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[Connal89]

So I figured with the advent of 34.08 its time for a new fort because I don't really feel like retro fitting my current fort with carts and I've spent alot of time dicking around that's lead to a backlog of problems. As a side note I read somewheres a little while ago (i'll be damned if I can find where now) that the generic world gen uses the Island template which causes maps to be very deep to compensate for the lack of overland space making access to caverns and the magma sea far more tedious then need be. Using the Region template in Advanced Gen would make the map much shallower so it was claimed.

Selecting Advance World Gen and Region Large template was easy enough but hitting 'e' for advanced parameters assaulted me with a list of variables I was scared to touch. The obvious ones like embark points and end year were perfectly self explanatory but following that I have no idea what's safe to touch. I get the feeling that the standard world gen options would rescale a whole variety of those values just by adjusting the slider. And I have no idea what values are 'normal'

I spose what this wall of text boils down to is the question; Can I simply set the template type and desired number of years and go to generating a world that will land pretty much in the normal values or are the ranges by default set to be much wider resulting a veritable crapshoot?

[zombie urist]

Yes.

I believe the default adv worldgen uses the middle setting for everything except world size and history.

[Connal89]

Excellent, thanks. On a slightly related topic of world gen I've noticed that on short world gens my migrant waves are pretty terrible, lacking any real skills but on the longer ones there's quite a few exceptionally talented dwarfs in there. Legendary cheesemakers, beekeepers and potashmakers aside it can be quite handy when that +2 armoursmith turns up.

I know immigrants are drawn from the world pop pool, but is it mere coincidence? I usually run a 125 or 250 yr gen and the differences seem quite pronounced there. Would this trend be exponential going up or down or does it cap off at a certain point either way?

[bluefox]

Further tips on world generation can be found on the wiki:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31:Advanced_world_generation

On immigration skills: naturally, if the world is young, it makes sense that there would be less time to accrue special skills. Dwarves live for about 150 years, so that's probably the absolute minimum age for a world if you want skilled dwarves to immigrate to your fortress.

You'll get more varied results if the dwarven population is very large, as there will be a larger pool to draw from. Of course, the way to get a big population is to put worldgen at a few hundred years.

[Connal89]

Yea I did read up on the older version of world gen but I wasn't sure how much of it still applied. No idea how much those values are tweaked. The DF2012 article is non-existent.

So the theoretical magical number would lay somewhere between 125 and 250. Anything past that would be purely chance based. Much earlier and the second generation of dwarfs wouldn't have had time to skill up and a large number of the first generation would be tied up in various official positions (subject to population sizes of course) and not eligible to migrate.

By the time the third and fourth generations come around there should be a good mix in the pool and anything past that it becomes total guess work as wars develop, artifacts are made and the RNG kicks into high gear as the population explodes.

Well at least that's how I see it working in a general sense. !!SCIENCE!! could be done I spose but the results wouldn't really be all that beneficial. And there's more productive tasks at the moment; breaking, weaponizing and general dwarf shinnenigans with minecarts are the order of the day.

Thanks for the help

[Jacko13]

Apologies if this is a thread hijack, but I think the question is related.  I read the wiki on advanced gen, but I must have missed a key point.  Both of the last worlds I genned had absolutely no flux at all. None!  I modified very little other than increasing the total number of volcanos to 25 on a large map and reducing the caverns to 1 layer.  Any suggestions as to what I did wrong?

[Garath]

it could have to do with 2 things. One commonly suggested issue is too low mineral scarcity. If that is true it's a bug. The other thing is.. volcanism. Most flux, and iron, is sedimentary. Sedimentary layers result from erosion and are not commonly found in mountainous/high volcanism regions. Logic also suggests sedimentary layers are found more towards lower areas of the map, near seas/large lakes and in area with a number of soil layers.

otherwise, marble usually shows up, but in my case usually between 1st and 2nd cavern layer, so that might be a problem for you. Lastly, did you actually use dfhack prospect all before embark or just use the sitefinder? site finder lies.


final note: in the last month this question passed by about 4 or 5 times. Using search function with '+no +flux' results in, quick look, about 3 definately positive hits with that question

[Connal89]

Without really understanding the exact bits n pieces Flux is found only in specific layers. Volcanoes appear in mountain biomes mostly and the igneoues extrusive layer that forms those mountains doesn't have flux in it. Sedimentary layers hold all the flux stones bar marble and cant appear in the same biome as igneous extrusive stone.

Marble appears in metamorphic layers and I'm also not sure they can be below igneous extrusive layers which only leaves you with igneous intrusive layers which have no flux.

So if I had to guess ramping up the number of volcanoes would cover most of your world in igneous extrusive layers because it would be mostly mountain biomes? Making it near impossible to find flux

EDIT: Garath beat me to the punch.. disregard above post

[Garath]

I've found that increasing volcanos can be compensated for by changeing the weighted values for volcanism levels to the low side (standard is 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 for each range, equal spread - more or less). You'll get a few more rejects, but it works out in general. All my last few forts had iron, which I didn't for the 10 before that, and half also had flux.

[lastofthelight]

Could you clarify what you mean by 'changing the weighted values to the low side' - I'm assuming this is something other then the standard all 1's, which you also mention.

[Garath]

if you have the "xx item";
0-20% 1
20-40% 1
etc

I have it at
0-20% 3
20-40% 3
40-60% 2
60-80% 1
80-100% 1

which would influence your world to increase low volcanism areas

[vjek]

Regarding flux..  I decided to do a little testing, used a worldgen I made in the past day or so, and generated 10 worlds with it.

