Bay 12 Games Forum

Supersize everything you have planned by making the floors 4 z lvl high each.

Urist McHauler does not need a 4z high living quarters.

1. A safari park with one of every animal in the entire world in. Not a zoo with them all in cages, but a single level for them to roam freely in, and some glass walkways for dwarves to come and gawk at all the weird and wonderful animals.

2. A hall of records filled with row after row of cast obsidian walls all covered with engravings, and with the mechanics set up to make more walls once you have covered it all.

3. A vault that takes up a whole level in which you place all the artifacts and other shiny things that you dig up and make.

#1 I like.  I'm gonna go a step further though and try to introduce some ponds, as well as a few enclosures (accessed from the walkways above) with windows for ground-level observation.
#2 is...  unfeasible, due to the fact that it does, in fact, require infinite space in order to build a continually growing tower of knowledge.  I do like the idea, though - I think I'll try to find a volcano and a river on another embark and make a giant obsidian Tower of Knowledge.  I can do this with any kind of exploratory mining I do in the future, though.
#3 is something I was kinda planning on anyway.  Things like jewel-encrusted gold/platinum crowns, figurines or kings/queens of this civ, masterwork golden armor (which was the one thing I have modded in, gold and platinum equipment - because after all, those nobles should have a set of suitably fashionable and expensive dress armor for when they lead troops into battle...), masterwork weapons, artifacts, large gems, and that sort of thing.

Since t's a mountab ho9me, it needs accomadation for proper number of dwarves,
I'ld go for: (*but you won't, since you've already got this covered)

 basic accomadation (for say 500 dwarves...) as (over three layers)

[...]

From dwarven luxury and relaxation suite - for maxium rehabitation a enjoyable attmoshere is advised. complete with platinum table, throne, masterwork engravings etc.
Ranging down to hell suite: floored with grates, looking down on the the schorching lava blow.
at a pull of a lever, water falls from the ceiling (conviently washing way any ... stains), into the lava below, sending plumes of scorching steam

You know, I really SHOULD plan to house a ridiculous number of dwarves.  This is, after all, going to be THE mountainhome, not just some ordinary fortress.  I can get a bit over 100 per floor with the pattern I have right now, so 4 floors should give enough space for 450.

As for luxury suites, yes.  Those are called Noble Quarters.  I don't think I'm going to include hell suites, though.

EDIT:

Current plan for the magma tombs - feedback encouraged, I don't want to have to rebuild it.  Magma drops down directly into the big tomb, and passes through those tunnels to reach the smaller tombs.  I'm also toying with the idea of instead, using a small 'lava chamber' between the tomb and the entrance door (so you would have hall -> door -> room with lava -> door -> tomb) so it's TECHNICALLY accessible...  if you're willing to sacrifice a dwarf or two.

Or constructing it so that the magma tombs can drain into the noble dining room

You need a floor for goblinite clothing. It REALLY piles up. Also add a floor for..... Elven aggravation (Yeah. Flood it with water, and chop down 100+ trees yearly).

no elves, and I just hock the goblin crap to the human and dwarven caravans that come by.

No settlement is a true mountainhome until it boasts a soaring cathedral to a fitting dwarven god. Or possibly to the entire pantheon, with separate chapels for each god within the setting.

The home itself is basically a giant citadel, but I do like the idea of a main temple structure with smaller chapels to the individual gods.  Or at least to the ones I manage to get statues of.

Have a Minas Tirith-style outer wall. Out on the plains, have a huge semi-circle of an outer wall extending from the mountain, with positions for archers to fire from. Then construct smaller more defended walls further in, until you have one highly defended wall just a tiny bit away from your main fortress. Bonus points if you add a moat of magma outside each wall.

As for the inside, you could have a huge chapel area made of some rare metal like gold, complete with a huge reflecting pool that reflects some statue of one of your fortresses gods. Other ideas include a huge training arena, and my favorite, another Lord of the Rings inspired theme, something like the Mines of Moria.

Turn your mining areas into a huge thing of beauty, fill the mines with workshops and homes and such for the poorer dwarves to live in (maybe migrants who can't afford housing in the main fortress?) and have a gigantic bridge stationed over a chasm that leads to a portal to the underworld. Super bonus points if you can get your mines overrun by demons or goblins.

Ergh.  I just got done building walls.  The mountainhome is situated in a large valley surrounded by mountains on three sides and with a 3 EMBARK WIDE wall made from marble blocks on the third side.  Even so, though, I DID say 'give me suggestions'....  I'll do what there's room for, but I already have a kind of plan for how the defenses are going to work.

