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[nbonaparte]

I just gotta ask, since it's semi-on topic, this has been bothing me, and i just started playing like a week ago(NerfNow got me interested in checking it out finally). How the heck does one get a map like Boatmurdered? I mostly mean with the river of magma near the top level, I've started on volcanos but those only have a small 'lake' of magma.

That was the 2d version. It had a very limited and premade map.

[KaguroDraven]

Ah, thank you. But is it possible for such things to occur on the randomly generated map?

[Servu]

The new version does have something similar, but now you have to dig down instead of right.

[Zaerosz]

I love cliffs. As in completely flat rock faces. Essentially blank skates for me towork my dwarfly magic on.

The problem, however, is that I can never find any.

[FleshForge]

Got a couple of very tall (9z and 13z) river canyons listed earlier if you're into steep cliffs

[Tsarwash]

It's of course possible to pretty much guarantee picking a waterfall location if you know how to interperate the pregen map. you need two rivers to intersect, and some kind of big jump in elevation on the map, ie going from light blue to light grey, (on the relative elevation tab) without the gradient inbetween. The cliffs tab will give you the indication of steep slopes or flat plains. It's taken me a while, but now I have a pretty good idea of what to expect, before embarking.

[GHudston]

There's some great tips here. The info screens on the embark map take some getting used to (like everything in this game!) but I think I'm starting to get it now. I also think I'm going to stop looking for volcanos, I just cannot seem to find a good site with a volcano in DF2010. I can always dig for magma!

[FleshForge]

It's of course possible to pretty much guarantee picking a waterfall location if you know how to interperate the pregen map.

While yes you can see what you're going to get before embarking, I can tell you that really impressive waterfalls are very hard to find unless you have very flexible standards, e.g. you don't mind multiple layers of aquifer or don't care about sand or savagery etc.

[ungulateman]

You can edit aquifers out.

Adding the [SOIL_SAND] tag to each soil layer is easy, if you want to go that far.

And why do you care about how savage the surroundings are? You're a dwarf/.

[Tsarwash]

Maybe I just got lucky then. When I first started playing this game, I had no idea how to get through an aquifer, so never embarked on one. Also, I thought that waterfalls were essential for defence and happiness, (don't know why I got that idea) so I only ever embarked where there was a 3 z-level or more waterfall. Not all of these maps would have flux of coal, but I think that most of them did. None of these areas were haunted. I find that if you are very picky, it shall take many hours to get what you want, but I don't have that much patience. I have made a strong successful fort with no flux, iron or coal or sand on the map at all.

Edit. I'm not sure what counts as an impressive waterfall, but I just found a 4 z-level one, in 5 minutes. No flux or sand, or elves, but everything else is good.

[csebal]

I tend to go for a theme, then set a group of parameters i want and go for those. I basically gen maps for the parameters i want with the settings i want.

Say i wanted a fort built INTO a lake, so i look for freshwater lakes. To get lots of those, i crank up mountains and elevation variance while turning down the erosion and add lots of river start points (800 actually). This results in plenty of rivers that pool at the valleys between the mountain ranges, giving me plenty of freshwater lakes to work with.

Normally such a setup would be heavy on aquifers, 2 sometimes even 3 levels. So i have eliminate those from the raws as they do not fit into my currenct concept.

Since I will be building on flat lands, i increase the cave layer sizes, to get plenty of space underground, this way i can end up with 80+ z deep maps even when the surface is completely flat. Then it is just a matter of finding the ideal site: got to have sand, sedimentary layer, some kind of flux, a savage biome, access to all 4 civilizations, a decent 4x4 or 5x5 embark size with 2-4 tiles of land and the rest water.

Initial worldgen is ran for 100 years

Then there is embark time.
On embark i check the underground with reveal and the ore/rock numbers with prospector. Criteria is to have 2000+ clownite, 10000+ iron ore and some sort of high value ore (silver, gold or both) 10000+ coal bearing rock. It is a plus to have something fancy underground, like a fortress or some cool underground feature, but not an absolute requirement.

When im satisfied, i quit, regen the world with a decent hisotry and check again to make sure the extra time didnt cause any problems, like extinction of a race or such. When im not satisfied, i try to find another site to run through the same process, or gen a new world.

Thats my "process" of doing it. Finding a promising site usually takes between 2 and 4 hours of genning / checking for sites.

[Gearheart]

I usually go for a mostly flat plain with a single large mountain, possibly two.

I don't like steep cliffs because it makes seiges feel less spectacular in my eyes. I like large plains where battles seem more epic.

Also the reason I set my caves open-ness to near max.

[Jake]

All I really insist upon are calm surroundings, coal and flux, a water source and no magma on the surface; I prefer a few years to get the basic necessities squared away and at least make a start on military preparedness before I have to transition to crisis-response mode.

[Dok Enkephalin]

I found an interesting location out of Legends historical map; a cluster of evil biomes on the disputed border between a dwarven and goblin nation. Then I picked a 16x16 exploratory embark to find out where the clowns were, narrowed in on them and began in earnest with a 4x4.

So far it's been too much fun keeping everyone sheltered and sane long enough to train for the big prize.