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[Kofthefens]

Wow. Nice fort.

[cludgo]

post screenshots for us forum lurkers!!

[Hyndis]

post screenshots for us forum lurkers!!

The entire fort is there in flash, so you can zoom in and view every level in as much detail as you want.

[smeeprocket]

I really wish I had the dedication to put this kind of time into a fort. I have a basic floor plan I follow, but it isn't very pretty. You did an awesome job!

[Hyndis]

Bah, I want some critique!

Let me know how I screwed up so the next fort can be better, or offer suggestions as to what could be improved.

I know I definitely need to do better at making it less orderly and more organic and flowing. Colonizing the caverns would allow a similar spacious, wide open, yet haphazard sort of design, and it would be easy enough to wall off a layer of the caverns to build the fortress in.

[Crossroads Inc.]

If you want it to be less ordered.  Practice "drawing" forts.

I never build forts for max eff. Instead I try to make forts liek real cities.  Huge buildings, towers, rooms, work areas "shops" big streets all underground.
It isn't always effcient, but it "Looks" very pretty

Cave building is a great way to practice... Try this...
Explore the underground and find an area with lots of open spaces and tall roofs. 
Clear off and mine off big flat areas on the existing "steps" of the underground, and then restrict your building to just those areas.

That forces a more "organic" feel as you have to build buildings to follow the lay of the cave system instead of just making big boxed areas.

EDIT:
heres a few of my "city forts" planned out and under construction

Plans for the small fort of "Tall Labored"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Carved out underground city:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fortress City of "Castle Tower" under construction

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Hyndis]

Problem is that the in game tools are somewhat limited, in that digging out round sections, or constructing round towers is a PITA to do due to how many steps it requires. Building a simple square structure probably requires an order of magnitude less steps than a round one does, even if the round structure is smaller than the square one.

I think I'll colonize a cavern layer with my next fort, though I'll continue to tinker with this one, perhaps colonize hell just for the sake of doing so, and then once DF2012 is stable I'll invade a layer of the caverns, wall off the entire caverns so its safe, level the terrain because I like my forts to be all on the same level, more or less, for convenient viewing, and then leave the natural stone pillars as towers.

Thinking something inspired by something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1kAwnGoqcM

On a side note, what inspired Minedances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eh22nIFZQU

I used freestanding towers in the middle and didn't carve much into the walls, but its the same sort of city sunken into an open pit or stripmine type idea. Another thing I could try would be to build a city much more like that. Probably a smaller pit in the middle, maybe just 30x30, filled with magma of course, with the city carved into the stone walls. Up top there would be fortifications similar to the ones in Minedances, extending all the way to the edge of the map, with a gatehouse garrisoned entirely by soldiers and not using any weapon traps.

Downside to this design is that turning temperature on would be murder for my FPS. Upside is that embarking on a snowy biome would provide an interesting mix of snow, ice, and magma. I'd also need to get better at designating round shapes for the central volcano core.

I think colonizing caverns might be the better option overall.

[olopi]

I also thoutg about an underground city, but it got to complicated for me

[Jalen]

I do the same thing, all underground though. Channel layer upon layer forming structures out of stone. It ends up being quite nice looking. Good fort

[Hyndis]

Its just squares because I'm lazy.

But yeah, thinking caverns for the next fort. Turn off invaders so I can have time to build. Wall off an entire layer of the cavern with blocks to make it safe. Smooth out the cavern so the floor is all on the same Z level, leave the natural and irregularly shaped stone pillars, then later on carve them up into apartment towers.

While stuff grows on natural cavern floors even if its not muddy, it will not grow on mined out stone floors, which would result in leveling out the cavern floor. So, two options. Flood the entire cavern, but that would make everything all muddy and brown, but things would grow everywhere. Or leave the stone areas intact, so some areas of the cavern floor would be full of tower caps, other areas would be just barren stone.

The benefit of those areas with the barren would is that it would be a good spot to build freestanding buildings out of more blocks, and would kind of make sense to build there. I'll need to poke around at it to see what works best.

Still waiting for DF2012 to get stable though, haven't done much more than poke around at it. So many possibilities for weaponized zombies.

[olopi]

Its just squares because I'm lazy.

But yeah, thinking caverns for the next fort. Turn off invaders so I can have time to build. Wall off an entire layer of the cavern with blocks to make it safe. Smooth out the cavern so the floor is all on the same Z level, leave the natural and irregularly shaped stone pillars, then later on carve them up into apartment towers.

While stuff grows on natural cavern floors even if its not muddy, it will not grow on mined out stone floors, which would result in leveling out the cavern floor. So, two options. Flood the entire cavern, but that would make everything all muddy and brown, but things would grow everywhere. Or leave the stone areas intact, so some areas of the cavern floor would be full of tower caps, other areas would be just barren stone.

The benefit of those areas with the barren would is that it would be a good spot to build freestanding buildings out of more blocks, and would kind of make sense to build there. I'll need to poke around at it to see what works best.

Still waiting for DF2012 to get stable though, haven't done much more than poke around at it. So many possibilities for weaponized zombies.

Wouldn't there be problems with FB's?

[Hyndis]

Wouldn't there be problems with FB's?

Thats why I'd wall off one of the caverns. In the caverns you can simply construct walls right to the edge of the map.