As for turning mining tunnels into housing...  what mining tunnels?  I've carved 55,000 rocks out of this mountain so far.  I have 10 furnace operators working on a backlog of ore that'll provide me with another 100 nickel, 120 gold, 110 silver, 170 lead (and statistically, another 80 silver), 750 zinc, 2200 (!!) tin, 1650 coke, 50 bismuth, and 340 iron.  I still have another 14 layers to go, PLUS the interior excavation, PLUS the outer defenses.

What, exactly, is a 'Magma Tomb'?

I do like the idea of ripping out the existing noble quarters and putting a giant iron reservoir in its place, though...  although there would be some problems pumping magma up from the magma sea, in that there aren't really any straight vertical paths through both caverns that are large enough to accomodate.  Still, I think I can make it work.

As for the storeyard layers, I think you're misunderestimating the sheer size of this thing.  I'm gonna put some Stonesense shots up in the first post.

The concept of a 'Magma Tomb' does intrigue me, though.  What exactly does a 'magma tomb' entail?

Also: I just imported a barrel of "Cat n/a" from a human merchant.

I'm working on a massive Dwarven citadel carved into the side of a mountain.  It's going to stand 26 stories tall, carved into a mountain (which peaks at about 36 stories) and overlooking a very flat plain.  The map has plenty of copper and tin, iron, no flux, gold, silver, somewhat limited Funninite.  The first cavern is very open with only a few columns, making for some nice beaches, and the second cavern is not only claustrophobic as normal, but also completely dry, meaning nothing but blood thorns.  But I need help on this one:

I have 26 floors of mountainhome to fill.  I only have ideas for six floors right now.  I'd like to possibly do something that involves pumping water up from the first cavern (a reflecting pool?), maybe doing the same with magma to re-locate the forges up...  but I don't want to make any of this just ordinary stuff.  I want something really cool for the new dining room, maybe some kind of multi-level temple, but I've done so many big projects like this, I want ideas from other people so I don't end up just putting 15 floors of engraved sculpture gardens.

The 26th floor is the royal segment, with a massive throne room, two large (yet unfilled) 5x17 statuary halls with alcoves in the wall for statues, two 10x5 halls, two odd-shaped rooms (which will probably become a banquet hall and a private zoo), and four smaller, 5x5 rooms that will possible be either bedrooms or artifact display rooms.

The 25th floor is going to hold a magma reservoir so the throne room has magma pools, and some sort of tombs.

The 24th floor is going to hold rooms sealed by magma in some fashion.

The 23rd floor is going to hold the noble quarters.

The 6th floor holds 114 common quarters.

The 5th floor holds 82 common quarters and a yet undetermined number of common graves (currently 6).

The 4th floor holds 116 common quarters.

The 3rd floor holds 99 common quarters and 2 small statue gardens.

The 2nd floor is the primary barracks and medical floor.

The 1st floor is for goods: masonry and carpentry shops, trade good storage, the jewelers vault, and a quick response barracks for the Miners Guild unit (which is where the miners will go once they finish digging out the structure).

Unassigned:
-2-level zoo
-Vault

Progress:
17/26 stories carved
9/26 stories assigned

Screenshot repository:
Pre-dwarf mountain
Before starting the mountainhome proper, trimming out a space for it to sit in
The mountainhome begins to emerge
More progress
A screenshot taken just to give some scale to exactly how much rock has been removed
The royal segment
The noble segment (note: this sits directly beneath the royalty.  May be partly or entirely scrapped to make way for a magma reservoir.
Common housing
First floor, workshop level.

I think a long time ago, someone did some experimentation and found that spears without shields did better than spears with shields, all other factors equal.  So really, you'd want to ditch the shield.

Is it much more of a problem than the old military system, where you could send basically naked recruits to wrestle each other until they became legendary in a few seasons?

From a strictly realistic level, it's sort of like being able to assign twenty dwarves to beat your military dwarves with sticks until they're good enough to not get beaten with the sticks anymore.  It makes sense logically, so I don't see why it would be changed.

I have two of the unluckiest dwarves ever.

The same dwarf that got a scar on his cheek and upper leg from an earlier ambush got a finger smashed by a goblin thief, who then proceeded to break the right upper arm of the other dwarf that got his leg cut open previously.  Plus, everything is frozen, so i'm gonna have to risk opening up a path to the caverns (where there are currently THREE fb's wandering around) to get some water for them...