one may go this way on this level and another may be off another direction on another level.  If they were a bit larger and spanned multiple levels, I might get closer to what I envision.

Right now I'm trying to build my own chasm from the surface down to the caves, with paths up and down on the chasm walls and rooms build into the cliffs, very little stairs between levels.  The only thing I haven't really been able to get away from is the entrance hall and various little sections for defense (primarily the isolated trading post and cage pit below the trapped cat walks).  The best thing I have done to try to keep this a more 'organic' thing is *not* to plan.  Not much design, at all.  Mostly just small installations that I have plopped down where ever they are needed like a water reactor here to drive a small pump stack to fill a small cistern.

[dwarfhoplite]

you will get more epic fortresses when you build everything to the closest place where you can. Still dont make insanely big rooms and halls but make lots of small ones instead

[UristMcHuman]

What I do:

I build a kiln, dig a clay pit, put 'collect clay' on repeat, use the clay to make walls, and I dig holes in the ground for instant housing.

During cavern challenges:

I build fortifications and place open beds in the perimeters.

EDIT: The simplest fort design I can think of is this:
Dig holes in the ground for houses.
Dig a trench that encompasses ALL the pit-houses, and remove the ramps on the outside.
Build ONE drawbridge on ONE trench, raising INWARD.
Keep it up unless you have migrants or a caravan.
Open it IMMEDIATELY before the caravan or migrants get to it, and close it IMMEDIATELY after they get in.
To trick goblin sieges, keep the bridge DOWN during a thief infiltration or small ambush, and once a goblin siege hits (hopefully without flying mounts), slam the door in their faces (raise the bridge once you see that "A vile force of darkness has arrived!").
To deal with attacks, use only crossbowmen.

[Mushroo]

Build vertical. It is quicker to go up/down a flight of stairs than a 20-tile hallway. Each workshop should have an up/down staircase with raw material stockpile directly above and finished goods directly below (or vice-versa).

Also I like to mine out entire soil layers once I have breached the caverns. Easy access to wood, grazing, plant gathering, etc.

[Flaming Toadstool]

What I do is I dig into a cliffside 3x20. At the end, I have a 3x3 down staircase. Just before that, I have a one tile section in the middle where I put a drawbridge to act as a seal, just in case. Then before that, I have a 5x5 dug out for a trade depot. Then everything before that is lined with cage traps.

On the next level, I have all my workshops, assuming it is a level with soil. If it isn't, I find a level with all soil. The reason for this is because I don't want to have to haul stone off my future stockpiles. I make all my stockpiles 11x11, with room for further expansion. I put my workshops inside the rooms as well, except for the butcher shop, which I make a room for all by itself, where I also pasture my dogs and cage my cats.

On the next level, I have my living quarters, which includes lodgings, hospital, and a barracks. My hospital and barracks are 11x11 in size, and depending on if it is a noble or not, I have both 3x3 rooms and 5x5 rooms. This is all done in the stone so I can smooth and engrave everything.

On the next level, I have my dining room. It is ~22x22 tiles large (I cant remember, but it is large). I have my tables set up in lines horizontally, with room in the middle for statues and levers.

On the next level, I have my burial chambers. I have mausoleums for people I like, and a common area for people who have not done anything exceptional in their time.

I then dig down until I find magma, usually in the first year. When I hit the sea or find a tube, I dig out a long hallway for two magma forges and two magma smelters. I have an ore and a bar stockpile right next to them. Then below I dig out the same hallway so that the forges can get their fuel. Then I dig a narrow corridor to the magma, smooth the stone next to the magma, put up and link a floodgate, open it, carve a fortification on the smoothed stone to allow the magma to flow forth, allow the chamber to flood with magma, then close the floodgate. All behind a securely locked door so that no stupid dwarfs decided to go in there and drown (I have temperature turned off for FPS gain).

Up on the surface, I have a pasture for animals and a refuse pile. This is all enclosed inside a wall, with entrances spanning from the downward stair case in my initial tunnel to my fort. I have drawbridges in front of these entrances just in case of flying creatures.

And that's pretty much it for my basic fort. Once that is all said and done, all my miners have to do is exploratory mining (with the help of dfvdig) and expansion for stockpiles and rooms.

[Inkster]

I tend to make large circular (as round as they can get) rooms connected by hallways with smaller circles around the large ones.

In fortresses with a lot of things to mine, I'll dig out veins and then square off the area the vein took up. This method looks fairly organic with a lot of different sized rooms that are unaligned with each other.

[UristMcHuman]

What I do is I dig into a cliffside 3x20. At the end, I have a 3x3 down staircase. Just before that, I have a one tile section in the middle where I put a drawbridge to act as a seal, just in case. Then before that, I have a 5x5 dug out for a trade depot. Then everything before that is lined with cage traps.

On the next level, I have all my workshops, assuming it is a level with soil. If it isn't, I find a level with all soil. The reason for this is because I don't want to have to haul stone off my future stockpiles. I make all my stockpiles 11x11, with room for further expansion. I put my workshops inside the rooms as well, except for the butcher shop, which I make a room for all by itself, where I also pasture my dogs and cage my cats.

