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[SiliconMagician]

I've been trying to make sense of the elevation and cliff maps and how they relate to each other in order to find decent terrains to embark onto. Ideally I'd like to look for tall, sharp, isolated peaks dominating a lower wooded plain.

I like building my fortresses tactically and like to carve the entrances into a heavily fortified peak far above the tree tops and then carving away the natural ramps over time then smooth and engrave the face of the peak down a few z-levels thereby forcing gobbos to make a long and laborious climb up to a death trap fortification packed full of marksdwarves sitting on the very top of the peak guarding the drawbridge below.

But finding peaks like this is difficult for me as I'm having a hard time truly understanding and using the elevation and cliff map modes in the pre-embark map screen. Does the elevation map represent and actual image of the terrain map I will find within my embark square? because I don't think it works that way. I have a rough idea of how to use the two together to find sharp cliff faces and peaks, large canyons, etc. but is there an article or link someone can point me to that describes these maps in some detail and how to properly use them to find specific terrain features one is intereated in colonizing? What if I wanted to colonize the highest peak in the world? How do I find it? or colonizing a grand canyon style valley? I know DF creates highly detailed elevation maps and the graphics only provide the roughest of representation of the true granularity within the terrain, but visualizing it all in my head from the blurry blocks and numbers of the pre-embark screen is not working for me.

Also... does anyone have any hints as to what to tell your girlfriend when she wonders why you spend so much time staring at numbers and letters and arcane symbols of mystical whatever scroll around on the screen for hours on end? Going without dinner or sleep or occasionally even sometimes sex just so you can see if your latest dwarvishly over engineered goblin mangler machine(which to her is just an indecipherable mass of symbols and sprites) works like some twisted game of Mouse Trap? She just DOESN'T UNDERSTAND why I am so upset that Urist McDotMatrixMan just changed colors and stopped moving.

[Bumber]

I guess the IsoWorld utility might be of help: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70700.0

Not sure how you install it. Maybe it comes with DFHack?

[PatrikLundell]

The in game tile level (2 meter tiles) doesn't exist pre embark. It's generated from RNG seeds when you embark, and it's also generated and destroyed dynamically as you move about in adventure mode. Unless you want to go into adventure mode to look at things pre embark, you'll have to do with the info available, which is the mid level tile info (what you see pre embark).

You may be interested in modifying the pre embark features to your liking using the Region Manipulator DFHack script: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164136.msg7454345#msg7454345

Social relations: I'd suggest trying to explain it in terms she'd be familiar with: if she follows TV series and cares about whether X died, you might try to explain that McDotMatrixMan is an important character in this game's evolving story.
A more insidious approach would be to try to introduce her to DF using tile sets so it is more approachable, but that hinges on her being among those who might be interested in DF.
Finally, DF will wait patiently for you, but she might tire of you if not given appropriate attention.

[SiliconMagician]

Well the "social relations" part was mostly a joke.

But I can use adventure mode to scout out and generate embark areas? I've always played dwarf mode and never touched adventure mode yet. I always thought of it as a side show to the meat and potatoes of dwarf mode. I didn't realize I could use it to scout embarks out in person.

[Admiral Obvious]

Well the "social relations" part was mostly a joke.

But I can use adventure mode to scout out and generate embark areas? I've always played dwarf mode and never touched adventure mode yet. I always thought of it as a side show to the meat and potatoes of dwarf mode. I didn't realize I could use it to scout embarks out in person.

I'm pretty sure you can do that, though depending on your worldgen settings, and how well you fare in adventure mode (namely, not dying at night) the world can change by the time you go actually setup your embark.

[PatrikLundell]

If you copy the world and start as an adventurer in the copy you can embark roughly at the same time in the "real" game. The only changes the embark should be subjected to by time is tree grown (I assume, but it might be that trees growth doesn't actually start until the area is loaded the first time. If it was, every embark [with trees] after retiring a long term fortress would be completely junglified...).
Apart from that, there's the very small possibility that someone may found a settlement where you intended to embark.

Using an adventurer is expending a fair bit of effort to check out potential locations, though, as you have to travel to each location manually (teleporting bit by bit is possible, though, but it's still time consuming, and unless the adventurer is flying, you'll have trouble with ending up in water and the air [and I don't know what happens if you're teleported inside a tree trunk]).

[gchristopher]

You can turn off autosave on embark, and use the dfhack die command to stop the game without saving after you check out an embark? I'd still make a backup of the world, but that's a quickish way to inspect an area.

