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[Fleeting Frames]

Likewise.

To find 3 easily, find an edge of two biomes and follow them till you come to a third biome. 4 is relatively common in psv patchwork worlds, what's with there being something like fortress width*1,4112/16 chance of two such tri-points being close enough to each other for your purposes (I've seen 1 or 2 with 4 land biomes in 1x1). Gets...polynomially? harder the higher you go, though, plus I've only seen screenshots of single-tile biomes as lakes.

[andrian]

I like volcanoes. Magma is !!FUN!!

I also quite enjoy coasts. There's lots of fish, and often sand. I've always wanted to make a series of cage traps for catching aquatic creatures, but I've never actually succeeded in doing that, mostly because I tend to get bored with a fortress before the whole project is completed. I rarely lose fortresses anymore.

As for elevation, I like at least some hills. My main entrance design requires a few z-levels to work with, and on a flat map I have to dig down ramps or use constructions to compensate.

I love savage biomes, and generally aim for tropical ones. Lately I've been trying a fun experiment where I embarked on a volcano with a tropical forest and a glacier (I've been learning how advanced parameters work!). I always want clay, though I really wish there was a sand indicator, because that's more valuable to me. Spiked green glass balls are an ideal trade good.

I usually want to embark somewhere with neighboring goblins, because invasions make things more interesting, even if my fortress designs are basically invader-proof.

[oldmansutton]

I like finding major rivers that have cut deep cliffs into the landscape.  I then build on a bend in the river at the top of the cliff, so that 2 sides of the fortress have sheer drops, and are mostly inaccessible, unless somebody seriously wants to climb 30+ z-levels.  Bonus points if a second river runs along the upper part and waterfalls down into the river below.

[Fleeting Frames]

@andrian:
FYI, there's sand indicator in dfhack. i.e. in dfhack.init

# enable mouse controls and sand indicator in embark screen
embark-tools enable sand mouse

Still can't search for it on the world map.

Vanilla, you used to be able to swap 1 soil with another in a generated location if you swapped their placement in raws and generated it again, though no idea if that's the case anymore. (And might change history slightly due civ who had red sand before now has peat or whatever you don't want.)

[Slozgo Luzma]

I've taken a liking to glacial biomes. I usually start on the border between a glacier and taiga biome, because it's nice to have wood. It's a pain to build using raw ice blocks because they can't be fashioned into blocks, and workshops can't be built below the glacier because the ice will melt. Being in the glacier deters a lot of enemies, especially when far from other civilizations, though migrants seem to arrive at a lower rate. The soft ice is nice for getting underground quickly, though, and on one of my forts I populated the first three levels above my fort with a labyrinth of ice tunnels, traps, and rooms filled with cave spiders and various monsters that had fallen into my pits. The garrison was also located at the bottom of this level and had a draw-bridge protected passage to the surface. The trade depot was protected by a fortified igloo, and made entirely from ice with glass windows. In the taiga area (so that mechanisms don't freeze) windmills powered the magma pumps from my volcano and water system, which I could use to wreck parts of the labyrinth.

[Feathermind]

I tend to be very partial to volcanoes, to the point I crank the minimum to at least 20 in worldgen.  Volcanoes with a river or stream nearby are particularly favored, with a preference for the latter due to the more secure water source they provide.  Aquifiers are a fine substitute; I've pieced them enough it's become routine and I've found you can often avoid them on volcano embarks by carving your down stairs adjacent to the lava tube.

I also enjoy embarking on areas where good and evil biomes meet, and tend to increase the count of both in worldgen in hopes of getting more such places.  It's an extra nice surprise if sliver barbs and sun berries both happen to be present.

I've done volcano-river forts to death though, so more than anything now I tend to look for interesting and exciting areas to embark.  To that end I usually make caves visible in worldgen and use adventurers to seek out shrines and other interesting places that can be embarked on top of.  My most recent embark was a cave that, according to legends, was home to a tribe of kobolds that had stolen many singing metal and pitch-black fabric objects over the years.  I had hoped the kobolds and their treasures would still be present, but there was no sign of a cave at all on the surface, and by the time my dwarves finally found it between the first and second cavern layers the kobolds had long since absconded with their goodies.  Still, at the very least it made a nice staging ground to send adventurers out questing for the vault the kobolds had so deftly pilfered, in the hopes of bringing back singing metal objects of their own to melt down and re-craft into superior dwarven works.