On the next level, I have my living quarters, which includes lodgings, hospital, and a barracks. My hospital and barracks are 11x11 in size, and depending on if it is a noble or not, I have both 3x3 rooms and 5x5 rooms. This is all done in the stone so I can smooth and engrave everything.

On the next level, I have my dining room. It is ~22x22 tiles large (I cant remember, but it is large). I have my tables set up in lines horizontally, with room in the middle for statues and levers.

On the next level, I have my burial chambers. I have mausoleums for people I like, and a common area for people who have not done anything exceptional in their time.

I then dig down until I find magma, usually in the first year. When I hit the sea or find a tube, I dig out a long hallway for two magma forges and two magma smelters. I have an ore and a bar stockpile right next to them. Then below I dig out the same hallway so that the forges can get their fuel. Then I dig a narrow corridor to the magma, smooth the stone next to the magma, put up and link a floodgate, open it, carve a fortification on the smoothed stone to allow the magma to flow forth, allow the chamber to flood with magma, then close the floodgate. All behind a securely locked door so that no stupid dwarfs decided to go in there and drown (I have temperature turned off for FPS gain).

Up on the surface, I have a pasture for animals and a refuse pile. This is all enclosed inside a wall, with entrances spanning from the downward stair case in my initial tunnel to my fort. I have drawbridges in front of these entrances just in case of flying creatures.

And that's pretty much it for my basic fort. Once that is all said and done, all my miners have to do is exploratory mining (with the help of dfvdig) and expansion for stockpiles and rooms.

I'm going to try what Flaming Toadstool did here sometime.

[Mobotium]

I like using the soil levels for farms (I build a aproximately 30x20 intial area), connected to a food stockpile wich has stairs down 1z into my kitchen/still/butchery/fishery circular room wich connects to the main dinning hall (wich uses a allongated circle architecture, not exactly a rectangle or a circle) wich connects to the living area (I like using big rooms in a almost hexagonal form here. Peasants get 5x2+6 rooms, while nammed dwarves get 7x4+3x2+5 rooms, all completly furnished as soon as possible) and the main star way. I also have a administrative zone were I put my offices (I like having separate ofices for every inportant noble. The bigger the importance, the better. While the manager gets a 4x5 rectangular office, the mayor/expedition leader gets a 12x12 circular office), as well as separate mansions for each inportant noble (they even get bathrooms! If I like them they get misted. If I dont they get magma misted. Yay!).

Theres several stair that are fited in the natural chuncks of unmined rock that come from my living area's arquitecture that are used as an alternate means of trasport to the level below (other than the main stairway), wich contains most workshops, each workshop  has a stair fited in the same room leading to the level below, consisting of a stockpile for each difrent kind of workshop.

I also have a forge area in lower levels, preferably near the magma, constructed barracks inside my overground fortifications (they are usualy quite large, depends on the biome) and a small draining channel, taking river water to my cistern and my well (located in the center of the kitchen room), all controled by floodgates. The water is usualy used for other porposes later on.

[Elisebambi]

I end up with very ornate constructions, that vary depending on what I do.   Usually you can expect my forts to be much more vertical than planar, and apart from that, very inefficient, at least pathing wise.   My work(ers)[shops] are usually 5x5x5-10, top level workshop, all but 1  level below that storage, bottom level a bedroom for that SLAVE. B:   Occasionally I furnish my favorite ones with their own booze reserve.

[UristMcHuman]

Build vertical. It is quicker to go up/down a flight of stairs than a 20-tile hallway.

What if your dwarf trips and falls, say, down 50 flights of stairs?

[Stoup]

I tend to make a long entryway, with a central staircase in the middle to access various levels that are usually sorted by the activities carried out there. Workshops are on the first level, as well as the pastures, barracks and most of my stockpiles. The second floor contains a few alternative paths for the dwarves'  ease of movement around the fortress, as well as the entrance to the jail/execution tower.

Beneath that, I have a hospital set up with cloth and crutches and the like stockpiled behind it. And behind that is the shooting range for an execution chamber. It's not frequently used, but ever since I flooded the drainage system for the death-by-draining trap in the chamber I've needed an alternative way to finish anything off that survives the fall into the chamber itself.

After that I have 2 or 3 levels of unaltered space, followed by catacombs in two hollowed out veins of gold and copper.

Beneath that lies the exploratory mining level. It's full of obsidian and gabbro, and can supply me with as much resources as I need to build just about anything.

Finally, I have my 2-z level high dining hall set up. It's got a short bridge above the hall that leads to an enormous stockpile of food.
On the bottom level of the dining hall, I have my tables arranged in the pattern of a dwarf's face. It was inadvertent at first, but when I noticed it began to resemble a face I decided to theme the rest of the room with it, and it's since become the most grand monument to dwarfkind I've built.

The sleeping chambers are basically 2-wide halls leading far from the dining hall before doubling back, and working their way around the kitchen in the upper corner of the hall.