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[Stormfeather]

So I've been playing on and off (and on... and then off for a while... then back on for a few weeks and... you get the idea) for years now, and I've used the "find desired location" a fair bit when I'm having trouble finding a preferred embark. But some of the stuff has always confused me, and I figure it's about time I get around to asking for some help. So if y'all don't mind I'll go through each one and give my understandings of them (which could be wrong and please correct me if they are), and point out the ones I'm really confused on.

X and Y dimensions are fairly straightforward I assume - it's trying to assume the size of your embark so it knows what to look for.

Savagery I believe is pretty much the number of wild animals, yes? Or is there more to it than that?

Evil seems to be the general alignment, so I think Low is a "good" aligned biome, High would be Evil, and Medium would be no alignment either way?

Elevation... this is straightforward in a sense, but I don't know exactly how it considers them. Like, would "Low" be only plains, with absolutely no hills/mountains? Or would it just be mostly plains? Is "high" ONLY mountains, or just an embark with at least some of them? Is medium hills?

Temperature is one that I'd really like translated as to which toggle corresponds to what temperature. I tend to like to play on temperate embarks as a preference (though it's not set in stone that I have to), so would that be "Medium"? Would Low be "Cold" and High "warm"? But then where do the extremes fall?

Rain sounds fairly straightforward, although I don't really pay too much attention to it, as long as an embark isn't "dry."

Drainage I just have no idea. I mean I know what drainage is obviously, I'm just not sure how it applies to an embark.

Flux Stone Layer is again fairly straightforward - some source of flux stone to make steel with

Aquifer is again straightforward, except since it's a binary choice I wonder just how it counts it - is it counted as "yes" there's an aquifer if just one pixel has an aquifer in it? Does it need the aquifer to cover the entire embark? more than 50%?

River again is easy, although I do wonder if it counts streams

Shallow Metal and Deep Metal are some of the ones that I use, but I would like to know just how it handles single vs. multiples. Does "Yes" mean "one OR MORE metals?" while multiple means there's definitely more than one? That's how I've been assuming it to work, but you know what they say about assuming.

Soil is another one that I'd like to clarify since I like to use it - if I'm reading it correctly, the "≤ Little" entry for instance would mean either no soil or very little. But that doesn't seem to make too much sense, since it'd seem to be more useful for people wanting to play with soil that they could look for "at least" a certain amount of soil. And for that matter, I'm not really sure in this screen or the actual embark screen what the different labels equate to exactly - how many layers is "a little"? How much is "some"?

Clay is obvious - either you have clay on your embark or you don't.

Really for most of the binary types, I'm assuming that having it on the embark AT ALL counts as a "yes," but I'm just not sure. And I'm kinda hesitant to post this at all since it's mostly asking for small bits of clarification or confirmation on a bunch of things, but it's been bugging me for a while!

Bonus semi-related question while I'm at it - are there any suggestions for creating more embarks with a larger number of neighbor types within range? I enjoy the trading, and I like having the challenge of goblins to keep me on my toes. It seems lately though like it's gotten fairly hard to actually get all the neighbors (well, Dwarves/Elves/Humans/Goblins) on one embark. I figure doing world creation with a higher number of civilizations should help, but anything else? For instance I know when kobolds were kinda bugged, it was suggested to do a shorter number of years before embark so that they didn't have as much chance to go extinct, but I have no idea if that'd be a factor here. Or for all I know having a longer pre-embark period would be good, to give races a chance to spread out more - I really don't know! So any suggestions as far as that goes are welcome.

[DanielCoffey]

I used this post in the wiki which was useful (but didn't explain every possibility)... http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Site_finder

As for Aquifers, I do remember when you have an embark that straddles several biomes, it is possible to have an Aquifer in one but not the others. River and Brook are counted equally if you have River to Yes.

At the moment we can't search for embarks with certain neighbours but remember the tab key will cycle between the neighbours on that landmass (and within a certain distance I think?). You can also get an idea of elevations on the embark area.

[PatrikLundell]

I'd look at the wiki page for biomes http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Biome.

Savagery: Non high savagery means only "normal" creatures are available (no giant or animal versions). Also Highwood exists only on savage embarks, and I think it's whip vine that's also savagery dependent. In addition to that, high savagery allows two groups of critters to be present on the same "level" (surface/each cavern) at the same time, while the normal case is one. High savagery also prevents civs from settling/spreading. As far as I know, savagery is the only feature that change with time, as civs can degrade the savagery of nearby tiles to eventually be able to settle on them (so a nice savage embark scouted out at year 1 might have lost the savagery by year 1000 when the world is regenerated with the same seeds).

Evilness: Yes. The only ones who can start in evil terrain are goblins, for instance. Humans and dorfs require neutral. Note that this is for the civs, not your embark. Also affects what creatures you can get (with reanimation and various freakish weathers in evil biomes).

Elevation: A messy term as it's used both for gradient and altitude and there is one tab view for each of them. DF makes use of two elevation systems, just to mess things up.
PSV wise 300+ is mountain, 100-299 is normal, 1-99 is ocean. Post world gen the ranges are compressed. 1-99 is still ocean, 100-149 is normal, and 150-300 is mountain. Hills are actually controlled by drainage and causes plains to split into normal and hilly ones. I look at the biome rather than absolute elevation one embark (but I want it absolutely flat), although I think a high embark usually results in a longer distance down to the magma sea.

Temperature is messy as well. I generally look at biomes again. If you don't have poles in your world < 85 is "temperate" and 85+ is "tropical" while biomes in worlds with poles are controlled by latitude (allowing you to have freezing cold tropics...).
Taiga is <5 degree forest, while tundra is the same non forested biome. Glaciers should obviously be freezing...
I avoid anything that risks freezing during any part of the year because you can't stop the morons from getting killed by freezing/thawing (you can reduce the risk a little for your citizens with traffic restrictions, but caravans, invaders, and visitors ignore them completely).

Rain: Affect the biome, and that's what you really want, so ignore rainfall and look for biome. Rainfall < 5 causes trees to not regrow, while <3 does the same to shrubs, and 0-1 is completely devoid of greenery (but channeling down into the soil grass will still grow there).

Drainage affects the biome and hill/flat for grasslands. Also affects aquifer probability. Again, you're after biomes unless you're building a PSV world.

Aquifers cover complete biomes, so if the embark has several, some of them may have aquifers and some of them not. Adjacent biomes with aquifers do not have to have them at the same level.

River/stream/brook is covered by river, and the embark info shows what the feature is.

Single/multiple: Should be exactly one vs more than one. Again, it's per biome.

I'm not sure what the various soil depths are. However, I like to have my underground farming in soil but not directly below the surface (due to tree holes in the roof). A deep soil together with an aquifer can mean you get several levels of aquifers in soil (which are more painful to deal with than stone).

World creation: If you really want to control what you get you should go the PSV route and design the world. That way you can design is such that the goblins, human, and elves are separated until you embark at an "ocean" tile that suddenly connect everyone to you. Few titans and megabeasts means they won't trash as many settlements, short history means goblins (usually) won't get to steamroll everyone else. Using Legends Mode to look at the viability of various civs/races before embark is also useful to find out whether to actually use that world or generate a new one (I export the XML data and look at it with Legends Viewer).

[Stormfeather]

Thanks for the answers guys! I did poke around the wiki, but didn't find that particular page. Closest I came was some general embark info. Silly wiki not reading my mind to give me what I wanted...

For the neighbors, I do use the tab, but it's still hit and miss to actually find a site with all the neighbors I want, and as you mentioned there's no way to include that in the site finder. Was wondering if there are any other things I should tweak in world gen like time elapsed before embark that might make it more likely to find them nearby.

As for PSV... I actually don't know that term. I assume it's a more advanced world creation? Not sure I want to tackle that much >_<

Probably the takeaway I should get from this is that I should be less picky about my embark locations. But where's the fun in that? (Although at the very least I should learn to deal with aquifers)

[PatrikLundell]

Just think of the horrible place the world would be if minds were read and those thoughts were acted on... It's safer this way.

PSV: Pre Set Values, I think it stands for. That's what you edit with the horrible editor you can use from advanced worldgen to specify exact values for 6 of the parameters (evilness is notably absent). If you want to specify your world in detail that's what you need (especially since vjek seems to be away, so the cookbook thread doesn't provide embarks cooked to specification left, right, and center).

For neighbors, I've tabbed to the neighbor screen and moved around the map to see what's reachable where.

As for all DF:ers, you select what you want to play with:
- Fancy getting the perfect embark? Either keep rolling the RNG dice until the cows come home or tackle advanced world gen to load them in your favor.
- Not keen on doing the above? Ask someone else (nicely) to do it for you in the cookbook thread, or compromise on embark qualities.