I second the suggestion to manipulate the elevations prior to embark. That's going to be by far the easiest solution.

[Starver]

Interpretting the displays you already have is (within a degree of subtlty that shouldn't matter too much) not so hard if you have a mind to establish a mental image. For what you want, ideally look for clumps of red asterisks (steepest slopes/cliffs) or at least as many higher/redder numbers as you can. That could be high plateau edges, very steep slopes or excessively undulating terrain punctuated with (ocally) steep ridges/valleys. All of which are useful, but in different ways. Then study the hight-map tabbing, to try to identify altitudes (also the path of any watercourses) to identify whether the slopes go upwards towards a defensable top, downwards towards a looked-down-upon valley or is indeed a 'badlands' of rock outcrops and slit canyons¹.

You can't really find "the tallest peak in a region" this way (without a lot of region-cursoring) but you can certainly centre/size your local-embark site around any given sufficiently interesting local point of maximum height. Also (without "embark anywhere" assistance, probably) I think you're still limited against embarking upon the 'pure' mountain biome areas that would contain the peakiest peaks in a mountainous part of the world map².

But you should be able to find a topologically useful area (then hope that you also get told about a good mix of ores/etc under the biome and geological column info) that you can make some use of.


¹ I don't think proper Slit Canyons exist, in game-gen, but certainly I once used to aim for, and get, a rock-pillar-studded canyon landscape apparently carved out by a river that could be found winding around one particular path. These days I tend instead to look for a completely flat, soiled, riverless plain, to carve out my own deep ditches in (on the exterior of my ambitiously-sized "inside" lands) without worrying about having to carve away hillsides as well.

² Which is not to say that you can't get (as I have, at times) a 4x4 or 5x5 embark with just one of the 16/25 tiles (usually a corner) being a flat soily one useful to dig out under and into for no-wetting-needed underground farms, and roofing over for securable surface farms, the rest being dry (often hotter/colder than comfortable) soilless rock mountain. Though often (I find) this doesn't give a handy peak in the middle, but a an ever-upward slope towards an opposite edge/corner beyond which there may be a pointy bit. In such circumstances I have made the (overlooking!) higher-edge bit defensible against by digging a (three to five-wide) ditch into this slope as close to the edge as possinle, with walls on the inner (maybe 2..4Z high, to match the 0..2Z inferiority of the ground-level) and a suitable arrangement of drawbridge spanning the gap (when opened). Either from mid-level of the wall at the the outer ground level or from the inner-ground level to a ramped-down (but incompletely ditched, in that spot) outer edge of the excavation.  But my methods are rather extreme and  dig-intensive.

[Bradders]

>what to tell your girlfriend

It's survival-construction meets fantasy-themed The Sims.  Instead of your Sims going to work, having relationships and burning the house down with fireworks, your dwarves mine and craft, have relationships, and fill the fort with lava.  Same things, basically.

[Mort Stroodle]

The solution is to not go without food or sleep. Take care of yourself man.

[Matoro]

You could make the world have more cliffs by turning of "Periodically erode extreme cliffs" and lowering erosion cycle count in the advanced world gen. More mountain peaks could also help.

[mikekchar]

This is from quite a while ago, but I thought I would mention that I've often scouted out fortress starting places in adventure mode.  Mainly, I like adventure mode, so it's kind of fun.  It's pretty cool to see the corpses of the animals you killed when you embark :-)  For me, the only real unfortunate point is that you can't dig in adventure mode, so you can't really do an assay for minerals -- just whatever is on the surface.

[PatrikLundell]

This is from quite a while ago, but I thought I would mention that I've often scouted out fortress starting places in adventure mode.  Mainly, I like adventure mode, so it's kind of fun.  It's pretty cool to see the corpses of the animals you killed when you embark :-)  For me, the only real unfortunate point is that you can't dig in adventure mode, so you can't really do an assay for minerals -- just whatever is on the surface.

What about using the DFHack prospector? Doesn't it work in adventure mode, or would it just be against your house rules?

[Urist McVoyager]

But I can use adventure mode to scout out and generate embark areas? I've always played dwarf mode and never touched adventure mode yet. I always thought of it as a side show to the meat and potatoes of dwarf mode. I didn't realize I could use it to scout embarks out in person.

Right now Adventure mode is lackluster compared to Fortress, but it's actually the main drive to everything. The Adams brothers don't actually play management sims like Fortress mode. They're doing everything with Fortress mode in service to the simulation so Adventure Mode 1.0 is the most interesting update to the Sims ever.