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[Thuellai]

Okay, so, I've asked for some help in the worldgen thread before.  And for some reason, I'll get veeeery similar, but not quite identical embarks to the ones provided, even using the same seed.  Likely this is because I'm a bit of a modder and tweaked something I shouldn't have.

That being the case, I'd like your help in understanding how I should set up my worldgen factors in order to achieve sites that are

1. Relatively flat, plenty of surface building space.

2. Have surface or near-surface magma, so that I can easily set up industries using magma.

3.  Have clay OR sand, preferably both.

4.  Will support a decent number of civs and megabeasts, to ensure both trade and FUN.

What tweaks do I need to make to the worldgen settings?  I'm guessing small volcanism meshes (so that I can have high volcanism areas that end abruptly allowing me to squeeze volcanoes and sedimentary rock/clay in the same area) is going to be a key aspect.

[vjek]

If you mod anything, your chances of reproducing the same world is slim.  Vanilla 34.11 currently produces the same identical worlds if you use the same seed, from one install to another, even cross platform.

If you change any raws though, you're on your own.

A few things to comment on regarding your list of desirable traits.  Some of these traits are opposed, so you'll have some difficulty.

Making thin worlds (those with few z-levels) is possible, but you need at least one cavern if default dwarves are going to survive.  You can make a world as little as ~20 Z levels between embark and the circus, though, if you take out caverns and give dwarves surface farming.

Generally, I don't do anything special to get clay and sand.

What civs you get depends on what biomes you provide.  If you provide all civ biomes, you get all civs.  This is true for humans, elves, dwarves, and kobolds.  Goblins will live almost anywhere (except Good biomes).  Getting a large number of distinct biomes (different names on the map) will allow for a large number of titans and forgotten beasts, as only one is generated per  uniquely named area.  One per surface region for titans, one per belowground region for forgotten beasts.

Getting unique biome names is easiest with varying elevation.  This of course makes it more difficult to find flat embarks.
Ramping up volcanism makes it easier to have volcanos and magma, but harder to find iron or other sedimentary stone/ore because volcanos are igneous.

Some of these problems can be avoided by lowering mineral scarcity to under 1000, but in some cases it's not enough to get the volume of resources you want, if you only have a few z-levels to work with.

In these cases, personally, I use dfhack to adjust my embark area, after I pick it.  If i need iron ore, I'll add it.  If there's no water, I'll add it.  If there's no magma handy, I'll add it.
You can spend hours (or even days) generating worlds to try and find one that is just right, when a few commands in dfhack, on any map, will give you magma, fresh water, and all the ore/stone you want.  I'm not saying it's the only way or the right way, but it does save an enormous amount of time.  In particular, as is your case, Thuellai, when your goals conflict with the way worldgen "normally" works.

[Fluoman]

While you can trust vjek about anything worldgen-related, I would recommend:

1. Relatively flat, plenty of surface building space.

Embark on an artic ocean biome, or increase number of erosion cycles.

2. Have surface or near-surface magma, so that I can easily set up industries using magma.

Increase number of volcanoes, don't touch min & max volcanism (0 and 100), volcanism variance to the max, no minimum number of low/mid/high volcanism. No need to mesh it.

3.  Have clay OR sand, preferably both.

Increase temperature to get more deserts.

4.  Will support a decent number of civs and megabeasts, to ensure both trade and FUN.

Increase number of civs, world size somewere around the middle (67x67) to keep generation fast.

[ORCACommander]

titans are not generated per region, they have their own variable number. To get more megabeasts simply up the megabeast cave count. however if you set this to high your not likely to advance in ages

while its true you do not need to use volcanism meshes to to achieve max volcanoes it will reduce headaches in getting there and also it will better allow volcanism next to sedimentary which is the real tricky part.

[wierd]

1) (relatively flat, low incidence of cliffs)

Reduce the X/Y variance from 400 to 50.

Spoiler: what this does (click to show/hide)

The X/Y variance is the degree of permissable change in value the ground's level can have next to its neighbor. At the default elevation range of 0 to 400, and a default X/Y variance of 400, you can theoretically have a cliff that is 400z! Because worldgen happens at a rather largish granularity, this effect is smoothed out a bit, and erosion levels it out more. Setting this much lower than the default forces the game to produce a flatter, less cliffy world. It has the negative effect of making mountain peaks more difficult to place however, making it harder to place dwarven civs, and causing rejection spam. Use with care.

2) easy surface magma

Set minimum volcanoes from 10 to a significantly higher number.

Spoiler: what this does (click to show/hide)

This increases the number of volcanoes that get generated on the landscape. This coupled with a reduction in allowed XY variance, or a reduction in maximum elevation will result in volcanoes that resembled the "magma tubes" of the 40d era, which are essentially just holes in the ground filled with magma. They may even appear in areas with aquifers! When set very high (greater than 30), the game has difficulty during worldgen, and rejections will occur. Greatly enhanced rejections from mixing with alterations to elevation or xy variance.

3) more sand/clay

This happens naturally as a side effect of flattening the world, but there are other ways to increase it as well.  The most prominent is to increase the required number of grassland or swamp areas. Another is to increase the temperature to get deserts, as previously suggested.

Spoiler: what this does (click to show/hide)

This is pretty self explanitory. It causes the worldgen algo to reject if the world does not meet your new minimum grassland requirement. Since grasslands grow only on soil types, sand or clay will be much more plentiful on such a world. Again, more rejections!

