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[Balathustrius]

It seems that world gen takes a lot longer in DF2010 than it did in older versions.  I generated a new world the other day and left the end year at the default 1050, but when I realized it was going to take at least an hour to finish filling those 1,000 years with history, I aborted and genned a new world to end at year 300.

Then I started getting tiny human caravans that consisted of a few donkeys each, and remembered something I had heard here about the civs in young worlds not having a lot to trade.  Is this true, or am I misremembering that?  What are the other drawbacks/benefits to young worlds as opposed to old ones (aside from the obvious megabeast issue)?  What year do you stop world gen at?

[ILikePie]

but when I realized it was going to take at least an hour to finish filling those 1,000 years with history.

An hour? I'm on an old Linux machine with a 2.2ghz (or is it 1.8? I don't remember) processor and a gigabyte of ram and it takes the game 5 minutes to generate everything.

[Lightman]

An hour? I'm on an old Linux machine with a 2.2ghz (or is it 1.8? I don't remember) processor and a gigabyte of ram and it takes the game 5 minutes to generate everything.

Depends on the world size and number of civs, doesn't it? A pocket world is going to be a lot faster than a large one. But I like to let 1000+ years generate, either way. I'll just go do something else while it's generating.

I think maybe I'll do a speed comparison with OpenGL vs Text output... just to see. I'm sure in-game is faster.

[NW_Kohaku]

An hour? I'm on an old Linux machine with a 2.2ghz (or is it 1.8? I don't remember) processor and a gigabyte of ram and it takes the game 5 minutes to generate everything.

What size map do you play on, and how many civs do you tend to have?  That really influences everything, as the number of individuals that the game has to generate history for can vary quite wildly.

Honestly, I haven't really had what I consider a long-term fortress yet since 2010 came out, so I tend to just make small maps that only gen to 50 years by default, just so that I can see how my mods and experiments work out.

When I want to do a serious map, I will likely do a medium-sized map (large maps are just too resource-intensive), and let it gen out to the full 1050, and probably just go make and eat dinner while it does the gen process, or else batch-create worlds so I have a selection just before I go to sleep.

[Balathustrius]

Yeah, I was generating a large region world with the default 50 civilizations.  And if it matters, I added like 20 z-levels of space between the ground and the topmost layer of caverns, so that I could dig giant defensive chasms.  I don't know if the game is generating history for all those layers of bedrock, but I guess with Dwarf Fortress you can never tell.

Large worlds with lots of civs took only a few minutes to gen on the older versions; I guess a lot has been added since then.  I don't really care how long it takes; I'm happy to let it sit for an hour if it needs to, I'm just wondering if there are any good reasons to play on an older world.

[NW_Kohaku]

Large worlds with lots of civs took only a few minutes to gen on the older versions; I guess a lot has been added since then.  I don't really care how long it takes; I'm happy to let it sit for an hour if it needs to, I'm just wondering if there are any good reasons to play on an older world.

40d only ran to 200, typically, because the game would stop when almost all the megabeasts were dead (and megabeasts were pushovers in 40d, while 2010 bronze collossi are virtually unkillable in worldgen and can single-handedly destroy whole civilizations)

Older worlds... have more history!  If you want to have more crap for your dwarves to engrave that has nothing to do with your own fort, then more history is a good thing, but if you don't care about legends mode, there's really fairly little reason to let history go past 100 years or so... it also lowers the amount of data on all the random people in your world's history, so saves are smaller (which in turn means saving and loading take less time).

[Deteramot]

One good reason is the rumor going around that the dragons you get if you stop early are babies, and thus wusses. So letting it sit longer gives you more BA Megabeasts.

Also, Elves almost always get wiped out in worldgen for me. So, y'know, that could be considered a good thing.

[NW_Kohaku]

One good reason is the rumor going around that the dragons you get if you stop early are babies, and thus wusses. So letting it sit longer gives you more BA Megabeasts.

Also, Elves almost always get wiped out in worldgen for me. So, y'know, that could be considered a good thing.

Dragons are often young because they have randomized ages, and take 1000 years to hit full maturity... that's raw-moddable fairly easily, though, if you want younger worlds.

Elves getting annihilated is generally a "bad thing", though, as it reduces your own options in the game - early on, they can bring nifty pets, and later on, you can kill them yourself for extra seiges to enjoy.  Why deny yourself the fun of elf-genocide by letting other people get all the good parts?  It's caused by having useless weapons so they get massively slaughtered in any combat they ever engage in.  You can solve it by giving them some better armor or the like.

[Shrugging Khan]

GAAAH. Bronze Colossi. Caves.

No wonder my civilisations die out way quickly...I have hundreds of caves :<

[ILikePie]

What size map do you play on, and how many civs do you tend to have?  That really influences everything, as the number of individuals that the game has to generate history for can vary quite wildly.

I always generate the default large island (no modifications at all), and ever since I moved over to using Gentoo, it generates them at lightning speeds. My Windows machine is far more powerful (1.8ghz duo core with 2 gigs of ram) and takes about an hour to generate the same map. Sometimes it also crashes in the process.

[Noble Digger]

End_year = 419
This leaves you with a 420 embark. +++++++

[NW_Kohaku]

I always generate the default large island (no modifications at all), and ever since I moved over to using Gentoo, it generates them at lightning speeds. My Windows machine is far more powerful (1.8ghz duo core with 2 gigs of ram) and takes about an hour to generate the same map. Sometimes it also crashes in the process.

Hmm... maybe there's something going on that involves sub-optimal code in the windows versions, then?  It does seem to take longer to generate worlds now than it used to, after all, and most of the additional layers of stone shouldn't take that much effort to model once the history part (which seems to take most of the time) starts.

[Deteramot]

I think, and don't quote me on this, that Linux has less "underneath" processes happening. Windows, at least on my computer, generally has about thirty processes which are required for Windows to run stably and not spiral into a death fall of death-filled death (I need a better Thesaurus). I haven't used Linux as an operating system in about five years, so I'm not sure what the subliminal processes look like.

[Lightman]

I always generate the default large island (no modifications at all), and ever since I moved over to using Gentoo, it generates them at lightning speeds. My Windows machine is far more powerful (1.8ghz duo core with 2 gigs of ram) and takes about an hour to generate the same map. Sometimes it also crashes in the process.

Can you give the specs on the two machines? Are you using the same output mode on both? (2D SDL? Or?)

[Funk]

1000 then i check when things got dul and regen stoping there.