Going on here after discussions during the setup of my succession fortress, Firecastle. So, one thing that came up was FPS, world sizing, and complexity. Using the "create world now" options we have some nice options for a quick generation, but what if we want more? I've had issues with complex worlds, otherwise unmodded, filling up memory and having huge file sizes. In addition, terrible FPS on embark.
I decided to experiment using a large region, because there's a couple of problems I have using large regions in more recent versions - generation time, crashes, file size (makes it hard to send around), and the difficulty of getting an embark with all civilisations. Some of these had already knocked me down to playing medium sized maps, but after the reduction in civilisation range, I started to use small maps. Now, I've taken the time to create a new world and try to get around some of the issues, mostly on the civilisation end as it seems the crashes have been fixed by the move to 64 bit and other changes.
Using the Large Region template, I decided to crank up the volcano count to 200, set the variances to max, turned up titans, werebeasts, demon types, and night trolls to the max, the maximum number of subregions to 5000, the site max and population max to 100,000, and Civilisation count to 300 (about 175, give or take, were generated). I get 500 rejections due to difficulty placing grasslands, and hit "p" (protip: if you want your quick world generation, best way to do so is create a way to reject everything due to placement issues, really useful for large worlds). The resultant folder size is actually 156MB (267MB on disk), which is bigger than anything I've seen for a long time without heavy modding. However, there were no crashes in generation. The history is 125 years, and really slows down after year 80.
The longest part of the generation is probably placing the minerals, which is interesting. I remember this used to be one of the choke points for generating large worlds, but it seems it has gotten worse. On embarking as a dwarf fortress, I'm getting 6 seconds per day for moving the world along during the 15 day advancement period.
Units take up 58MB or so, and the world.dat file takes up about 98MB.
The good news is the world isn't having any problems with civ access and is a lot more varied. The specs are in the spoiler.
I used the following seeds:
[SEED:CUUaqqqgoKsYss2c4Kyw]
[HISTORY_SEED:2cGwCKGwYUAioQqEeOW8]
[NAME_SEED:4u6IUS6UYIyGaYCWqOYE]
[CREATURE_SEED:E2u6kiIkkeUm4oYa8CQ4]
[WORLD_GEN]
[TITLE:LARGE VARIED]
[DIM:257:257]
[EMBARK_POINTS:1504]
[END_YEAR:125]
[BEAST_END_YEAR:300:80]
[REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:1]
[CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:0]
[ELEVATION:1:400:3200:3200]
[RAINFALL:0:100:3200:3200]
[TEMPERATURE:25:75:3200:3200]
[DRAINAGE:0:100:3200:3200]
[VOLCANISM:0:100:3200:3200]
[SAVAGERY:0:100:3200:3200]
[ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[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]
[POLE:NORTH_AND_SOUTH]
[MINERAL_SCARCITY:100]
[MEGABEAST_CAP:75]
[SEMIMEGABEAST_CAP:150]
[TITAN_NUMBER:1000]
[TITAN_ATTACK_TRIGGER:80:0:100000]
[DEMON_NUMBER:1000]
[NIGHT_TROLL_NUMBER:1000]
[BOGEYMAN_NUMBER:26]
[VAMPIRE_NUMBER:26]
[WEREBEAST_NUMBER:1000]
[SECRET_NUMBER:52]
[REGIONAL_INTERACTION_NUMBER:52]
[DISTURBANCE_INTERACTION_NUMBER:52]
[EVIL_CLOUD_NUMBER:26]
[EVIL_RAIN_NUMBER:26]
[GENERATE_DIVINE_MATERIALS:1]
[GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:100:1000:2000]
[EVIL_SQ_COUNTS:100:1000:2000]
[PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:50]
[PARTIAL_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:2]
[COMPLETE_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
[VOLCANO_MIN:200]
[REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:1032:7:6]
[REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:1032:7:6]
[REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:4128:13:12]
[REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS:8256:9:9]
[REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:8256:7:6]
[REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND:8256:13:12]
[REGION_COUNTS:HILLS:8256:13:12]
[EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:250]
[RIVER_MINS:400:400]
[PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:1]
[OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:1]
[SUBREGION_MAX:5000]
[CAVERN_LAYER_COUNT:3]
[CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MIN:0]
[CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MAX:100]
[CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MIN:0]
[CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MAX:100]
[CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MIN:0]
[CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MAX:100]
[HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_1:1]
[HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_2:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:15]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_1:5]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_2:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_3:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_4:1]
[LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_5:2]
[LEVELS_AT_BOTTOM:1]
[CAVE_MIN_SIZE:5]
[CAVE_MAX_SIZE:25]
[MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:100]
[NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:200]
[ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:1]
[SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
[TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:300]
[TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:100000]
[SITE_CAP:100000]
[PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
[ELEVATION_RANGES:8256:16512:8256]
[RAIN_RANGES:8256:16512:8256]
[DRAINAGE_RANGES:8256:16512:8256]
[SAVAGERY_RANGES:8256:16512:8256]
[VOLCANISM_RANGES:8256:16512:8256]
Now to investigate how to create a world with the continental forms from "create world now" but with the new features.