My suggestion is you play around with the raws that affect world generation. You get heaps more sites which match your expectations. You can change advanced worldgen params, or do modding. I won't cover the params, but these are the modding things I have tried, amongst others:-
- Remove AQUIFER tags from all substances. So all sites are aquifer-free. No more site rejections just on this quality, ever.
- Remove all soil types which are not sand or clay - guaranteed of getting either one, or both.
I have done both of these, and my enjoyment has increased dramatically. I like having the "perfect site" with respect to available materials, and then modifying that by embarking in good/savage/evil/dry/wet/etc. terrain as desired.
I also modded:
- Kobolds to be [NOEAT] and [NODRINK] (So they don't starve in worldgen.)
- Cobaltite and Cinnabar to be iron ores. (This means that veins of iron are probably 100% likely at all sites, even if "regular" iron ores are missing entirely.)
- [PET_EXOTIC] tags are all replaced with [PET] so that the broken/missing dungeon master isn't required.
I've been very happy with this setup, though I usually only tend to play until I get up to around ~100 dwarves or so. I also modify worldgen to create larger areas of warm, moist forests, so that I have plenty of wood for bins, beds and burn. (I've recently started playing with the mesh sizes in worldgen to try and get somewhere closer to what I want, which is more forests and less grasslands, but without eliminating deserts/hills/etc.)