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[avari]

About aquifers, I would like again to point out that removing all [AQUIFER] tags from the layer raws works wonders.

I suppose this might be called "cheating", though, if you are averse to such things. Personally I usually never embark on an aquifer anyway so all this does is save me loads of frustrating effort in choosing a location. I must confess that before finding out this possibility, I regarded the ubiquitous aquifers as one of the most irritating features of DF.

[Leafsnail]

My swamp is almost perfectly flat (one little bit in the corner which I could get rid of, if I wanted to).  I recommend a nice temperate swamp.

[Jude]

You may have trouble finding a flat area with no aquifer though; DF seems to be positively obsessed with putting aquifers in every single desert, forest and shrubland it can find; and those are the flat bits of the world.

The most you're going to find is a stream without an aquifer, too. Every body of water bigger than that is, without exception, surrounded for tiles and tiles by aquifer. Pretty freaking annoying.

[alway]

Flat is easy to find. Unless of course you want magma, flux stone, a river, sand, no aquifer, HFS, sedimentary layers, ect like I do... Then it gets very tricky to find.

The advantage of flat is it requires less CPU cycles... Unfortunately, on the maps where you would build a huge city (best resources, like the above) the terrain is often 10 or more elevation changes.

[Leafsnail]

Wait, so you're trying to find mountainous features on a flat map?  That might explain your problems.

[avari]

As far as I know, of the above features only HFS is only found in mountain tiles. I'm not sure if magma, flux, etc. are more common in mountains, but they can definitely be found in relatively flat areas as well. However, there are a few other features that can only be found in mountainous areas (chasm, cave river).

[Albedo]

Exponent has the right of it. All 10s is not, in fact, as flat as all 1s. Any non-zero number in a section means that there is elevation change in that section. If there's an 8 in the section, that means that the difference between the highest and lowest z-levels in that 48x48 area is 8.

The only time I've had large variances is when there is variance between the diff numbers.  I distinctly remember embarking on a map with all big numbers, and finding a very disappointing billiard table.  One with a LOT of levels beneath it, but flt as a board.

[Earth Striker Lurin]

why not puncture the aquifer and use it as a water source?

[Derakon]

Albedo: I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean about "billiard table", but there's no guarantee as to the distribution of the Z-levels within a given region. You could get an even slope from one end to the other, but you're more likely to get a very steep slope across a dozen or so tiles.

[Fossaman]

You may have trouble finding a flat area with no aquifer though; DF seems to be positively obsessed with putting aquifers in every single desert, forest and shrubland it can find; and those are the flat bits of the world.

The most you're going to find is a stream without an aquifer, too. Every body of water bigger than that is, without exception, surrounded for tiles and tiles by aquifer. Pretty freaking annoying.

This is wrong. You just have to hunt for them, and possibly gen multiple worlds. I've gotten major rivers with aquifer-free soil layers.

I often do flat maps; again, it's just a matter of genning standard sized worlds and looking around. Look everywhere, even at the peripheries of mountain ranges. You should be able to find something within a few minutes.

I usually do 3x3 embarks, so it's easier to find a perfectly flat one, but vanilla world-gen will spit out a LOT of areas with only zero and 1 elevation changes in non-aquifer biomes.

[Kidiri]

As far as I know, of the above features only HFS is only found in mountain tiles. I'm not sure if magma, flux, etc. are more common in mountains, but they can definitely be found in relatively flat areas as well. However, there are a few other features that can only be found in mountainous areas (chasm, cave river).

And volcanoes. They have a chance of generating mountain-related things too. Good to know if you want to have a good source of wood, magma, HFS, chasm...

[smjjames]

About aquifers, I would like again to point out that removing all [AQUIFER] tags from the layer raws works wonders.

I suppose this might be called "cheating", though, if you are averse to such things. Personally I usually never embark on an aquifer anyway so all this does is save me loads of frustrating effort in choosing a location. I must confess that before finding out this possibility, I regarded the ubiquitous aquifers as one of the most irritating features of DF.

Sounds like something I could do. Those aquifers are annoying for sure.