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Dirt fort - Everything in the soil layers

11 (10.9%)

Above-ground structure - Megaprojects that dorfs live in, etc

20 (19.8%)

Mechanical hell - Shitloads of levers and pressure plates to the point where you don't know what each does

14 (13.9%)

Militant - Made for the sole purpose of death and destruction

16 (15.8%)

Other

40 (39.6%)

Total Members Voted: 101

[Gamerlord]

I'd like to know what kind of forts people make. I usually make dirt forts.

[Sanguine]

I tend to embark without miners so to train some up quickly I usually make all of my workshops, farms, store rooms and bedrooms in dirt and then go down to stone layers for the rest of the fortress.

[kenpoaj]

I'm currently building a combination of an aboveground fort and a mechanical hell. Its a giant glass tower with luxury rooms for every dwarf, 20z above ground, and more below. This will be surrounded with a labyrinth of one way halls each to sort out invaders by speed, then slowly crippling them before returning  them to the start. I'm somewhat humane in that if they can survive a cycle, they can run away. but if they go back in, their path changes due to crippling injuries, so they can experience more Fun each time!

Still gotta figure out how to deal with building destroyers and trapavoids though.

[Darkweave]

Massive sprawling fortresses in only stone layers that I guess are kind of semi-mega-projects. Everything has to be smoothed and most walls engraved. I include lot's of magma-falls, waterfalls, multi-z halls, temples, arenas and all sorts of other nonsense. I just carve them inside of a mountain instead of building above ground. I'm not sure which of your options that comes under.  Usually I end up getting dragged off to play games with friends before my forts really develop and by the time I get around to playing again I can't remember what was going on so end up restarting so I never get that far, but it usually takes around three years just to get my first two entrance halls and a small guard post dug out and engraved using six to seven skilled miners and engravers.

[Oaktree]

I'm laboring towards more compact builds and using more of a vertical style.  So 2-3 levels above ground for defenses, livestock pastures and using up stone.  Limited use of soil layers for initially getting underground and some storage.  Then the main fortress in the stone layers 8-9 levels deep in a roughly 50x50 square.  Mining galleries, cistern, catacombs, etc. going down out of the bottom.  Some sprawl in the first and second stone layers since I like to dig my caravan access tunnels here to avoid issues with tree growth and having to pave roads or tree cutting simply to keep things clear.

[UltraValican]

Typically a 4*4  stair way into the dirt surrounded by a wall and a drawbridge. I will somtimes box off areas so they can oly be acessed from underground.
In my latest homebrewed Orc Fortress(Deon Orcs or wherever he got samurai orcs from) I build wooden Inns that house about 12-20 people each.

[Teronsuke]

Highly volatile, poorly staffed pits in the ground with no metal being smithed ever because I'm a noob and either forget, or focus on something else until I have Fun.

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
Still gotta figure out how to deal with building destroyers and trapavoids though.

BDs: artifact furniture off to the side, surrounded by repeating spikes. They will move to attack, wheras other creatures ignore it. Artifact furniture can't be smashed.

Trapavoids won't activate pressure plates and fall through the hatches that then open, so they keep walking into a spike repeater hall. Hatches/pressure plates set to accept creatures of any speed.

[EveryZig]

My building style is closest to Mechanical Hell, but I keep my levers fairly well organized through use of color coding (for the levers in the control room) or placement near the thing effected (for little-used or non-urgent levers). I usually build a few guard towers and a pyramid or something over the main trap-field (I channel it out and make a roof in order to prevent miasma).

I have recently taken a liking to dining halls spanning more than one z level that can be sealed off with iron drawbridges and an emergency lever.

Artifact furniture can be smashed in the sense that they just deconstruct it. I just place walls in my trap field so that the shortest rout to the entrance is where the repeating spikes are.

[Lortath]

Designed, organised.
With workshop levels, Living level, military level, all separed by rooms of different industries. (Exemple, I have a room for stocking raw food, a room for kitchen/raw food, a room for alcool/still with barrels, a room for prepared food)   
All rooms are designed before start digging.
Exemple : Here, the entrance to my workshop z-lvl (each stair = one industrie, stone and gem, wood, cloth, and metal.) And my hospital. And maybe noble rooms.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I alway abandon because boredom (or because it disorganized). I spend more time making designations than playing. And I alway forgot some workshop (soap maker, my eternal nemesis). I'm a maniac.

I apologize for bad english.

[UristMcHuman]

I tend to like making an above-ground city out of clay or wood. Eventually, I'm gonna change the sizes of dwarves, elves, goblins and kobolds to that of humans so as to avoid armor and clothing issues.

If there are elves nearby, I tend to make ALL structures out of clay. If there are no elves nearby, I will make farmers' huts out of wood.

[Jake]

A large and moderately comfortable settlement with living quarters, storage and most workshops in the stone layers and a handful of above-ground structures like a large metalworking complex*, the trade depot or an elaborate sculpture garden. Most walls eventually get smoothed and sometimes engraved, and most worked-out mineral veins get turned into art galleries. My primary design philosophy is, "somewhere I wouldn't mind settling down to raise a family".

* Reactions involving fuel are slated to create smoke at some point so it seems like a habit worth getting into, and in any case I like to keep flammable stuff on the surface where possible.

[acetech09]

My current megafortress has a 350+ population, neatly organized with a control room with color-coded levers, (approx 35 of them). Dirt layers are used for pastures, tree farms, stone stockpiles, and the fortress entrance path. Rooms and workshops are located in the stone layers, very organized and preplanned.

But recently the fortress has experienced some bugs (0004115, 0000828, 0002481) that make it sorta hard to operate like I used to, so I'm thinking of doing something different, probably some raw-editing with infinite resources and some sort of mega-city theme.

[i2amroy]

I tend to dig down until I hit stone and dig out a depot and barracks. I then tunnel up on the other side back into the soil to dig out my early rooms that then later become tree farms. The end result is a fortress with a very easily defendable entrance that then has a main stairwell on which I stack different levels (living, dining, farming, military training). I also tend to have a stairwell on the side that dives down to the magma sea, dodging around caverns when necessary and then opens up in order to set up my magma workshops. If I manage to keep playing past that point without dying due to FUN then I eventually convert the whole thing into a mechanical hell, but most of the time something or other collapses first.

[Cyroth]

My favorite style is to embark on mountains and dig out several towers, all connected by bridges and walkways.

The tower in the center is usually the entrance, 15 - 20 or more levels filled with barracks, fortified walls or several level high halls that have fortifications on the upper levels with marksdwarves behind.
The other towers have stockpiles on the upmost levels (or generally on the level where the walkway/bridge connects), workshops in the next lower level, then a dinning hall and finally bedrooms for the workers of that tower at the bottom.
One tower exists as the gateway to the cavern levels, it is designed like the entrace tower, but "reversed" and with the additional option to completely seal it with several bridges (I don't do that on the entrance tower).

My playstyle is extremely militant, usually about 80% of my population are soldiers, and only 1 or 2 dwarves for each civillian profession exist in my forts. Traps are rarely used, and mechanical deathtraps are only constructed for the lulz, never as a real way to defend myself.