It helps, when trying to save a dwarven civilization if you have a world that has areas of land which are islands, cutoff from the nasty goblins, humans and elves that are trying to wipe out your dwarves.  The older world didn't have that, so I spent some time mucking with parameters to get more low-lying ground, more oceans / large lakes, and more cutoff bits of land.


Lots of little cutoff bits spread around.  And at least a few of them have iron ore, which is one of the requirements for establishing an impregnable mountain home for the dwarves.

Here are the basic details for the world:

Eras
Age of Myth (-1 - 129)
Age of Legends (130 - 400)

Civilizations: 24
Dwarves: 4
- The Corridor of Blazes
- The Ropes of Work
- The Dagger of Scribing
- The Banners of Speaking
Elves: 5
- The Confining Beach
- The Glen of Compassion
- The Invisible Leaf
- The Stones of Breath
- The Sensitive Thunder
Goblins: 5
- The Curse of Dreams
- The Elevated Dread
- The Hex of Roughness
- The Skinny Hell
- The Roasted Cruelty
Humans: 5
- The Secretive Kingdom
- The Stormy Nation
- The Vermilion Realms
- The Mint Kingdom
- The Blotted Confederations
Kobolds: 5
- Dafalakidus
- Shluguporsnis
- Fuflayker
- Klobotogis
- Pradakathleegus

Populations are:

6325 Dwarves
8327 Humans
11118 Elves
70941 Goblins
1374 Kobolds

All four of the dwarven civs are playable in fortress mode for year 400, but two of them (Ropes of Work and Dagger of Scribing) have no sites left and are refugees.  The Ropes of Work had all of their remaining sites taken over in 167-168 and Dagger of Scribing lost one of their two sites to a dragon in year 44 and goblins took the original site in 189.  The remaining dwarves are evenly split between the other two civs.

Both of those dwarven civs are good possibilities for "savior" forts where we embark and try to grow the civs back to 200+ dwarves each.  It could be a very difficult embark as we will be stuck with the starting seven for a very long time, with the possibility of zero migrants or caravans.

Ropes of Work has an active war with the goblins, so they are probably at greater risk of extinction.

The first possible location is in the Swamps of Coloring.  This is on an island in the middle of the map.


A 5x4 embark in the upper right corner will cover (2) biomes.  One is the Swamps of Coloring.


The other is Mire of Requiring.


Both have aquifiers, which means I'm going to have to learn how to pierce one to get below ground.  But they have heavy forests, sand, clay, and very deep soil as well as metals and flux stone.  The DFHack pre-embark prospect looks promising with Copper, Silver and Iron ores as well as Marble for flux stone.  Hopefully all of those are present when it comes time to embark for real.


Even if they aren't there, it does provide evidence that there are those metals in that area of the world and a location nearby might provide them.  I'm risking a 5x4 embark size and hoping that getting to 200-250 dwarves doesn't result in FPS death.  Invasions and thieves will be a non-issue due to the isolation of being on an island, but there will be other challenges.
  • Possibly no migrants, ever.
  • Possibly no dwarven caravan, ever.
  • Ocean is nearby (but in the embark area), so possibly no fresh water until I hit the caverns.  Or setup a sealed, smoothed, cistern, which has never been polluted by salt water.
  • Definitely no human or elven caravans.  The only plants I will be able to grow is what I can find on-site or bring as seeds.
  • Piercing the aquifier may be exceedingly difficult (fortunately, there are lots of trees).
  • Hostile wildlife is a strong possibility, although this is a neutral area on the less savage side of the scales.
We can carry the war back to the goblins once the Ropes of Work have a fortress!

I'm going with a rather minimal set of embark supplies.  I've gone through every possible surface crop available and will pack along five of each type that produces seeds.  That way I can get a crop rotation up quickly at the start, just in case the aquifer prevents me from farming underground.



For livestock, I am bringing the usual assortment, but have scaled back in some areas so that I can be sure of bringing a breeding pair of pigs.  Each pig has a 25% chance of being sterile or asexual, with three pigs the odds that all three males (or females) will be sterile drops to about 1.6%.  Having only two of each meant a 6.2% chance of one of the genders not having a breed capable pig.  There's still about a 3.2% chance that I will get unlucky with one of the two genders.

Because of the cost of supplies, the starting seven dwarves only have a single point of Discipline.  All of their other skills will have to be learned on-site.








Four females, three males.

All refugees...

On a deserted semi-tropical island...

After what was probably a three hour boat ride from the mainland...