plenty of deserts, with and without aquifers, frozen and non frozen, and you can find magma vents poking out of the surface everywhere. the temperature variance on this map is insane, such that you can have a scorching desert and a freezing tundra in one standard embark. so deserts change from sweltering to snow covered, with brooks that suddenly turn to ice. i embarked upon some to have a look, its like there is literally a line drawn across the area where the snow starts, and water freezes on one side and boils on the other. it is completely iretarded, its like looking at the surface of mercury where the light side meets the dark. also, somewhere along the line the last elf forest retreat fell to the demon onslaught, so i may stick a bunch of adventurers in the last remaining human town to bolster its defences a bit before i really get into the swing of my turn. otherwise there will be nobody left to play as except the goblins.
there is only one smallish terrifying ocean to the far west of the map with mostly forests along the shores, and no islands at all. i went looking carefully along the coast because building a stupidly giant bridge to a walled island fort was one of my ideas. there were plenty of seaside brooks and lots of caves along the shores, with a reasonable variance of biomes considering how small the ocean is.
ive taken the volcano directly beneath the last free human settlement in the very bottom right corner. it has the biggerst cliffs ive ever found directly, and i lucked out and got a chasm that actually has little windows looking out of the steep hill side. there are LOTS of other magma vents everywhere for people that want them, and my site has no HFS or flux.
using tweaks embark cheat lets you embark somewhere with 50 proficient masons and as much stone as you want. no quarrying, you can just raise a castle out of the ground anywhere, but you need to put the save in a straight 40d version of DF for it to work. im using all the nosleep noeat tags, but does anyone know how to make the dwarves speed 1? could not find out how after a forum and wiki search.
edit: pictures, courtesy of imageshack. urk.
cliffs, from down low
cliffs looking down from the top. chasm runs inside these hills paralel to the cliff face here, and has a few holes where chasm creatures have spilled out, though they are nearly impossible to see.
very quick mspaint plan of possible megaproject?
ive done huge dams before. biggest issue is waiting for them to fill, specially with magma. takes forever. if i can turn off births/messages then leaving it overnight would work. my horde of dwarves are on site and digging big fancy many layered galleries to start with. suggestions anyone?