'Emeraldroad'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not sure how popular these kinds of log posts are anymore but I'm going to make one anyway. I just recently got back into Dwarf Fortress after about a year's hiatus. I'm liking allot of the new changes and I even updated my tileset so I could get the most out of it.I already tried out a couple of other forts so I've gotten back into the groove. With my last one I left as many things set to default as possible, just so I could get a good feel for how it's supposed to be played. Well screw that! Having over 150 dwarves, dozens of dwarflings, and countless monster slayers wandering around my caverns gets pretty overwhelming pretty fast.So for this fortress I'm going back to my normal play-style. I cranked population down to 50 with a strict cap of 60, so I should end up with a manageable number of useful dwarves with a few babbies and dwarflings wandering around playing make-believe. I also set a cap on visitors to 4, although this setting seems pretty meaningless in it's current implementation so I'll probably be spending a lot of time kicking these guys out of my fortress. I didn't mess with aquifers or anything as I sometimes actually use them, although I haven't successfully pierced one since several versions back. I usually just try to get a neighboring biome that doesn't have an aquifer to try to get around them. Not this time, though.So onto world generation. I cut down on the number of sites to make history run a little faster, plus I noticed when playing adventure mode these sites tend to saturate allot of the map so having a few less sounds ideal for my tastes. I also made minerals frequent, which is what I generally set it to.Hit 'enter' and after a few minutes of history generation I end up with... Xesosurza, "The Everlasting Domain". We'll see just how everlasting it is. Looks cool, though.World details image:I don't usually bother with legends at this stage as I like to leave allot of that a mystery, so it's straight onto prepping my embark.I found this nice forested area next to a stream. No aquifer so I won't have to worry about that. Besides, some of the areas I was looking over were giving me inconsistent aquifer information so I decided it would be best to just avoid them altogether.I was considering this desert area on the south-eastern part of the world but I didn't like that it was in a freezing biome. It's not that I don't think I could handle it, but I just prefer warm climates. Purely psychological, I know.Anyway, this place seems better. Deep metals, flux stone if I happen to run into iron (probably won't), access to all the major civs so goblin raids could be a thing. Plenty of trees so I might get some of those nice fruity beverages out of them. Time to prepare for my journey carefully!I don't usually nickname my dwarves but I decided to make an exception this time. I picked their names based on the things they like. For instance Dark Sun likes obsidian and sunstone, Tigress likes tiger leather, and Dr. Pepper likes plum wine, you know, because Dr. Pepper is made from prune juice. Bet you didn't know that! Dagon and Cthulhu both have a thing for tentacly sea creatures. Heaven just really likes pretty things like flowers and clear crystals. Finally Snake Eater likes helmet snakes for their heads, but hates fire snakes. So kind of a love/hate relationship there.I also gave them custom professions and marked them with asterisks so I know that they're founders. "Miner" and "Farmer" are pretty straight forward but "Woods Dwarf" includes woodcutting, carpentry, as well as some skill in using axes as weapons. So if I get in a scuffle early on at least I know a couple of dwarves will be able to defend themselves. "Stone Smith" includes masonry and engineering, because I always find myself needing some mechanicking early on.Nothing too non-standard with the equipment. Got rid of the useless stuff and added some leather for those occasional moods that "MUST HAVE LEATHER!"For the group name I chose "Silver Hammer" with a screaming war hammer as the symbol. And for the name I settled on "Emeraldroad" of course, in case you didn't see the thread title. Time to hit 'e'!So this is about what I was expecting. Lots of trees. Looks like some sand so that's good. With all the trees I could easily start a clear glass industry. The trees are almost all fruit trees including apple, cherry, sandpear, and peach. I'm already getting thirsty just thinking about it.Lots of bamboo too. I'm honestly not quite sure if I can do anything with that. I'll have to look into it. Paper maybe? Or am I thinking of Minecraft?No random creatures wandering around as of yet. I did notice some signs of lignite in the sides of the nearby hill. Fuel for furnaces certainly won't be an issue. Well, time to unpause and see what I can make of this place. I'll post a new update once I get a little bit established, or of something !!fun!! happens.