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[NW_Kohaku]

Or they only have access to pig iron because they traded for it from humans who had access to iron, but they didn't trade for iron itself.  In reality, a few dozen bars of pig iron is the only kind of iron your entire civilization has.

[Nirreln]

I'd say it's an over correction for the previous 31. versions. I generated three random worlds using the the medium and small region(the first two are the small regions and the last is medium) preset in the advanced world generator and this is the result.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Carrock]

Relying on goblinite isn't always a good idea. The ones turning up at my fort are all equipped with copper armour and copper or silver armour. But I've got flux and haematite, and the magma isn't far down (although I'd got through enough trees to annoy a whole elf civilisation before realising that). Conflicts have been depressingly one-sided, apart from the time my small squad decided to take a "See you!" approach to the militia commander charging the enemy on her own.

"Shallow metal(s)" with flux stone not below it very often seems to mean some form of iron ore.

[Hyndis]

I use a prospecting mod (can break down junkstone with a % chance to find metal in the junkstone) so this doesn't really affect me, but it would be nice for metals to be more plentiful AND/OR for trade to be able to properly redistribute resources.

Local scarcity does not matter if you can import stuff from abroad. If its locally scarce and you cannot import it in quantities that matter then it really just doesn't exist. If adamantine is more common than steel you have a problem. 

[Skivverus]

If adamantine is more common than steel, odds are you've been digging for it specifically and ignoring your caravans and goblinite.

Besides, if you don't have goblinite, it means the goblins don't have iron or steel either, and so you're not exactly at a disadvantage there. Now, if a titan or forgotten beast shows up, you might be in a worse position, but then again, these have their own kinds of equipment-independent nastiness (particularly the latter).

[Granite26]

When you hit a cavern, make a stairwell next to that one (with an upstair rather than up/down stair to preserve the floor), channel the old stairs, and throw down a floor. 

Actually, you can construct things on the tile if you just remove the up stairs with d->z, which is slightly safer than channeling.  After that's done, you can construct a floor OR an up staircase on that spot, since a constructed up staircase includes a solid floor.

Hunh, that removes a step from the process, thanks.

I'm paranoid, I floor over the Up/Down Stairs.  Don't need to remove anything.

[Malicus]

When you hit a cavern, make a stairwell next to that one (with an upstair rather than up/down stair to preserve the floor), channel the old stairs, and throw down a floor. 

Actually, you can construct things on the tile if you just remove the up stairs with d->z, which is slightly safer than channeling.  After that's done, you can construct a floor OR an up staircase on that spot, since a constructed up staircase includes a solid floor.

Hunh, that removes a step from the process, thanks.

Actually, I don't think it does.  You still need a stairway next to there so the dwarves can GET there to do their work.

[Flaede]

When you hit a cavern, make a stairwell next to that one (with an upstair rather than up/down stair to preserve the floor), channel the old stairs, and throw down a floor. 

Actually, you can construct things on the tile if you just remove the up stairs with d->z, which is slightly safer than channeling.  After that's done, you can construct a floor OR an up staircase on that spot, since a constructed up staircase includes a solid floor.

Hunh, that removes a step from the process, thanks.

Actually, I don't think it does.  You still need a stairway next to there so the dwarves can GET there to do their work.

Barring digging ramps, we used to have to contrive to drop dwarves down z levels and have them build up. That isn't so anymore, since we got the "can build down" thing in place of letting down rope ladders. I'll admit, I'm not sure if it allows building "up" stairs at the bottom of a stack. It may only allow up/down stairs, but I think it allows you to build either.

[Supercharazad]

I just outfit my soldiers in adamantine.

Then again, I only ever have a single soldier to gaurd my entrance...

[Sutremaine]

If adamantine is more common than steel, odds are you've been digging for it specifically and ignoring your caravans and goblinite.

The first point, yes, the second, not necessarily. Digging a shaft straight down and sealing it off or diverting it as necessary is very quick, and once you find magma you get a huge revealed area (should be smaller really) plus the knowledge of where to put the next terrain-revealing shaft.

I brought along two Adequate miners to a 3x3 site, and they had it mapped at the start of mid-summer with the working area being 150z down and partially undiggable. With a 'proper' embark it would have been a little slower due to having my attention not 100% on the miners, but finding adamantine before the first caravan is not unreasonable. Digging it out is another matter, although a build with several military dwarves and a Proficient armour / weaponsmith with a liking for adamantine would be an interesting (if extraordinarily dangerous) exercise in bootstrapping.

