Point is, does anybody have any reliable/useful method of fortress planning? Productivity really goes down after a few years in my forts, just because lack of stockpile/workshop planning causes everything to be 1000 steps away from everything else.
The trick really does seem to be efficient use of the Z-levels, honestly.
The first level contains, in order, the entrance hall, dining room, statue room/zoo, and meeting room.*
On either side of the entrance hall I build the barracks and archery targets, with room for their associated stockpiles, so that my military will be near where they're needed in case of attack. (I even go so far as to assign each barracks bed to a soldier so that they definitely sleep there and also because civilians hogging the beds gets on my nerves)
Between the dining hall and statue room is a 3x3 stairwell which is a straight shaft down to the bottom of my fortress. First it leads to the food stockpile, with rooms leading off to the farm on one side and the food-related workshops on the other. Directly below that, a vast storage room for stone, wood, gems, furniture, finished goods -- everything really. Beneath that is a big area shaped like a sideways cross - all my workshops go on the three short ends, with the long end leading to bedrooms and another staircase that goes up to connect with the meeting hall. Bedrooms surround this shaft at every level and I assign them to the dwarves that are most likely to work or hang out on that level, because I'm just obsessive like that.
Of course, all this takes time, especially the part where you have to clear away roughly a billion trillion rocks, so for the first year or so everyone just lives in one giant cluttered hellhole next to the starting wagon.
*If I'm on a spot with a lot of soil I switch things around slightly and put the farms and food storeroom up top, so the dining room etc. can be dug lower down in nice engraveable stone.
As for the future plans, I'm eager for Core 28-30, and see how much I can create the central places model (Christaller). Nevermind all the other awesome things to come. :D
I also tend to kill threads, I hope this one continues.. (sorry beforehand!)
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These can be joined by Starcases in the central Chamber, or Corridors between.
The outer 5X5 rooms make great Farms, Stores etc, the 3x3 Rooms for the Appropriate Workshops or bedrooms, Since the stores in this 'village' match the requirements of the workshops and usually the drop off goods also go to this area. By then assigning One of the 5x5's as a food/beer/hall, set the tables for the locals, set the workshops for the locals, and set other designated stores to 'gather from' these village style placements, their bedrooms are in the village, checking for parents/children/marriages/friends in the same area..
Usually they dont go very far, and I can run very very large games, with very little lag.
It doesn't look messy, but it also doesn't look all that impressive though.
Since I explain badly, I'll give an example:
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BEDS DININGROOM
Standardize room size and placement. I usually go with 3x3 rooms attached to a two-tile wide corridor. For the newer, cheaper rooms once the economy starts, I leave them unsmoothed and 2x2 or 2x3.
From the points that branch out into the hallways that your bedrooms attach to, make a hub with statues at each corner, leading in four directions. Near the living spaces should be an area directly made for office space.
Leave the corridors _open_ so that you can expand almost infinitely in lines or squares when you need to.
Floor 1 is workshops. 3x3 workshops get put at the center of a 5x5 stockpile for their raw material.
Floor 2 is storage/dining room.
floor 3 is storage.
floor 4 is storage.
floor 5 is bedrooms.
floor 6 is more bedrooms.
Floor 7 is nobles quarters + misc.
Floor 8 is graveyards.
I've found it works really well.
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I really got sick of my ugly-but-functional fortresses, so I printed out some graph paper and got to work. Took about an hour and a half but I had a blast doing it. My fortress is in its fifth year and it looks almost exactly like I had planned!
[ May 23, 2008: Message edited by: Elitay ]
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Originally posted by Donkringel:
<STRONG>If your mining, just designate everything in advance (after mapping out your requirements) but keep a thin sliver of rock to keep your miners from working on unneeded areas.</STRONG>
Work camp design specifics vary, but they always:
* Avoid tearing up the landscape too much.
* Place crops, food-preparation, the dining hall, and a critical industry or two in close proximity.
* Pay some attention to defense against minor threats.
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How well does that work for noise spread? I guess if you specified one side (say, the left side) for bedrooms, and the other (right side) for workshops, it would fine.
I'm so obsessed with finding a workable design that I like that I've rarely gotten past the first summer before making a new fortress, and what I've been using recently is a modular design composed of alternating 5x5 and 7x7 rooms, with 3-wide halls in between. I place farms and workshops in the 5x5 squares, and stockpiles in the 7x7.
Also, the 7x7 and 5x5 rooms alternate between Z-layers, so from a side view it would look like:
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Below and above each workshop are stockpiles of the appropriate type.
It's not a perfect design, but (I think) it looks good, and works.