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My fortresses typically have compact, distinct rooms and/or narrow, neat hallways. I usually don't feel the need to change this.

83 (38.4%)

My fortresses usually end up pretty closed in, but I'm usually not happy with it.

12 (5.6%)

My fortresses typically have sprawling, expansive chambers (walls and specific rooms optional). I am generally happy with this.

46 (21.3%)

My fortresses usually end up with many large, open sections, but I often find myself wishing I could somehow undig stone.

14 (6.5%)

N/A; My fortresses are typically a more-or-less even mix according to my taste, built above ground/in the caverns/at the circus, and/or Mr Frog sucks at making polls.

35 (16.2%)

Evenly-mixed, but I'm cursed and the parts that I want closed-in turn out spacious and the parts I want open end up all claustrophobic.

26 (12%)

Total Members Voted: 216

[Mr Frog]

After spending a bit of time looking at screenshots of players' fortresses, I've noticed that fortresses tend to fall into one of two general styles:

• Generally closed, with narrow hallways and small, conservative rooms for each workshop/category of workshop.
• Generally open, with wide corridors and massive work areas with many workshops; there may or may not be internal walls to separate rooms.

Of course, an important thing about people is that they are not supercomputers and, thus, not every result of their activities is 100% intentional and desired; I know that I'm not always completely happy with how my fortress's layout is turning out. Perhaps your fortress has wide spaces because you find it simpler to just designate a big square; maybe you aren't happy with this later. Perhaps your fortresses start out compact, but you frequently end up expanding rooms because they're too small to accommodate your personal vision.

So now, citizens of the Bay 12 Forums, my question to you is this:

Which end of the scale does your fortress tend to lean toward as you're building it, and how does this compare with your 'ideal' fortress? Are your fortresses often too cramped? Too sprawled-out? Just right? Impossible to describe in terms of Earthly geometric relations (I know there are a few like that)?

I find that I usually lean towards narrow and compact; I occasionally have to expand a stockpile or two, but for the most part I'm happy with it and don't feel the need to change it.

NOTE: This doesn't count fortress structures that are narrow/wide by necessity, such as trap hallways or tree farms. Of course, if you avoid building those *because* they're too narrow or wide, it's pretty clear from that which end of the scale you lean towards.

EDIT: Changed option 5 to include forts that are somewhere in the middle. False dichotomies, begone!

EDIT II: Added new, super-sexy 6th option! Also, friggin' typos.

[Lemunde]

My fortresses are generally compact yet very asymmetrical. I never have a design in mind going in. I just start digging out rooms and try to squeeze stuff in where possible.

I hate the giant rectangle design. Very unimaginative and drab looking.

[Masta Crouton]

i generally have giant rooms, like a production floor, a bedroom, a dining room, and storage. i do this to keep my fortress on one or two z-levels, and make the pathing for dwarves a little simpler.

[NecroRebel]

I have set chambers for workshops that tend to be grouped by industry (for instance, the loom, dyer's shop, and clothier's shop will be next to each other, but each in its own chamber), are usually grouped with a relevant stockpile or three, and these areas are separated by corridors or catwalks (I prefer catwalks; open space is pretty). Bedrooms also are grouped, usually into somewhat-circular towers with 8 chambers per level.

I tend to have many, many more doors in my walls than most people, though. Like, a workshop might have 10 doors and 6 pillars making up its walls if it's by itself in the middle of a chamber or if there are corridors or stockpiles on both sides of it. As such, while my forts usually look like they have specific chambers and hallways, oftentimes dwarves move through them as though there was hardly a wall present.

[krenshala]

I don't fit the options.  I tend to have small, minimally sized rooms squeezed in where they will fit as, like Lemunde, I don't go in with a plan.  However, my hallways are typically two or three tiles wide to accommodate high traffic in places I expect it, but use one tile wide hallways in areas with minimal expected traffic.   ... with the exception of the tomb area, which has 3 to 5 wide halls, but not normally very much traffic.  This might change, however, as for my next fortress i'm thinking of using someone elses suggestion (apologies, but I can't remember who it was) to have the tombs off the main hallway so the dwarves are always able to see them.

