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[Granite26]

General discussion on what makes a good world to play in.

When responding, please list your favored mode, as well as any mods you usually use.

Common features seem to be diplomacy between dwarves and other races, and minimum levels of certain terrain features.

Anything else you think makes a good world?

[Philosophical Gamer]

Lots of decent sites for fortresses.  In any given world, I seem to find only 2-3 spots that are worth colonizing, with interesting enough features to be worth playing on for awhile.  I'm not so much worried about what the world has, as whether it has any good sites.

This will change once expeditions are put into the game with the army arc, then the locations of settlements on the map, and what terrain they're in will be much more important.  But for me, it's just about having a good site or two to plunk down on.

[ricemastah]

Well for fortress mode, certainly having interesting features is a plus. Also having lots of megabeasts still around is another plus. I really like having forts get sieged by megabeasts because it makes the fort more interesting as well as having an interesting history to the fort.
Actually megabeasts in general are a good thing, because they are fun to kill in adventure mode as well.

[Mephansteras]

Megabeasts and interesting sites. Although, for me, I've found that any large world is bound to have plenty of good sites. I use my Civilization Forge mod, so enemies and interesting materials are plentiful. And lots of rock crystal everywhere, so sand is no longer a must have (although I still lose a few dwarves to moods that need green or clear glass).

My favorite sites have forests, a brook, limestone, marble, and granite. Interesting underground features and magma are optional, and mostly depend on the fort.

Overall, though, I've found that most sites are workable, and even somewhat boring sites can be fun if you give yourself the right projects.

And for the record zombie dinosaurs suck to fight.

[Granite26]

What I'm looking to develop is a mental heuristic for how to tell a good world from a bad.  Possibly that could be included into the world generator (in order to stop world gen during 'interesting times') or at least be used to tell at a glance if you need to reroll...

[Flaede]

up volcanism, for starters.

Also, increase mountains a wee bit (for goblins and dwarves alike, so they have room to breathe, and not wipe each other out).
Make caves more epic-ly huge an' crap.

yeah, that's a start.

[Tormy]

Well I have a heavily modded game, and I usually create worlds with these main settings [I change other minor settings also like mesh sizes etc, but that's not so important] :

- Size of the world: LARGE [257x257]
- No population cap
- Minimum volcanism 20
- Minimum savagery 20
- Number of Mountain Caves: minimum 300
- Number of Non-Mountain Caves: minimum 200
- Number of Civilizations: 25

[Glacies]

Lots of civ's, year 2, double caves and make them visible.

[Creamcorn]

All I really want is plenty of wood, and some flux. Oh, and also more than two hostile civs would be great.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I like a world that's really tough to tame. Not impossible, mind you, but something where you really have to put in a lot of effort to establish much of anything, and then you have to push hard to keep it going.

Good sites can be fairly rare. I like the idea of a fortress that's reclaimed 3 or 4 times before it's really secure and liveable, but worth the trouble, because where else are you gonna go?

I also like (the idea of) really looong games. Like years long. It's not a specific feature of the world, but a good world should be able to encompass that desire.

I'm comforted by the idea of a finished and polished DF that will allow an interesting world to keep going for literally like a decade, and then maybe donating it to anthropology museum or something. 

[Archaeologist]

I play vanilla DF, but I've found the best worlds are ones that have good swathes of  hostile/ purple terrain on the map, plenty of dividing mountains, and a decent number of volcanoes. 

But to tell the truth, modding up volcanism and caves, etc really makes things much better.  Get a nice volcano, flux, and sand, and a river, and the possibilities are endless.

[Deathworks]

Cheers!

Most of the time I play fortress mode, focusing on easy, peaceful fortresses where I can experiment and create a lot of engravings/encrustings. Occasionally, I do a bit of exploring in Adventure mode, but this is a minor thing for me.

My first concern about a world is diversity: There should be humans, goblins, elves, and dwarves around (okay, goblin civs, to be precise (^_^;; ). Kobolds are a nice addition, but I do not always check about them.

Actually, this is the most difficult part, as early contact between humans and elves often causes elves to go extinct. In addition, if either of them has too small a heartland to move back into, they will usually get extinct. Similarly, goblins sharing mountain chains with dwarves are at a very high risk of getting wiped out as well (T_T)

Secondly, I need temperate, calm, non-aquifer locations for my fortresses, reachable by all trade partners (unless I am exploring a somewhat different site, like a sweetwater island).

Finally, because I like engravings, I need some large regions (forests, mountains, ...) offering fortress locations and at the same time having exciting histories (like unending conflicts between elves and humans). In order to boost histories, I also like to increase the number of caves (the default values are way too low in my opinion anyway).

Deathworks

[Gunner-Chan]

Any world without Elves for me is a good one, but hellish death worlds are the most fun.

Urist McDwarfie cancels eat: Eyes eaten by parasites.

 

[Turnip]

LAVA SAND AND INFINITE WATER.
EVERYWHERE.

[NewMartianEmperor]

Lotsa civs and beasts to hack, maim and generally kill in as many cruel and unusual was as possible.