Some dwarven civs can make high boots, some can't. Same with robes. Some dwarven civs have access to iron, and some don't, leaving the player stuck with having to spend 300 embark points on a steel anvil, or start without an anvil. Some dwarven civs don't have access to cassiterite, so starting with the makings for smelting bronze isn't possible. But you can't know these things until you've already selected a civilization and get to the "prepare carefully" screen.
It would be nice to be able to find out which civs have access to what when choosing the civ in the embark site chooser. It seems like a dfhack plugin should be able to determine this sort of thing and make a report about which civ has access to what materials and clothing/armor types.
A summary of who is at war with whom would also be nice. I usually end up selecting a civ, tabbing around to the relationship screen to see who they are at war with, then tabbing back to the civ choosing screen, selecting the next, tabbing around to see who they are at war with, and so on, ad nauseum. It's at least possible to find out war status before choosing a civ, but kind of tedious.
A summary similar to this would be nice:
The Hammers of Choosing
Hostile with Goblins.
Makes high boots, robes. Has iron.
The Boats of Indecision
Hostile with Goblins. At war with Elves.
Makes robes. Has cassiterite.
The Fist of Ash
At war with Goblins, Humans.
Makes high boots. Has iron, cassiterite.
There are probably other clothes/armor and minerals that would be worth reporting, and maybe other things that would be nice to know about a civ when choosing. Population maybe? That's available in region*-world_site_and_pops.txt, but could be put on the same line as the civ name w/o cluttering up the summary too much. Other ideas?