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[Zombiearcher]

I'm curious as to how other people here pick their sites? What parameters do you guys use?

[itg]

I try to do something a little different every time. In my current fort I chose a site in between two (or was it three?) Necromancer towers. The previous fort was by a freezing ocean (The plan was to build an ice fortress, but I abandoned it because the goblins never showed up), and the one before that was in a sinister biome.

Generally, I prefer high-resource sites, although the only thing I absolutely insist upon is flux stone. I'm fine with aquifers. As for terrain, I prefer to have either a totally flat site or a site with a very steep cliff.

[wierd]

I typically generate custom worlds to get what I want.

Set min volcano number to 10
Set X elevation variance to 600
Set Y elevation variance to 900
Poke a little at the weighted mesh for elevation to favor medium elevations
Set erosion count to 1000 cycles
Set civilizations to 50
Set titans as high as it will go

Believe it or not, that's actually somewhat stable.

I prefer:

An embark with a volcano and a sedimentary layer, that is mostly flat, has good surface vegetation, and lots of hostile neighbors.  Flux stone and metal abundance are highly desired.

Happy player dance for both sand and fireclay on the same embark, but that rarely happens.

[Dwarf Kitty]

I prefer a site with at least medium cliffs to dig into for the actual fort, but with a nice spread of flat land for early stockpiles and pasture land.

[AutomataKittay]

High drainage and a lot of rain's my preferrable embark, high drainage let me get sand or clay more often and rain encourages me to go underground since I don't like storms IRL

I usually try to pick flat embark because it's a bit frustrating to try to deal with cliffs and mountains, otherwise just normal worldgen pattern.

[Supersheepman]

I'm fairly flexible. I prefer some cliffs but it's not absolutely necessary. I like there to be no aquifer but once again I can work around that. I like to have some sort of water source but I can always pull it from murky pools and stuff.

The only things I insist upon are a good supply of metals and lots of trees.

[edgefigaro]

Savagery and good or evil. No volcano. Metals optional. Sand. Often a beach or a desert. Wind.

Typically, I am looking for a creature (giant tiger, unicorns, Ice wolf, elephant, hippos) and could care less about most of the resources the map comes with. The only thing that is going to matter is how many candy spires there are anyway, and I can trade for steel parts.

[Tevish Szat]

My favorite embarks are flat, nonevil, soil-having, sand-having, metal-having, aquifer-not-having forests.  Having running water is a plus.  Other than "no aquifers" I can deal with most of the issues, but not having a soil layer hurts a whole awful lot since it means I need to conquer a slice of caverns in order to farm, which is more important than ever with dwarves actually needing clothes.  But, when I'm feeling comfortable, I'll experiment with things like cliffs, volcanoes, evil, cold, lack of trees and so on.

[Button]

High savagery, not evil, within range of a necromancer tower, in a region with at least a breeding pair of hydras or dragons or rocs. (I find a good spot and then check it in legends mode).

[weenog]

not having a soil layer hurts a whole awful lot since it means I need to conquer a slice of caverns in order to farm

No you don't.  Dig out an area of stone and irrigate it.  If you want wild growth you do need to pierce a cavern with the plants you want, but you can pierce and then immediately seal it, your fortress is already spored.  If you just want farm plots you don't need to open the caverns at all.

[Tevish Szat]

not having a soil layer hurts a whole awful lot since it means I need to conquer a slice of caverns in order to farm

No you don't.  Dig out an area of stone and irrigate it.  If you want wild growth you do need to pierce a cavern with the plants you want, but you can pierce and then immediately seal it, your fortress is already spored.  If you just want farm plots you don't need to open the caverns at all.

True, though I'm not sure if getting some secured caverns dirt wouldn't be easier than managing irrigation.

[weenog]

Small-scale irrigation is easy.  Spill water on stone once and it will be muddied, and stay that way until you build a construction on it.  You don't have to re-irrigate yearly or anything.  If you can't get the water to flow there, just put a place to stand above the area you want to irrigate, and use a pond activity zone to have dwarfs try to fill it, dumping water on from a bucket.

Large-scale irrigation is a little trickier as you need to account for evaporation as water stretches across huge distances, but the principle is the same.

[kero42]

I don't really have any specific parameters, but I prefer to have a source of water on  the surface, usually a river. I prefer my land flat to accommodate my hate of slopes above ground (it makes keeping track of migrants hard for me if they keep pathing over zigzagging slopes, such as hills). I sometimes like to embark on caves, in hope that I will one day hit cave that leads to a flat cavern to finally try a cavern fort with adorable hostage pet plumphelmet men waddling about. I suppose I like to have many types of trees available for beds and other miscellaneous building tasks, and mainly embark on safe-ish neutral areas with a temperate climate, though I sometimes go for good areas for the light wood and the joy of permanently scarring a place of such wonders. I avoid the evil areas like a plague though, mainly due to not quite being ready for undead hordes and evil weather yet. Lastly, I prefer most of the underground layers used to be made from one material, and cant stand finding non-matching veins in my dining rooms.

[kingubu]

I love aquifers.  Also I try to embark across as many biomes as possible.  And some trees at least on part of the embark.  Rationing wood sucks.

Lately I've been embarking by the ocean.  The waves are nice.  And I don't like rivers.

I like warm to hot embarks.  Freezing water annoys me.  And I always embark on the main continent, because if I don't kill a goblin every so often, I get twitchy.  I like the elves to show up too.  I think of them as the roving garbage collectors.  Like that guy from Futurama with the accent, and pointy ears.

I like a flat spot to dig a moat for my first defenses.

[deepdowner]

As a newplayer I flock towards rich embark points: WOOD, no aquifier, metal(s) shallow and deep.
Oh and a river, always a river.

I just started my first volcano embark, 3x5 with cliffs to dig into, shallow metals, deep metals, woodland, clay, sand, start of a river, the right 1/3 is flat, and savage (giant louse men etc).

Next civs are dwarves, gobbos humans and elves.

Nothing lacking I think?