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[SteelZsar]

So, curious, what little creature comforts do you have to have to make a fort a fort?

For example. Each one of my forts MUST have a functioning library ASAP. It must be big and it must have a squad purely to defend it. Additionally, crypts are literally a great pit with notches dug into the walls. Those not deserving a good death are thrown, others are interred into coffins into the notches.

[Derro]

I like putting temples to all the different deities in appropriate locations (god of death gets the cemetary, goddess of agriculture the pens, deity of justice the jail) and decorating them in a fashion fitting their patron.

[overseer05-15]

Nearly all of my forts to date have ended up, one way or another, with a flaming artifact in the first main hall.

[Mostali]

Most of the fun for me is in design - so I almost always have elaborate plumbing schemes to allow a well in every bedroom.

[Ironfang]

Mine is a tavern filled with primates.

[Thisfox]

I have individual bedrooms as soon as possible, but what makes my fort a fort is a well. I love having one in the middle of the fort, with a hospital to one side, and a soap stockpile and a bucket stockpile. It is usually aquifer-fed, always at least 4z deep, and I have been known to make a waterfall entrance. I train up a mechanic so that I can have masterwork mechanisms, I buy fancy decorated wooden buckets and expensive dyed and decorated ropes to make it with from the merchant wagons. I make heavy gold blocks and fancy rock salt blocks to make them with. I tile the floor and engrave the walls. I put gratings around it and statuary.

My nobles get a "nobles only" wellroom next to the nobles quarters, and I will make lesser wells into the same cistern with chains next to them, so my prisoners don't die of thirst when they're incarcerated. Sometimes, late in fort development, but early in planning, I'll put in a third well in a more extensive hospital level, complete with private rooms around the edge of the wellroom to wall off in case of were-transformations. At other times, I'll make a "dwarfchild play bunker" with a food storage area, a few tables and chairs, a wellroom, the kids bedrooms, and a toy stockpile. It can have a small locked room with a pick stockpile too, in case the kids grow up and have to dig their way out. I can lock it off from the rest of the fort and the kids survive whatever flaming forgotten beast is nearby.

My forts might lack other things, but there's always a well, and usually a waterfall.

[Immortal-D]

Ever since I discovered macros and building templates, all of my Dwarves are given separate 2x2 bedrooms with a cabinet and chest (and bed & door of course).  Thisfox- I am also fond of creating multiple Well-rooms.  Though admittedly, this is more due to me being sick of waiting for my single Well to get cleaned after the Dwarves wash off a year's worth of blood and mud.

[Urist McVoyager]

A hospital. They're decently complicated and the true mark of Dwarf Fortress for me. Other games have healing units. We have a fully functioning hospital where anything hospital related can happen.

[Thisfox]

A hospital. They're decently complicated and the true mark of Dwarf Fortress for me. Other games have healing units. We have a fully functioning hospital where anything hospital related can happen.

...What does that look like? Lots of small rooms, or one big one? How many beds?

I used to have bedrooms for hospital staff down the hall from my hospital, so they were nearby at least every once in a while. Do you do the same?

Thisfox- I am also fond of creating multiple Well-rooms.  Though admittedly, this is more due to me being sick of waiting for my single Well to get cleaned after the Dwarves wash off a year's worth of blood and mud.

I find gratings on the edge of the well, where they soap up, work well. The gunk doesn't accumulate on the grating. If the well is deep enough, the contaminants seem to fall to the bottom, and I've not found that I'm contaminating my water supply that way.

[azrael4h]

A fortress just isn't a fortress without the roads and halls strewn with corpses.

[Baffler]

I've been playing with giving dwarves luxury accommodations. Lots of times I'd give them 3x3 rooms, and I realized lately that I can easily just dig up one level and put their bedroom there, and make the hallway level a dining room. And then there's no reason not to make the hallway they connect to 2 z-levels high, since the rooms have the same profile on both levels and there's not really anything else to use that space for, and that way they can have a window up there, or I can have marksdwarves cover the hallways from safety if needed. It's made my forts look more like human towns transplanted into a cave than the more traditional layout, and the effect is interesting.

[Chief10]

So, curious, what little creature comforts do you have to have to make a fort a fort?

For me, it's the gatehouse and its associated features.

I like to build mixed indoor/outdoor, castle-y type forts. The main entrances are always some form of raising bridge into the side of a hill/mountain (if there is no appropriate spot on embark I start over). The bridge must be connected to a lever which is in its own lever room. The walls of the gatehouse also must be made of stone blocks using my chosen stone type. All constructions in my fort are made of the same type of stone, so to get to this point I need to mine and find an appropriate stone that my map has enough of (gabbro is my favorite!).

[Urist McVoyager]

A hospital. They're decently complicated and the true mark of Dwarf Fortress for me. Other games have healing units. We have a fully functioning hospital where anything hospital related can happen.

...What does that look like? Lots of small rooms, or one big one? How many beds?

I used to have bedrooms for hospital staff down the hall from my hospital, so they were nearby at least every once in a while. Do you do the same?

I generally have the hospital close to the bedrooms and prison. I really do need to run the hospital with isolation suites in case of werebeasts. I've fallen prey to those before. It's usually a big room with beds towards one wall, wells along another. Traction benches in the middle, and stockpiles for supplies along the last non-door wall.

I'm thinking my next hospital should be two levels high, with the bottom level consisting of pit bedrooms with small retracting bridges over them in case of the inevitable.

[Thorik]

I've been playing with giving dwarves luxury accommodations. Lots of times I'd give them 3x3 rooms, and I realized lately that I can easily just dig up one level and put their bedroom there, and make the hallway level a dining room. And then there's no reason not to make the hallway they connect to 2 z-levels high, since the rooms have the same profile on both levels and there's not really anything else to use that space for, and that way they can have a window up there, or I can have marksdwarves cover the hallways from safety if needed. It's made my forts look more like human towns transplanted into a cave than the more traditional layout, and the effect is interesting.

I like the whole z-level thing you got going on there but it must be disconcerting when your window is 10 feet from the neighbor's and you can see each other shagging...

[Fearless Son]

I stage it.  First priority is a cistern for an interior well.  The well is usually in the middle of a hospital zone (they need the fresh water most of all.)  Then we follow that with a communal boarding room, then a communal dining room.  Then after establishing secure defensive construction, we can begin to add individual apartments and expand our production capability. 

I have not really played much since temples, libraries, and taverns have been added, but I imagine those would coincide with the individual apartments.  I might structure the communal dining hall so it can be expanded and converted to a tavern as we go.