[lotopius]

I just tried a fortress in .19.
I have to say there is definitely not enough metal.
I've only played .18 so I might be biased a little; but average metal quantity should be upped; even with a caravan arc starting.
First of all, having civilisation withought ANY access to metal already rules the current setting as not viable.
Then comes the concept of realism. Compared to real life, .19 maybe doesn't require to have ores more available, but really I doubt it means that it can't (actually, screw that; you KNOW there aught to be more ores if you dig down to hell itself.)
Then comes balance and the rule of fun. From my experience it seems that there is both little ore variety and quantity, or an outright huge amount of 1 type of ore (relatively speaking; might still be less than in .18). Now the concept of "getting metal from caravans" is fine, but entailing it to also mean being 100% dependant on caravans is a big no just from a balance point of view.
Furthermore, we are dwarves. Dwarves cut trees, dig down to magma, mine ore, play with magma and make metal stuff: that's what we do. Rule of fun states we should be able to do it with if we want to. Having no ore is an immediate impediment. The absence of metal on an embark or civilisation is reasonable if it occurs MUCH less frequently than a reasonable presence of metal on those embarks/civilisation.
That being said, .18 ore are a little too varied for both balance and rule of fun. If I had been an experienced player during 0.18, I would had advocated a small reduction of ore variety available on an embark, even if it requires an increase in quantity.
Ore quantity is in my opinion less of an issue, especially regarding rule of fun; knowing you have a finite amount and having to make do with it is important; but since you can melt the whole thing anyways and do something else, I think quantity should be used as an upper limit to discourage and avoid utter cheating rather than a component of carefull management.
I however am in favor or oreless/nearly oreless embarks, but I think they have a more "accidental" chance of occuring; like making up around 10% of the world map and distributes in a random fashion, so that if a player actually looks for it, he can find it; and if you embark at random, you have a chance ending up with no ores available to spice things up.

tl;dr
Need more different ores embarks, not to the point of 0.18 because that ruins the fun, but enough to let the player do thing with metal if he wants to and not be forced to rely on a caravan if he wants to do a reasonable project.
Keep around 10% of worldgen oreless, including a civ from time to time, so that you can end up on a metal-less embark and have to find ways around it.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

i also want to be able to embark somewhere where there is absolutely no metal, i'm having more fun that way.
the answer isn't upping the availability of metals, but to provide more information at the embark screen

[Vamyr]

But after some forts where I didn't even find ANY iron ore on sites that do have shallow&deep metal I find that the system is seriously borked.
Toyed around a bit with df hack to get a look at some sites and what I noticed: Entire layers are full with gem clusters but devoid of any ore. If there is any ore, you'll only see one type over entire layers, sometimes you have luck and there are two different ores.
There's that pretty embark on shallow/deep/flux and all I have are the top layers full of limonite veins - nothing else. Not a single vein of any coal, no bauxite or other regular findings. Deeper down are ten layers with nothing but gems, then some layers with tetrahedrite start - and only tetrahedrite. The odd cluster of Microcline is there, too. Deeper down some Galena mixes with the tetrahedrite, which vanishes further down where only Galena is found. Further down you get the usual blue fun and the Galena was replaced with gold.
So, there's a 6*6 embark and you have 5 different metal ores, nothing else except a handful rutile and some microcline/orpiment. Not a single case, since I get that on every embark. Toying around in the world editor with said scarcity just increases the amount of veins, not the variability.

I find that really, really odd.
That being said, I like the approach to make metals more valuable by making them scarcer. But being restricted to a couple of ores? Don't like that, even if you could already trade "sensibly" for other ores. Making a handful dominant and the others rare - null problemo, but the reality now seems... dull and frustrating.

[Sirdrake]

But after some forts where I didn't even find ANY iron ore on sites that do have shallow&deep metal I find that the system is seriously borked.
Toyed around a bit with df hack to get a look at some sites and what I noticed: Entire layers are full with gem clusters but devoid of any ore. If there is any ore, you'll only see one type over entire layers, sometimes you have luck and there are two different ores.
There's that pretty embark on shallow/deep/flux and all I have are the top layers full of limonite veins - nothing else. Not a single vein of any coal, no bauxite or other regular findings. Deeper down are ten layers with nothing but gems, then some layers with tetrahedrite start - and only tetrahedrite. The odd cluster of Microcline is there, too. Deeper down some Galena mixes with the tetrahedrite, which vanishes further down where only Galena is found. Further down you get the usual blue fun and the Galena was replaced with gold.
So, there's a 6*6 embark and you have 5 different metal ores, nothing else except a handful rutile and some microcline/orpiment. Not a single case, since I get that on every embark. Toying around in the world editor with said scarcity just increases the amount of veins, not the variability.

I find that really, really odd.
That being said, I like the approach to make metals more valuable by making them scarcer. But being restricted to a couple of ores? Don't like that, even if you could already trade "sensibly" for other ores. Making a handful dominant and the others rare - null problemo, but the reality now seems... dull and frustrating.

Just because it says shallow/deep metal theres like a 30% chance to get iron

[Vamyr]

Noticed that. The distribution of the different ore just seems strange. Like 5 different ores per embark is wonky, given the amount of different ones. And I'm not speaking of the "good ones", I'm speaking of all of them. There are 11 different special stones/ores in sedimentary alone, and you only get one type in all layers?
It doesn't make any sense to find all of them in roughly equal quantities, of course. But no variety at all? Kind of kills the game for me. Hopefully this'll get some attention in the next updates. No problem to trade (in a sensible system, i.e not as it is now) for economic stones. But the stones whose main purpose basically were to get some spots of colour into the mountain should come back in force.