There are some things that never seem to be mentioned in these cliff threads. You don't have to confine yourself within the limits for world gen parameters given by the game. Just edit world_gen.txt manually in your init folder and you can pump elevation variance above 1800.
Remember, variances are absolute values that don't take into account the size of the world. 800 variance for a small world will create more variation than that same 800 for a large world. I personally, for this reason, use 129x129 or smaller sizes for my worlds.
Beyond creating cliffs with rivers like described above, you can create cliffs with extreme elevation variations. The largest ones being where oceans and mountains meet. Of course this doesn't happen with normal vanilla maps, but edited maps with at least about 5000 elevation variance will produce mountains next to oceans and that will create enormous cliffs near the base with the ocean beach working as the base. I've seen cliffs that extend 10+ z-levels made like this.
High elevation variance will produce cliffs at normal mountain bases as well, but that is much rarer and usually not nearly as impressive. Try this world_gen.txt entry:
[WORLD_GEN]
[TITLE:HYPERCLIFF]
[DIM:65:129]
[END_YEAR:2]
[BEAST_END_YEAR:300:-1]
[REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:1]
[CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:1]
[ELEVATION:0:400:7000:7000]
[RAINFALL:0:95:200:900]
[TEMPERATURE:10:70:900:200]
[DRAINAGE:10:100:250:250]
[VOLCANISM:20:100:1600:1600]
[SAVAGERY:15:100:1600:1600]
[ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:0:24:0:0:0:25]
[RAIN_FREQUENCY:6:12:7:6:4:3]
[DRAINAGE_FREQUENCY:6:5:5:6:7:12]
[TEMPERATURE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
[SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:6:4:7:9:8:9]
[VOLCANISM_FREQUENCY:2:100:10:0:10:160]
[GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:3000:2000:3000]
[EVIL_SQ_COUNTS:3000:4000:5000]
[PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:700]
[OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
[VOLCANO_MIN:200]
[REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND:0:0:0]
[REGION_COUNTS:HILLS:0:0:0]
[EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:0]
[RIVER_MINS:2000:500]
[PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:0]
[OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:0]
[SUBREGION_MAX:50000]
[CAVE_MIN_SIZE:30]
[CAVE_MAX_SIZE:100]
[MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:300]
[NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:500]
[ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:1]
[SHOW_EMBARK_RIVER:2]
[SHOW_EMBARK_POOL:2]
[SHOW_EMBARK_M_POOL:2]
[SHOW_EMBARK_M_PIPE:2]
[SHOW_EMBARK_CHASM:2]
[SHOW_EMBARK_PIT:2]
[SHOW_EMBARK_OTHER:2]
[SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
[TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:10]
[TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:-1]
[PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
[ELEVATION_RANGES:0:0:0]
[RAIN_RANGES:0:0:0]
[DRAINAGE_RANGES:0:0:0]
[SAVAGERY_RANGES:0:0:0]
[VOLCANISM_RANGES:0:0:0]
Its a quick and dirty parameter set that will create a world with the most potential cliff sites, look for cliffs near rivers and where the mountains meet the oceans, especially where the peaks and high mountains meet oceans. It's just for show here, if you want to create a proper world for playing, go over the parameters, put more civilizations in and turn on the bells and whistles again.
Beyond this there are a few tricks for finding good places where the map can easily terraformed to create plateaus cut off by cliffs, like requested in this topic, in-game. One place to look is near river conjunctions. Sometimes when a river joins another from a height it'll cut off a piece high elevation land that will be now cut off from the rest of the terrain and land of the same elevation by at least two sides by rivers. The slopes at the other side can be easily dug out and, voila, you have a plateau to build a fortress on.
It should look something like
this fortress from an older version of DF.
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Topic: Worldgen cliffs (Read 5333 times)