4) support a large number of civs/beasts

Turn up civilizations from 10, to something absurd, like 100. Turn up demon types from 10 to something absurd. Turn up the number of secrets. Turn up the number of evil places. Turn up savagery, etc.

Spoiler: what this does (click to show/hide)

The number of civs value is the number of civilizations that the world spinner conjures into being at year 0, and magically plants on the ground. This is regardless of world suitability. If the world cannot accept a civ being placed because of a lack of an appropriate biome to put them in, it rejects. (Eg, no mountains, no dwarves,==rejection) as long as one dwarf civ can be placed, it will not reject, and will instead place other kinds of creature civs.  With savagery turned up, this includes beastman populations and civs. Turning up the number of caves increases the number of cave dwellers, like troglodites, cave trolls, kobolds, etc. Turning up the number of titans increases the number of titans placed at year 0, who don't care where they were dropped. Turning up the number of "secrets", increases the number of magic stone tablets hidden in the world, which increases the chances of necromancer enclaves forming after their discovery. Be careful doing this! It is very easy to make dwarves die out after history processing, from all the competition and chaos!  Again, this makes it much harder to gen a world, and will create rejection spam.

[Thuellai]

Thanks everyone.  I'm getting the hang of this version slowly but surely, and enjoying it quite a bit, and all the neat utilities people have created.

Wierd, you've been especially helpful by calling the X/Y variance variable to my attention.  Would a high X/Y variance (especially combined with turning off 'periodically erode extreme cliffs') create lots of sheer drops?

[wierd]

XY variance is the "allowable" variance, not the hard set cliff height. It works in conjunction with max elevation and min elevation. Specifically, an allowable variance greater than the difference betwee max and min elevation would impose no tangible limits.

To get absurd drops, you would have to set max elevation high, and xy variance to the same amount. This would produce "mount olympus" mountains.

Basically, min/max elevation sets the extremes. Xy variance controls how the topology changes from one extreme to the other.  Large values let it change radically. Small values force it to change gradually. 

It has a profound effect on placing peaks, because those are sharp changes in elevation. The XY variance can prevent peaks from being placed if set too low.

[Thuellai]

Okay so, for sheer cliffs, the ideal is

-a large difference between min and max elevation
-a high XY variance
-Turn off 'periodically erode extreme cliffs'

And maybe some tampering with other erosion factors?

[wierd]

Pretty much. 

Dont be afraid to just play with the worldgen spinner's knobs to see what they do. Toady exposed the knobs to be played with, so dont be afraid to do it. Dont consider rejections as an innately bad thing-- it just means the formula toady uses for world gen is having a difficult time meeting the requirements you have set. It is perfectly possible to put values that will reject 100% of the time, all the time. You will pretty much know this has happened when you get the rejection notification windows endlessly, and the number of rejects is in the hundreds of thousands. But thats not a bad thing either. It conveniently makes suggestions when that situation happens.  Often times, it is rejecting because it cant 'quite' meet the requirements, but is getting very close. Allowing a rejection type from the rejection window can help with that. Dont be afraid to use it. I've gotten some intensely "interesting" worlds this way, and am very glad toady provided that functionality. I would be angry if he took it out to make "Worldgen easier" The only issue is with trying to make a repeatable world with very difficult parameters, so that other people can recreate that world fresh later. That's what things like the worldgen cookbook are for. For your own sadistic pleasure, one-off worlds with absurd numbers of rejects and a few "allow" button presses are perfectly fine, and shouldnt get any bad press.

It would help if the worldgen screen came with a help menu to explain what each knob does in greater detail-- but I think Toady likes watching us fumble in the dark, because seeing us blindly whirl the knobs results in a kind of diversity and inventive world gen tribal knowledge that would never develop with a comprehensive manual.  That's what I think anyway-- Who knows, he might just be lazy and not feel like making a really long boring help menu or something. I like the former explanation better.

The best way to learn about worldgen, is to play with the knobs, make worlds, look at them all over with the embark menu, cancel, delete the world, and spin the wheel again, taking note of how the changes impacted the result.  Doing it without any specific intent in mind, and just playing with the worldgen spinner can be entertaining in and of itself, and I think advanced players should take the time to do exactly that, so that when they try to spin for a specific type of world, they know exactly how to do it, and have found their own unique little recipie for FUN.

Look at all the above suggestions for your desired world-- They share several similarities, but each is subtly different. That's a good thing.

[Thuellai]

Yeah, I ran into that trying to make a world I thought would be interesting earlier.  It kept having trouble placing low elevations, despite my leaving the minimum elevation at 1, so I tweaked the elevation mesh slightly to weight low elevations higher and that fixed that issue and got me an interesting little world full of diverse biomes.

Now I'm seeing exactly how patchwork I can get - can I manage to get the game to put a jungle, a desert, and a mountain in the same embark?  A desert and a tundra?  How 'oh god why do fantasy authors never study geography' can I get a playable world, considering Toady has applied so many geographical factors to worldgen?

That's just my current project, of course.  I've genned probably twenty worlds so far just testing out parameters.

And I agree that one of the best things in this community is that, presented with a problem or query of sufficient interest, we will do absolutely SILLY things to pursue them - the minecart water shotgun being an eminent example, as well as my own 'shark domestication' thread (which has quickly turned to the domestication and breeding of other water animals, for example, giant sperm whales, for use in a variant of aforementioned minecart shotgun, because what's more FUN than launching whales at your enemies?)

It's like some kind of emergent random hilarity/atrocity engine.

[Fluoman]

A desert and a tundra?

I did manage a freezing red sand desert once. It was pretty strange.