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[Sorenson]

While admitably I discovered this only after making uncoverable changes to the DF raw data files, I think that the fact that there be things going on where you'd think things ought not be going on was worth the submission.

So I was reading up on various item and material values and the relationships between them on the wiki, and after topping that off with a look at the magma-safe materials page I decided I was going to add some extra tags to metagloss_metals to open up the possabilities - one of those "why not?" sort of things.  Nothing major, just making stuff like Platinum and Nickel/Nickel Silver and Electrum forgeable into anvils and armor and stuff for the pricier metals, and when I finished I went and generated a new world to see how things had turned out.

When I selected my standard loadout, though, I got some nasty messages - "you cannot afford this, you cannot afford that" - and it was all stuff I'd used multiple times before without a problem.  After doing some detective work, restarting the PC and rolling back to vanilla raw data (admitably I've got several files I've tweaked), I finally traced it down to metagloss_metals, specifically the (ANVIL) tags I'd put on some of the entries.  Wierd thing, though?  Only nickel/nickel silver caused that point interference - not platinum, not electrum, not the numerous entries I'd added to them for other things.  And it wasn't even just changing them, either - in tests I did the (ANY_USE) token didn't do a thing for either metals in terms of embark points.

Long story short, there's something at work regarding the nickel/nickel silver entries that makes DF flips its lid that bit more and start hacking away embark points whenever you make 'em anvil capable - from the 2060 available points I've goten in vanilla tests it goes down to 1260 for nickel and 1360 for nickel silver - and I figured that between Toady's reported shifting of more things to raw datafiles from hardcoded stuff and people doing their own modding and tinkering it was worth bringing this out.

EDIT: So DF determines your embarking points after calculating the value of the default load-out instead of using a set value from which the default values are subtracted?  Interesting, if not a bit puzzling/convoluted - time to snoop around and see if there's any reasoning behind this.

[Moron]

I think the reason for this is that you always by default start with the cheapest available anvil.

In vanilla DF this is iron which is worth 1000, so when you choose to embark without an anvil, you get 1000 points back to spend on other things. If you make a cheaper metal like nickel usable for anvils then your starting anvil will be made of this so your total embark points will be less.

[Untelligent]

It's not quite as complicated as you think.

All those default items on the embark item screen are "freebies." You get all of those (which are based on a few hardcoded items, some entity tokens, and what your civ has access to), and 200 points.
 

[mithra]

I think the reason for this is that you always by default start with the cheapest available anvil.

In vanilla DF this is iron which is worth 1000, so when you choose to embark without an anvil, you get 1000 points back to spend on other things. If you make a cheaper metal like nickel usable for anvils then your starting anvil will be made of this so your total embark points will be less.

And this appears to work the other way, too.  I made iron expensive and got the steel anvil instead, which gave me many more points at embark.