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[PeridexisErrant]

While a world is being generated, some basic information is displayed about the history so far. 

Code: (Current display) [Select]

The Age of $something
Year ###
Hist Figs:  ####
     Dead: ####
Events: #####

It would be reasonably easy to add some more information here, and it would make a long or slow worldgen more interesting to watch.  The microsuggestion which I think has the best effort/outcome ratio is to simply list live as well as dead historical figures, but I though of others while typing

• Using commas to separate long numeric strings makes the magnitude much more readable, which is important.
• Displaying the end year helps give people an idea of how long is left to run, and together with the others informs a decision to abort or not.
• Displaying a count of the living historical figures (though maybe "active" is more precise?) would let you watch population rise and fall.
• Some kind of time series of event density over time would also be cool - and let you jump in at a time of interest. 
  
  • The obvious option is 'events in the year before this one'.  Simple, and if it keeps a list of the past few years also effective.
  • For longer histories, a longer sampling unit might be in order.  Maybe also display per decade after the first decade?  For very long histories, this pattern could be extended to centuries or even millennia
  • I suspect reworking the events display like this would require substantially more work than the other points, but it would also give a nice overview of history in the making

Code: (Proposed display) [Select]

The Age of ###
Year ### / $end_year

Hist Figs:  ##,###
     Live: #,###
     Dead: ##,###

Total Events: ##,###
Events in
   in (year): ###
 in (year-1): ###
   <for past ten years?>

  in 100 - 110: #,###
   in 90 - 100: #,###
    in 80 - 90: #,###
   <for past ten decades?>


[vache]

I would like to see things like civilizations and their area of influence highlighted with a certain color, and wars show the shift of colors.  You can watch armies of dwarven civilizations march across the map, or during rampages of certain megabeasts, you can watch them travel across the world.  It'll display the names of ongoing events somewhere on the screen so you can watch.  Essentially integrating some of the info that's only found in legends mode/engravings into the process, so you can get a little bit of history before you start your world.

[Dirst]

I would like to see things like civilizations and their area of influence highlighted with a certain color, and wars show the shift of colors.  You can watch armies of dwarven civilizations march across the map, or during rampages of certain megabeasts, you can watch them travel across the world.  It'll display the names of ongoing events somewhere on the screen so you can watch.  Essentially integrating some of the info that's only found in legends mode/engravings into the process, so you can get a little bit of history before you start your world.

The problem is that the worldgen screen doesn't show the whole world at once.  An inset with the global map (at embark-screen-scale) with a cursor on it to locate the big map would be helpful.  A cursor on the big map could indicate an event of interest which is spelled out in a caption underneath the big map.  These could stay on the screen for, say 10 seconds minimum or until the next event of interest.

The real roadblock is the game recognizing which events are "of interest".  A fixed priority list of event types is probably the way to go (hardcoded or in an init file somewhere).

[PeridexisErrant]

Showing more stuff on the map would be cool, but I suspect it would also be a lot more word than increasing the display of numbers... and there are features I'd prefer to that.