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[lastofthelight]

I generally do a Medium Region for fortress mode - Large takes too long, and Island worlds end up with the caverns being stupidly tall (e.g. 100+ Z-levels between the surface and the magma sea, whereas a Region typically has it only 40 Z-levels down).

Wait.


What?

100Z level caverns? I AM DOING SOMETHING WRONG HERE. Please enlighten me.

[azrael300]

My computer isn't the best so at most I think I use a medium sized island. This is the biggest map I have ever played on and was my favorite, not sure it's size. I used many custom parameters to get this, and unfortunately turned off the circus cause I didn't know what it was at the time. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyway, I was looking on another topic that was discussing different ages and I recalled how world size can greatly effect the history of the world. As well larger worlds tend to have more variation in cultures and civilizations. But large worlds get so big that I can't wrap my head around all the different civilizations, cultures, and really feel like I get to know the land. For this reason as well as for my somewhat below average computer, I typically use a medium sized world or smaller (never pocket really though). The only thing I don't like about it is that there is not enough wars.

What size world do you typically use and for what reasons does that choice appeal to you?

I like large worlds but i use a laptop so i cant do that without lag,i also like generating worlds with a long history,and i mostly do that on pocket or very small worlds so i don't have to wait so long.So therefore i like small worlds on laptops unless it is a fast laptop, and large worlds on large/fast computers.

[Jeoshua]

I have determined exactly what is happening with the cavern layers!!!

Go make a pocket dimension.  Paint it so that there is a mountain in the center and no oceans.  Now generate it and see where the caverns start.  At the very lowest elevations, they should be about 5 z-levels down.

Now go back to that worldgen, edit the world painting area and paint ONE square of the map at 0/0 height, aka deep ocean, aka the deepest it can get.  Now generate it and go embark again.

With default settings in a worldgen, the first caverns are 5 z-levels below the LOWEST area on the entire map.  And since oceans can be 100 z-levels down, and mountaintops can be 400 z-levels high, there is a maximum difference there of 400 z-levels to the top of the caverns, max.  IF one has no ocean, or only shallow ocean, the top of the first cavern could potentially be much closer to the surface.

So ultimately it is not that there is a lot of ocean that is causing this "deep island cavern" phenomena, but rather that the island worlds have the edge pushed towards deep water ocean type, making the whole area very much deeper than it needs to be.

I'm going back into PerfectWorld and repainting my ocean around the island I've been creating.  Shallow caverns, here I come.

[CaptainArchmage]

Large worlds. They take a while to generate, but are generally guaranteed to have most or all biomes if the settings are all correct. They are also pretty much guaranteed to have mountains, something I've noticed smaller embarks may lack, especially with advanced settings.

I've noticed that if you generate a large world with 20 years of history, it will load faster than a small world with 100 years of history.

[ydaraishy]

Medium worlds with a fairly short history (about 150-250 years) for fortress mode.  This is so it goes faster, and I have more outdoor megabeasts.

For adventure mode, large worlds, also with a short history.

[Starver]

I never had a need for a world bigger than Medium. Even my custom medium world produces quite a big save (120MB) and takes quite a while every time I load or save the game.

How'd you manage to need 120Mb?  I've got a .31.19 game folder with saves on an adjacent computer (for some reason, I don't actually play DF at work, so not sure what that's doing there) with, for some reason, five worlds generated upon it[1], and their sizes are 7.57Mb, 24.1Mb, 33.8Mb, 5.13Mb and 4.5Mb.  Not sure what sizes they each are, but that'll include max-sized regions, probably both the 24Mb and 33Mb  versions.  In total that's smaller than your 120Mb; although including the 'seasonal backup' folders for the two worlds that I've apparently played a little in fort mode does shove the total up to 255Mb.


Incidentally, taking that final total away from the game folder's size gives 24Mb of base files.  Not that many people appreciate this kind of thing, these days, but I think that's a nice compact set of executables and (mostly ASCII and totally uncompressed!) definition files, given the complexity of the game behind it.  Now... how might I start to get it to work in an Arduino environment with custom physical interfaces?


[1] In answer to a prior question, I don't actually usually generate one per version, but a new one per version, and little migration at all, these days.  I may copy a pre-embark fort for simultaneous (non-interactive fortress and adventuring mode, but that's straight copying, not regenerating.