[Cellmonk]

I've fallen in love with magnetite, Bauxite, kaolinite, kimberlite or olivine clusters

(NEVER microcline. If I see it, I will change my designations to dig around it. If I don't catch it, I dump it all under a draw bridge, and refloor and re-wall where I dug using only blind dwarves, and put the poor dwarf who dug it out of his misery with my ascension room. sometimes I use microcline for a dungeon for elven prisoners, to destroy their eyes so they can never appreciate natural beauty again. I only let blind dwarves enter that cursed room.)   

I micromanaged the hell out of digging designations to dig out magnetite (or all the other beautiful cluster forming rocks) clusters perfectly, and leave a huge, roughly ellipsoid room with rough walls. Then I discovered dfhackvdig, and began auto designating magnetite to be dug, leaving nice organically shaped and expansive rooms.

these are connected by 2 wide hallways or veins of some ore. these can be expanded to 3, 4, or 5 wide (and i WILL expand if I have traffic). so I always leave room for the hallways to widen. I NEVER dig whole levels... it just don't seem natural.

I like to have widely and organically shaped centers and stockpiles, with a few rooms off of them, all connected by expandable hallways, so I think I fall somewhere off the median into the Expansive corridor category.

[Squirrelloid]

Your poll sucks =)

So, I think I found a happy medium, or maybe a super optimum.  I tend to (try) to build my forts around an expansive 3x3 staircase.  Each level is fairly compact, although it may actually be a single open room, its always reasonably tight to the staircase (my rule of thumb is that no tile should be more than ~10 away from the stairs in a working area, 20 for bedrooms).  Thus my dwarfs are never cramped and can move efficiently about the fortress while keeping the necessary separation between sleeping and working areas to avoid insomniac dwarves.  Relevant related workspaces are on the same or nearby floors, related stockpiles tend to be either immediately above or below (or both!), and so on.  The idea being to minimize the pathing most dwarves need to do to accomplish their tasks (although going to bed usually involves going up 10+ staircases, even that is still bounded at 30 + #levels tiles moved, and getting near that full distance would be unusual).

So I definitely build compactly because a given dwarfs travel time is pretty minimal.  At the same time, many layers are only a single room and there's a nice wide 3x3 'vertical corridor' providing rapid access through the fortress.

[WolfeyS]

Personally I just dig out the entire map and build rooms with stone underground.

Edit: A true dwarven city!

[Broseph Stalin]

I usually build my forts above gound but when do make a traditional fort I don't waste any space. 3x3 hallways except the 1x1 entrance lined with traps and a generally symmetrical layout organized by Z level.

[Loud Whispers]

Where's the crap ton of hallways, mazes and rooms littered all over the place option? :d

[Plutocrat]

Stone undig yourself this instant!

[Mr Frog]

Where's the crap ton of hallways, mazes and rooms littered all over the place option? :d

That would fall under Option i: "My fortress is an Escherian nightmare that cannot be quantified with conventional units of volume."

[Fishbulb]

I've been on a "I'm going to out-Flarechannel Flarechannel" kick lately, only underground. So my recent forts have fallen into the "it looks like a little town" model, with individual buildings carved out surrounded by streets and alleys.

I like it … but I've run into some brutal lag problems that I'm pretty sure are related to pathfinding. When each dwarf has like twenty different potential routes it can take to go from anywhere to anywhere else every frame turns into my laptop going "Wait wait, hang on, I'm thinking."

I'm still trying to work that out.

What I am tired of, though, is crowding. I don't like to see my dwarves jammed up against each other. It bugs me. I like my forts roomy. I've done tons of tightly packed, efficient forts; efficiency can get stuffed. Common areas, like the main town square or the dining hall, need multiple shift-arrow presses to cross with the cursor. All my main roads/corridors/whatever are at least seven tiles wide, with five-tile-wide ones reserved for side streets, and three-wide ones for those out-of-the-way alleys where nobody ever goes … like the potash stockpile.

[Loud Whispers]

efficiency can get stuffed.

This sums up my fortress designs.

[Sutremaine]

My design is, conceptually, something of a hangover from the 2D days when you'd often dig a corridor straight through to the river or chasm and live in it until the rest of the fortress got dug out. There's a main corridor that snakes down into the earth, and rooms and areas are thrown off as necessary. Since the corridor is big enough for a trade depot and essentially divided into rooms by the frequent level changes, it can be used as a proper fortress. I tend not to dig out areas until I have a specific need for them.