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[Zantan]

When you select your embark items, you only have access to items that your civ would.  It's a nice way for the fort to be affected by the world while we wait for the caravan and army arcs to get really under way, and I have already appreciated this.  However, one thing that has always confused me is how embark item availability seems to vary due to other factors. 

There are some items which I like to start out with, such as rock crystals, bauxite, and cheap animal leather.  It is disappointing when they are unavailable on embark, but I have found that as long as I have a normal (no extreme volcanism paramaters added) world, I can usually quit the embark and reload the same world, and find the items on the second try.  Why exactly does this happen?  I could maybe understand the game not bothering to determine whether sites have bauxite and gems until the world is loaded, but I would think that animal products would be fairly fixed, since the population of every biome is determined during worldgen.  Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[mission0]

You can choose the civ you start out with by pressing tab to scroll through the different civs available. Each civ will have different resources available depending on where they are.

http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Embark

explains the embark screen pretty wall.

[denito]

Wow I don't know but if you really can get it to give you bauxite where it wouldn't before just by stopping and trying again, this will make some bauxite-less sites I have usable!  (Hard to make mega lava projects without bauxite mechanisms.)

I wonder if it works in the other way:  I have been assuming that if something is (is not) in the embark screen then it won't be in the caravans either.  Is this assumption incorrect?  Which way is it incorrect:  might I trade for things I didn't find on embark, or might there be things I saw on embark I can't trade for, or both?

Also, on my maps without bauxite on embark I couldn't even *request* bauxite from my liason.  I wonder what the relation is between the embark item availability and the requesting items availability?

[mission0]

Wow I don't know but if you really can get it to give you bauxite where it wouldn't before just by stopping and trying again, this will make some bauxite-less sites I have usable!  (Hard to make mega lava projects without bauxite mechanisms.)

I wonder if it works in the other way:  I have been assuming that if something is (is not) in the embark screen then it won't be in the caravans either.  Is this assumption incorrect?  Which way is it incorrect:  might I trade for things I didn't find on embark, or might there be things I saw on embark I can't trade for, or both?

Also, on my maps without bauxite on embark I couldn't even *request* bauxite from my liason.  I wonder what the relation is between the embark item availability and the requesting items availability?

4

The relation is that you are requesting resources from your parent civ when you are embarking basically giving you a list of everything they have available. If it's not available on the embark screen then it is most likely not available for trading.

The quitting then reembarking on a location gives different resources because the game normally assigns a starting parent civ at random unless you pick it out yourself.

[Derakon]

Note that in most situations in which you'd like to use a magma-safe mechanism, you can instead use a wall supporting a screw pump. Much more annoying, as the screw pump requires power and the entire thing is bulkier, but it does work.

[Tael]

And, as for which items they have, they will ALWAYS offer certain items -- I think common domestic animals will always have their products included. Then, any resource which is in any town of the parent civ will also be available. Also, I THINK most metal bars can be requested regardless of ores. As such, more cities/towns almost ALWAYS means more variety of resources.
So, if you want a general rule of thumb, the larger the civ, the more often you will get LOTS of options and the favorites, like bauxite, turtles, flux and such.
Thus, you can also get a rough idea of what to expect from a given civ by looking at the biomes of the cities.

[Enzo]

I think generating the same world with a different history seed might help, if you've tried all your available starting civs and none have access to the material(s) you need.

[2xMachina]

Some does have pretty good stuff. One I genned have crazy stuff like Giant Cave Spider meat and the like. Plenty of food types. Wonder how they catch so much dangerous stuff.

[Satarus]

Cage traps??

Anyway it doesn't matter how they get the stuff.  If it spawns in the biome they have pre-existing cities/mountainhomes/whatever then they will offer it.  If you wanna check for availability of the materials before embark, check out where the cities of that civ are.  If you see they have sedimentary levels then they probably got bauxite.  If they have a flux level then they will definitely have flux.  They should also probably have all domesticated animals.

[pushy]

I think generating the same world with a different history seed might help, if you've tried all your available starting civs and none have access to the material(s) you need.

Particularly in larger map sizes, it would, yes.