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[Grif]

How do you guys go about it?
Besides the search function, what do you look for?

Some time ago I found what was, for me, the perfect spot: a 6x6 region with grassland biome, medium to sparse trees and other vegetation and in the smack middle of it a "hill" with high cliffs (7); it was bleeding perfect. Ever since I haven't been able to find a spot like that, EVER, and that world gen is long gone... any tips/tricks/advice?

[UristMcGunsmith]

I like brooks right next a mountain which has a magma pipe with heavily forested and sand for soil no aquifer with flux.

Other than that, I'm not very specific. 

[Jude]

I like brooks right next a mountain which has a magma pipe with heavily forested and sand for soil no aquifer with flux.

Other than that, I'm not very specific. 

Hahahahah me too - same exact thing

Except I wouldnt' mind a major river, it's just that they never show up on mountains. Underground pool/river could replace the brook too, and a chasm/pit is nice as well.

[Trekkin]

I ask for two things: underground water and magma. Flux I can take or leave; sand I will stretch my embark to accommodate. Then again, I am very partial to underground vault-type fortresses where the only things visible from the surface are my sewers and my siege engines.

beyond that, I just grow my fortresses organically so they conform to the local geography; I take more joy in making a strange-but-workable embark work than I do in finding a good one.

[andy1005]

I hate elevation because mountains create problems rather than solve problems.
I hate murky pools because they create design flaws.

My ideal location is actually a tundra with no trees, it's dead flat and no vegetation... No aquifer and no water source at all.

Injured dwarves die, new ones take their place but I don't keep an active army anyway, I use marksdwarves so the chance of injury is slight.

[slink]

I like brooks right next a mountain which has a magma pipe with heavily forested and sand for soil no aquifer with flux.

Other than that, I'm not very specific. 

You forgot the bauxite.   

[Grif]

Ah, well, I wasn't talking about the "perfect" place, each person has a different goal so there is no all time ultimate perfect place; I've yet to build a fortress on a real MOUNTAIN side though, it seems I always end up going for a marsh or swamp...

[slink]

I know what you mean.  An awful lot of the sites the Finder locates for me seem to be swamps with magma.  I guess that's because swamps provide flux along with wood and water.  It does seem a little weird to have Dwarves living in a swamp.  I wish the Finder let us see a list of sites that matched, so we could pick the one that looked most interesting to us.   

I have recently started doing things a little differently.  Instead of using the Finder, I try mixing things up a little in the gen files.  Then I export the map and examine it for interesting geography with a graphics viewer.  I look more closely at these in the embark screen, and if they look good in terms of geology then I take screendumps of the embark and try it with a quick and dirty party.  I use Reveal to see if there are enough interesting features to try settling there, and if so, then I kill that embark and make one with my good Dwarves and custom names.  The embark graphics gets saved with the fortress name and the exported gen files get saved with the world name.  The save gets renamed world - fortress.

If nothing pleases me enough, I delete that world and try a new gen.  I get ideas from forum posts and from the Wiki.  I can spend an entire day doing this and only have a new fortress maybe half of the time.   

[Grif]

I can spend an entire day doing this and only have a new fortress maybe half of the time.   

Aha, true, it seems I spend half the time planning the fortress and half the time playing it. 

[Grax]

Cliffed 3x3 map with magma, water and sand. Preferably with one square of ocean/shore to fish.

[Untelligent]

First of all, I don't bother with the Site Finder at all. Don't like it.


Second, I use the worldgen parameters to push certain statistics in my favor. By maxing out the Volcanism variances, it's much easier to get magma and sedimentary stone at the same time. If I'm not looking a beach or island fort, getting rid of oceans altogether gives me more land room and thus more potential sites where perfect or near-perfect forts can be. Maybe decreasing the rainfall and drainage to encourage deserts, for more sites with guaranteed sand. I usually don't bother with the reject parameters and turn them all off so the world generates faster, turning them up never worked well for me.


It's not difficult at all to find a 5x5 or smaller site with sand, flux, sedimentary rock (for iron and bauxite), magma, and several mountain features. Turn up the elevation variances and you can get rediculous amounts of z-levels, too.


What I'd REALLY like, though, is a major river cutting through a giant-ass mountain, for hella cliffs. Too bad they usually occur far away from mountains because of the way rivers are generated.

Maybe I should generate a world with lots of tall mountains and as many rivers as possible, just to see what would happen.

[HAMMERMILL]

If you generate a map with alot of rivers and some good elevation variation you can always embark on the intersections of rivers, which almost always have huge, perfectly steep cliffs that go down to the water.

[Untelligent]

If you generate a map with alot of rivers and some good elevation variation you can always embark on the intersections of rivers, which almost always have huge, perfectly steep cliffs that go down to the water.

Aye, but Major Rivers are the widest breed of river, I have yet to see a Major River that goes through a mountain, and it's difficult to get 100 z-levels without a mountain.

[RedWick]

Lately, I've actually started going out with an adventurer to do my surveying for me.  Since I prefer interesting land features over other amenities, this actually makes for a really good way of finding the right spot.

[Telcontar]

I usually have a 'story' behind each fortress, and pick my land accordingly. Though I often end up tabbing over to the cliffs view to find suitable sites, as except for rare cases I prefer to dig straight into steep cliffs.

In stranger forts (say the dwarves are looking for certain resources) I might pick stranger sites, like in the middle of a fortress. I once started a fort on the place where two rivers came together with a stream to make a major river, and built a bunch of bridges for the heck of it. Explained it away as the dwarves were hired to improve ease of transport in the area.