Testing parameters (using vanilla 34.07):

Worldgen

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[WORLD_GEN]
   [TITLE:FLUX_TEST1]
   [DIM:65:65]
   [EMBARK_POINTS:2500]
   [END_YEAR:250]
   [BEAST_END_YEAR:250:99]
   [REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:0]
   [CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:1]
   [ELEVATION:100:400:101:101]
   [RAINFALL:10:32:101:101]
   [TEMPERATURE:90:90:0:0]
   [DRAINAGE:10:49:101:101]
   [VOLCANISM:0:0:0:0]
   [SAVAGERY:0:0:0:0]
   [ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:3:8:0:0:0:2]
   [RAIN_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [DRAINAGE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [TEMPERATURE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [VOLCANISM_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [MINERAL_SCARCITY:500]
   [MEGABEAST_CAP:0]
   [SEMIMEGABEAST_CAP:0]
   [TITAN_NUMBER:0]
   [TITAN_ATTACK_TRIGGER:80:0:0]
   [DEMON_NUMBER:0]
   [NIGHT_TROLL_NUMBER:0]
   [BOGEYMAN_NUMBER:0]
   [VAMPIRE_NUMBER:0]
   [WEREBEAST_NUMBER:0]
   [SECRET_NUMBER:0]
   [REGIONAL_INTERACTION_NUMBER:0]
   [DISTURBANCE_INTERACTION_NUMBER:0]
   [EVIL_CLOUD_NUMBER:0]
   [EVIL_RAIN_NUMBER:0]
   [GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:0:0:0]
   [EVIL_SQ_COUNTS:0:0:0]
   [PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:0]
   [PARTIAL_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
   [COMPLETE_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
   [VOLCANO_MIN:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:HILLS:0:0:0]
   [EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:1000]
   [RIVER_MINS:800:800]
   [PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:0]
   [OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:0]
   [SUBREGION_MAX:2750]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_COUNT:1]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MIN:10]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MAX:15]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MIN:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MAX:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MIN:10]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MAX:15]
   [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_1:1]
   [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_2:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_1:40]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_2:16]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_3:2]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_4:2]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_5:3]
   [LEVELS_AT_BOTTOM:2]
   [CAVE_MIN_SIZE:1]
   [CAVE_MAX_SIZE:1]
   [MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:0]
   [NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:0]
   [ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:1]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
   [TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:2]
   [TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:5000]
   [SITE_CAP:10]
   [PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
   [ELEVATION_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [RAIN_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [DRAINAGE_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [SAVAGERY_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [VOLCANISM_RANGES:0:0:0]

note Mineral Scarcity: 500.  One cavern.  No volcanism, no volcanos.  Mountains and plains only.  Plains were all elevation 100.  All embarks were found on the plains.

Finder Parameters
Embark Dimensions - 4x4
Flux Stone - Yes
Aquifer - No
Shallow Metal - Multiple
Deep Metal - Multiple

Flux is: Calcite, Chalk, Dolomite, Limestone, Marble
10 random worlds with above worldgen, vanilla 34.07, results are..

Marble Y/N      First Stone under soil level(s)
----------      -------------------------------
     Y                 Dolomite
     Y                 Limestone
     Y                 Shale
     Y                 Siltstone
     Y                 Phyllite
     Y                 Claystone
     Y                 Chert
     Y                 Shale
     Y                 Siltstone
     Y                 Siltstone
     Y                 Marble
     
Every single map met the finder criteria, and every single time, finder was correct.  Verified with dfhack 'prospect hell' and 'reveal'.  Every embark had Marble, at minimum.
However, it sometimes did this by combining two biomes to get all the parameters to match.
Biome1 could have Shallow metals
Biome2 could have Deep Metals, and Flux
So when you view it, initially, you think, no flux! But if you press F2, you see flux, and if you embark, flux is there.
Even if it's just Marble, 100% (10/10) of all worlds made with that worldgen, there was flux, and the finder worked exactly as expected.

I'll be happy to do another round of tests if someone has some constructive criticism/suggestions to debunk some of the myths.

[FuzzyZergling]

I'll be happy to do another round of tests if someone has some constructive criticism/suggestions to debunk some of the myths.

If it's not too much trouble, could you do it in a world with higher volcanism?

[vjek]

Sure, i'll take a run at that tomorrow and do up another 10 samples.

[vjek]

I'll be happy to do another round of tests if someone has some constructive criticism/suggestions to debunk some of the myths.

If it's not too much trouble, could you do it in a world with higher volcanism?

Here's the results.  All I changed was Volcanism Minimum: 100 & Volcanism Maximum: 100

Generated 10 random worlds as before, same worldgen except those two parameters changed. (vanilla 34.07)

#      Marble     First Stone
--     ------     -----------
01      Yes        Obsidian
02      Yes        Dacite
03      Yes        Obsidian
04      Yes        Basalt
05      Yes        Dacite
06      Yes        Andesite
07      Yes        Phyllite
08      Yes        Rhyolite
09      Yes        Andesite
10      Yes        Dacite

Finder Parameters
Embark Dimensions - 4x4
Flux Stone - Yes
Aquifer - No
Shallow Metal - Multiple
Deep Metal - Multiple

Every world found at least a dozen embarks (some had several hundred) that matched the finder parameters.  Every embark the finder found had marble. And again, the finder was never wrong, but on some locations, a multi-biome embark was necessary to match all the parameters.