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[Chief10]

Hi all, I was wondering if putting non-mountain caves on the map affects world gen, or anything else?

I really want to play an embark with one, so to ensure I find one in the right place I put 200 of them on a medium sized world. But the world gen seems...weird. I am finding that none of the civs appear to make more than 4 sites. This only concerns me because my main embark criteria is plentiful goblin neighbors.

Other major changes I made that could affect this are a massive number of vampire curses (advanced world gen), and huge shifts in populations/frequencies of natural predators (raws), like cave crocodiles and grizzly bears. I've done those before though, so I don't think that's it.

Any help is appreciated!

[Admiral Obvious]

I don't think you can embark on a cave. If you can I've never seen anyone who has done so.

I thought caves were supposed to be for stuff like Kobolds and Dragons.

[PatrikLundell]

You can embark on caves (I've done so, but it's rather boring...). There's a world gen option to display them, so you can make your embark on a location that has a cave. All the caves I've encountered have had access to the first cavern, meaning that creatures can, and do, come out of it (including an FB at one time). The caves I've embarked on have been empty in all cases but one (where kobolds were present).
It can also be noted that spores weren't released until my dorfs discovered the caverns, so the physical access itself did nothing.

Caves all over the place means less room for other civs to set up sites as caves and sites do not coexist (and I think this acts on the world map level, although I'm not sure).

[WhiteLighter]

Im not sure about whether or not the other civs will embark on caves or the specifics of the current version but it used to be that you certainly could embark on caves, I recall one that had a dragon living in it and another that had some lions. I seem to remember doing this by accident, but Im fairly sure you can set 'caves visible at embark' in adv worldgen settings and it will show lttle icons all over the map to indicate where they are in the embark screen.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yep, it does. Putting even a single additional cave on a world gen map will nudge or change local level geography and rivers. This alone would be enough to change history, but....

After generating the geography, the caves are only places where kobolds are placed, as well as being sites where other civilizations can flee to. Other creatures can also make lairs in a cave, though they are also pretty likely just settle in sites they wrecked or some random unremarkable spot.

Embarking on caves is mostly beneficial if you play as race who can't make/use picks, like MWDF kobolds.

Vampires can rack up thousands of kills, though this mainly affects human and dwarven sites.

Natural predators will also attack them, though not as much.

However, it doesn't exactly block the placement of civs.

(Caves, lairs, vaults, etc. do, on their spot only)

It might be that you're hitting the site cap now, with all those extra sites.

[SebasMarolo]

I once killed (strangled it atfer it passed out from over exertion and I couldn't chop off its head with an iron great axe) a cave dragon that was coming out of the streets of a human town. Never did check if it came out of a cave or if it escaped the caverns from a world generated dwarven fort...

[Chief10]

Ah yes I'm sure the issue is that the caves are blocking other sites. I'll keep fiddling with the numbers until I find something that works.

I embarked on a few caves to test, and interestingly enough almost all of them had two groups of goblins. One group was marked as "hostile" and would attack upon coming into the line of sight. The other group would be marked "temporary resident" (I think? I'll check this) and was non-hostile until attacked first. I think the hostile ones were bandits and the non-hostile ones were the owners of the cave?

[Melting Sky]

You might as well crank up the Titans and mega beasts if you are going to increase the number of caves. It should help fill them with interesting residents. What sized world are you creating? The bigger the world, the larger the number of caves you can pack in before it starts to really crowd out other sites. I usually double the number of mega-fauna and caves from the starting value on a medium sized world.

[Chief10]

You might as well crank up the Titans and mega beasts if you are going to increase the number of caves. It should help fill them with interesting residents. What sized world are you creating? The bigger the world, the larger the number of caves you can pack in before it starts to really crowd out other sites. I usually double the number of mega-fauna and caves from the starting value on a medium sized world.

I had originally said it was a medium sized world, but it is actually a small region.

When you double mega-fauna does that include all of megabeasts, semi-megabeasts, and titans? My goal is to increase the challenge to myself while having thriving civs, so I usually reduce megabeasts, but increase titans. My thought is that only megabeasts cause civ extinction/reduction in worldgen, is this true?

[PatrikLundell]

Given that it's quite common for a titan to be sitting on the ruins of the mountainhome in my worlds, I would assume they can wreck non dwarven sites as well. However, unlike megabeasts, the ones not sitting in the mountainhome tend to visit my fortresses, and thus be cleared from the world.
I typically ignore the semi megabeast numbers in worldgen as they're rather underwhelming (give them weapons and armor, and it might be a different matter).

[Melting Sky]

I had originally said it was a medium sized world, but it is actually a small region.

When you double mega-fauna does that include all of megabeasts, semi-megabeasts, and titans? My goal is to increase the challenge to myself while having thriving civs, so I usually reduce megabeasts, but increase titans. My thought is that only megabeasts cause civ extinction/reduction in worldgen, is this true?

Sorry I missed where you stated it was a medium sized world. I just ramp up the creatures I wish to see most which in my case are the full sized Mega Beasts and especially Titans. Titans normally spawn in pitiful numbers and many are made of materials too fragile to survive so I usually triple them. I normally crank up the secrets, curses and Demons as well. Demons will not harm the survival rates of civs but mega beasts and Titans can. It really comes down to personal taste. Experiment with the settings until you find ones you like.

If you are playing in a medium world and you don't run the history more than a few hundred years you should still have plenty of thriving civs left even with double the mega beasts and Titans. If you go much past tripling all the civilization hampering mega fauna you might start to notice some balance issues. If you are looking to just see one type of mega fauna then you can always just super crank up the numbers in that one group and leave the others alone or even decrease them to compensate. For instance if you like dragons and hydras but don't care about the semi-mega beasts you could put like five times the number of mega beasts and spawn barely any semi-mega beasts at all. In pocket or smaller worlds balance problems tend to crop up way more often and easily. Medium worlds are pretty robust and varied in my experience.