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[DarkMagnus]

There are so many different things that can make fortress life easier. What are your most needed features in new sites?

I'd say iron is important, with some flux... Sometimes magma seems like more of a hassle than it's worth, but having an entire layer of obsidian makes housing much easier. Trees are always nice, but it's so easy to request a thousand logs from humans and elves (and they're so friggin' cheap) it's generally simple enough to bring a couple with you for beds and be set until year 2.

One of my big things are low cliffs, actually. I really enjoy being able to see the entire ground level on one or two z-levels, it makes fighting off sieges (and planning defense) so much easier.

I just hate when you find a location with all of what you need save for one feature. I just found a freshwater marsh/mountain that had a two z-level ground (split right across the middle, incredibly easy to navigate) was Serene/Calm, had trees, an underground river and a large underground chasm, plus loads of adamantine, bauxite, flux... and no iron ore whatsoever. Kind of a dealbreaker.

[Aqizzar]

I absolutely must have sand.  I started making glass in my past few forts, and I love the way it looks.  Naturally magma is high on my list of priorities, but I've recently tried going back to basics and just starting somewhere good looking without using Prospector.

I like having lots of cliffs and Z-levels.  I've got a beefy enough computer that pathfinding isn't a problem, but mostly because I like having half my ore-searching duty done for me.  And making baroque cliff-face fortresses.  Ironically, I seem to have terrible luck finding iron ores.  And the only fort I've found a big magnetite cluster lost the whole starting team in the first year to a kobold ambush...

[Derakon]

Magma, water, and (ideally) sand in a 3x3 or smaller area. I actually don't care so much about iron ore, as iron becomes readily available once the goblins start invading, which they do en masse by year 2 at the latest in my version of the game. I do tend to avoid some types of stone (e.g. Puddingstone, Conglomerate, Gabbro) mainly because I think they look/sound lame. Eh, personal prejudices, go fig.

Flatness is also important to me, as it makes logistics simpler. I prefer to get my water from brooks than from aquifers if I can manage it, too.

[Tamren]

areas with flux layers tend to have oodles of bituminous coal and iron ore.

[Helmaroc]

I avoid magma and I am not one to build amazing magma tubes and such into my forts.

Basic Fort Requirements:
Flowing water source (brook or river)
Plenty of trees
At least one easily accessible soil layer

Everything else just depends on what I plan on building.

[THLawrence]

Does anyone know what the parameters will be for the new drawing tool? What exactly can we control when creating a new map? This may lead to it being much easier to find that perfect location.

[Jamuk]

I usually start in swampy areas, the lack of ore in the upper layers makes getting inside and building the main structure extremely fast, and farming is easier too that way, no irrigation.  I'll generally look for swamps bordering the mountains.

[Jack A T]

A permanent water source, rocks, and no aquifier.

[Metalax]

Sand. It's pretty much the only thing you can't import or work around. Secondary features that will help determine which sand site I'll pick are underground water feature, for the tower-caps and underground shrubbery, and either magma or a heavily forested area. A chasm/pit of some sort is useful if I'm going to be doing any large scale waterworks but not absolutely necessary. Similarly HFS is fun if it's present but not really necessary for my forts. I tend to go for areas with good levels of vegetation as well so that my herbalist can feed the fort for several years on his own before real farms become necessary.

Some or all of the above can be disregarded for certain challenge forts of course.

[grelphy]

Generally I only insist on evil. Beyond that, I go for trees or lava (slight preference for lava, but whatever), sand and flux layers (with accompanying fucktons of magnetite) and a permanent water source (haunted stream/river full of undead fish is ideal; aquifer less so, but manageable). Anything else is icing.

[Eiba]

I too am addicted to glass. I absolutely love the dark-cyan color of clear glass, and tend to use it to make elaborate constructions. I can't recall my last fortress that didn't chiefly export glass goblets for the first few years.

Also: Underground water features and some sort of water source. I'm at a loss as to what to do with my legendary miner after digging out my functional fortress if not turn every level below the water source into layer upon layer of gigantic towercap nurseries.

Along those lines- a way to drain the water- that is, a chasm or pit of some sort. I've rigged up an elaborate pumping system to drain water off the edge of the map (on the surface) once before, and I never want to do it again.

That's it for features (the magma requirement is a given).

I have, however, become addicted to really, really small fortresses after playing in a 2x2 featureless haunted forest (for the silver barb dye and phantom spider silk), and playing at 100 fps, even when I had ~50 dwarves! After several control tests (starting otherwise identical maps with rivers, magma vents, cliffs and the like), I found that high cliffs and larger play areas are hundreds of times more important to the fps than temperature, weather, or units. (Flows are just about as influential if there's something up, but as long as they're stable they're generally fine.)

Basically, my fortresses now have to be 2x2 with no more than 3 or 4 Z levels on the surface. They also have to have sand, plenty of trees, magma, and an underground water feature/chasm (preferably the end of a cave river).

Once you've found that fortress tell me, as I'd love to start playing again. It's actually pretty easy to find such a site without the water feature/chasm, but since those types of things only show up under mountain tiles... Well... I've been looking for a while.

[Surma]

Yeah, I think you're going to have some difficulty squeezing all that into a 2x2, basically you'd have to have magma on one square, chasm/u.g. river on one, forest (or heavily tree infested) on one and it'd need to be fairly FLAT to boot... it's possible but... anyway good luck.

As for me, I prefer smaller maps no larger than 4x4 (or <= 16 total map tiles) with magma, sand, and permanent water. Everything else (including mountains and the accompanying 'features') is icing on my green glass cake.

[Jetman123]

Mountanous area, water of some sort, some soil for planting subterranean crops, and lots of iron. Flux is nice but unncessary - I find iron stuff works just as well. Steel weapons are always welcome. I find glass to be more of a hassle than it's worth, so sand is definitely low on the priority list. I can never seem to find it near the good sites anyway. I also prefer brooks, they're great for catching mussels.

[SmileyMan]

Magma + sand + river/aquifer*.  Recently I've been enjoying building surface forts with enclosed farms to have more crop variety.  Once the goblins turn up, with the magma you can melt and remelt armour and weapons until everything is masterpiece.

* - you can get below the aquifer by digging through the obsidian next to the magma.

[Frobozz]

I suppose I still count as a newbie, but I prefer similarly-sized areas to the of Surma. I've actually got a world gen I really like with a fortress spot I just love. Totally flat with four layers of soil one of them being sand. All three rock layers promise a slew of various gem types and so far that's proven correct with gems being found any and everywhere I've dug. I'll put up the seed and a picture of the location if anyone is interested.

[WORLD_GEN]
[TITLE:STANDARD]
[SEED:122833599]
[DIM:257:257]