[MaximumZero]

I play large island worlds with custom parameters. Lots of minerals, lots of civs, lots of sites, lots of beasties, and few evil/good biomes.

[Starver]

I play large island worlds with custom parameters. Lots of minerals, lots of civs, lots of sites, lots of beasties, and few evil/good biomes.

I'm still surprised at the size.  I'm likely to have made my saves (certianly the larger ones) have ?20?Z levels between cavern layers rather than the ?5? that are there as a default, which surely adds something.  (At least to the in-play forts?)

Oh, and several grammatical and informational errors to my previous post, that really need correcting, e.g.

[1] In answer to a prior question, I don't actually usually generate more than one per version, but always a new one per version, and little migration at all, these days.

I blame lack of sleep.  But the numbers are all correct.

[Viking]

When it comes to fortress mode I like to play smaller worlds, pocket size to medium really. For adventure mode small or medium I guess. Really in dwarf mode you only really get to deal with 3 civs anyways regardless of how many there are so having more countless civs is pointless. Although I guess civs could also be kobolds and such? This despite me not really liking worlds with really long histories either. Its less fun when you have fewer beasts in fortress mode and abandoned houses/villages in adventure mode. All considered smaller worlds are faster to create, load and store. I tend to like worlds with some oceans and coastlines in them. I especially like lots of rivers and having a few volcanoes. I don't like the idea of an endless landmass.

[penguinofhonor]

Small non-island or medium island. I like my fortresses to not be ridiculously far away from whatever civs my adventurers start in.

[MaximumZero]

I play large island worlds with custom parameters. Lots of minerals, lots of civs, lots of sites, lots of beasties, and few evil/good biomes.

I'm still surprised at the size.  I'm likely to have made my saves (certianly the larger ones) have ?20?Z levels between cavern layers rather than the ?5? that are there as a default, which surely adds something.  (At least to the in-play forts?)

I like to play tremendously huge, deep worlds. It helps me visualize the history of the world as I watch it form.

Edit: To clarify: The games that I play, I always insert myself into. They are generally pretty small, vertical fortresses. When (not if, always when) I die, the fort ends and I start over.

[penguinofhonor]

Oh, also I like shallow caverns. Easier to bust into. They're normally what, 20 z-levels down or something? My forts are rarely more than 7 or 8 levels deep. This means I usually just have a bunch of levels with stairwells going down.

Maybe I could take advantage of this with a ridiculously vertical fortress, but I like the sprawling suburbia of my residential areas and long twisting passages of my crypts.

[Courtesy Arloban]

My favorite size is much larger than dwarf fortress currently generates - 1800 wide by 900 tall.  I already have a map I've been working on all my life, and it's scaled larger than I can get perfectworld to accept,  even though my computer could run dwarf fortress with a map that size.

[vidboi]

I have determined exactly what is happening with the cavern layers!!!

Go make a pocket dimension.  Paint it so that there is a mountain in the center and no oceans.  Now generate it and see where the caverns start.  At the very lowest elevations, they should be about 5 z-levels down.

Now go back to that worldgen, edit the world painting area and paint ONE square of the map at 0/0 height, aka deep ocean, aka the deepest it can get.  Now generate it and go embark again.

With default settings in a worldgen, the first caverns are 5 z-levels below the LOWEST area on the entire map.  And since oceans can be 100 z-levels down, and mountaintops can be 400 z-levels high, there is a maximum difference there of 400 z-levels to the top of the caverns, max.  IF one has no ocean, or only shallow ocean, the top of the first cavern could potentially be much closer to the surface.

So ultimately it is not that there is a lot of ocean that is causing this "deep island cavern" phenomena, but rather that the island worlds have the edge pushed towards deep water ocean type, making the whole area very much deeper than it needs to be.

I'm going back into PerfectWorld and repainting my ocean around the island I've been creating.  Shallow caverns, here I come.

I'm pretty certain this isn't true. There are two z-level counters on the left on the screen. The top one shows you the number of z-levels above or below the surface at the centre of the screen and the bottom one shows you the absolute z-level (the same one that determines mountains and oceans in world-gen). The top of the first cavern in my current fort (in a world with a large ocean) is at 118, so the measure can't be below the lowest point on the entire map, instead i believe the lowest point on the embark (which makes sense).

[penguinofhonor]

So... yeah, apparently you can't make caverns more shallow in the current version?