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[Eusebio Ptolomeu]

So, I'm a fairly new player of Dwarf Fortress, and one of my favourite things about this game is the world generation. I like to use Perfect World to give more control when it comes to this. Now, my way to generate worlds might be a little odd (perharps not, I don't know): I'm kind of boring and like to create Earth-like planets, so I always choose options like Poles both North and South, 2x1 dimensions, etc. However, a key part of my method is that I like to create a map where all land is pretty much mountains (my Percent Below Sea Level is 65% and my Percent Below Tree Line is 66%). This might seem bizarre, but I also set a really high amount of erosion (2000 to 2500) so the erosive process will take the majority of these mountains away. The reason I do this, instead of just reducing the percentage of mountain lines at the start, is that I've noticed that this way the mountain ranges get a little more realistic, whithout the shortcomings of noise-generation. For example, I can have some coastal ranges this way, which would be hard by means of noise terrain generation alone.
But why am I saying all of this? I've realized that doing things this way, there seems to be a huge amount of deserts spawning the world, like the presence of mountains at the start tells the simulation that there should be no rain in this place. Like, sometimes 50% of a continent is pure desert. I've tried messing with the rainfall parameters in both Perfect World and inside Dwarf Fortress itself, but I can't reduce their size anyway. Is there a way not to get rid but to reduce the size of these deserts?

[Starver]

Off the top of my head (more knowledgeable minds than mine may be along to confirm or quash this titbit) mountains are used to calculate rain-shadows, in their lea. It's a thing that gets modelled.

I don't know (assuming it's right, to start with) if it reduces rain by a partial proportion/fixed amount so that engineering wetter weather gives more humidity making it over your alpine ridges, perhaps to support something less overwjelmingly deserty. But if it just extracts all the potential for a hyper-arid footprint then that wouldn't work.

[Ulfarr]

Off the top of my head (more knowledgeable minds than mine may be along to confirm or quash this titbit) mountains are used to calculate rain-shadows, in their lea. It's a thing that gets modelled.

I don't know (assuming it's right, to start with) if it reduces rain by a partial proportion/fixed amount so that engineering wetter weather gives more humidity making it over your alpine ridges, perhaps to support something less overwjelmingly deserty. But if it just extracts all the potential for a hyper-arid footprint then that wouldn't work.

There is one world gen setting, "Do Orographic Precipitation and Rain Shadows" that sort of work like this. At least according to the wiki it seems to mostly change how the rain gets distributed near mountains.

Personally, when I was trying to achieve the opposite (create more deserts ) I was messing mostly with rainfall/drainage both their min/max values and their meshes. I couldn't get very consistent results but I did raise the chance for more deserts to appear.

edit: I couldn't find it yesterday. This graph has some rough values about what rainfall/drainage levels each biome needs to appear during world gen.