I made this for my mod, I just copied the text from my thread, maybe it fits the topic here.
EIDT:PS: Serra has tons of flat, begning volcanos. Shiv should have as well, although I dont play it often
Like I said in my last post, I planned to redo the worldgens, since the sometimes cause weird errors, like a very high molten rock layer, or caverns without plants/trees. Because of this, I used the PerfectWorld Utility to make some highly customized worlds. The general geography of these worlds is always the same, but civs, river, lakes and regions differ slightly every time you generate one.
All worlds have following settings:
65*65 tiles, a small region, to help FPS.
Very high mineral count, to allow all new features.
200 Semi/Megabeasts, and many caves to allow them to survive.
Lower Megabeast attack trigger. 30 dwarves, and you are a fair target.
3 very open caverns, to avoid FPS problems.
Minimum 25-50 water in caverns, to avoid barren, plant/tree-less caverns.
I made caves visible at embark, so you can pick one if you like. The usually connect the surface to the first cavern.
25 solid levels before the first cavern. I dont know how exact the endresult is, but you should have a lot of space for your fortress.
Recommendations:
Always check the civs before you embark. You might be seperated, or allies did not survive.
Dont run long histories. With 200 titans civs might have a slight problem to prosper.
Cursed Urborg (the evil swamp world) might easily kill of allies. This is intentional.
Scorching Shiv (the desert-volcano world) might cut of trade, and has mostly no trees. This is intentional.
Remote Tolaria (the islands) has many civ-less little islands. Again, intentional, for players who like to play without invaders.
Garden of Gaia (the patchwork world) has a huge amount of biomes. It is very easy to find 3-4 biomes for one embark. This results in a bigger variety of creatures.
Blesses Serra (the plain-good world) is for beginners. It features ocean and mountains, many volcanos, forests and streams, and mostly a benign sourrounding. You can find everything you need here.
Screenshots of all five worlds and templates: