How does the world seed work?

[Topper]

I seem to get a lot of repeat names/words with the random button for world seed so I'm just randomly typing letters in now. It would help if I knew what the letters actually stand for. Does length matter? If a put a "1" at the end or the beginning does that significantly change the world ? Is there a set of letters I want to lean towards to generate particular climates?

[Bozobub]

I'm under the impression that you're just generating a seed for a pseudorandom number generator.  So the same set of characters will duplicate a given world but it's not like the individual characters "mean" anything, of themselves.

But I could be wrong ^^' .

[Hans Lemurson]

Any seed that contains the character 'q' is going to have mineral deposits that are exactly prime numbers in size.

[NinjaDiscoJew]

Any seed that contains the character 'q' is going to have mineral deposits that are exactly prime numbers in size.

ThAt's crAzy, are there any other letters that do something simular to this?

[yannisk]

Any seed that contains the character 'q' is going to have mineral deposits that are exactly prime numbers in size.

Really? That sounds interesting. I'll give it a try.

[Bozobub]

Is that worm delicious?

[Topper]

still seeking answers..if I generate the world "bubbles" does changing it to "bubb1es" get me more boreal tundra spots with large rivers and roads?

[Bozobub]

Folks, it's just a random number seed.  You can (mostly*) duplicate a given world by copying the seed, and you can start in almost exactly the same situation each time, but the individual digits/characters have no inherent meaning beyond this.  You've been had.
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*Rivers, roads, resource locations within the starting map, and faction names/relations/encampments/settlements will vary.

[kubolek01]

World Generator uses given value to make complicated calculations on this and give yhe result in world. It works same in almost any game using RNG for world, Minecraft for example.

[BlueWinds]

To put a little differently, since no one's actually said it in plain words yet: Changing any one character is effectively changing the whole thing. The world created by "fish" is completely unrelated to "fish1" and "f1sh", same as it's unrelated to "pandaaaaaas".

[Topper]

Plain answers was what I was hoping for. What changes from fish to fish1? Am I improving or making worse the chance for a world with characteristics I desire.

[Bozobub]

It's a random number seed.  That IS the plainest answer possible.  It's used to generate the intial value that's plunked into a random number generator and varied pseudorandomly to generate the final value.  Since it's "pseudorandom", however, the same initial value will generate the same results every time, but the individual characters merely change the initial input number, or "seed"; they have no real significance otherwise.

[Apposl]

Basically you're saying roll the dice on creating this world XXX times, where X is a letter. The letter doesn't mean anything. It's just saying roll a dice for a result here, and then see if there's another letter to roll dice on, and so on down the line. The word/seed/letter combination *is* something that is saved and repeatable though. XXX is as different as 333 or XX3 or 3XX, but the result of those letter combinations remains roughly the same if you put them in again at a later world generation date.

[Apposl]

Plain answers was what I was hoping for. What changes from fish to fish1? Am I improving or making worse the chance for a world with characteristics I desire.

Neither, you're just saying roll some generative dice an additional time, mix the pot a little bit more. And if you like the way that mix turns out, you can always re-use that word "recipe" again for roughly the same result.