Umm... No aquifers, no economy, do you guys want to limit dwarf numbers to 100? That way we'll get all the features and not so much lag. (due to migrations we'll probably go slightly over 100)
No economy—check. It sounds incredibly annoying, even aside from its extreme bugginess.
No aquifers—well, so long as we can find a site with a good river. But that's an embark thing, not an init option.
Dwarf limits—I would say more like 120, 140, if you want to move it down from 200. My most recent fort (which has, alas, hit an extremely annoying crash) has over 150, and I still frequently need more labour to get things done fast
Children... change to 5/10% since they... lag if you have lots married and they go over pop limit. Um.... anything else? I'll post more if I think of them. Weather? Does anyone care if muddy pools are filled? I don't really if we embark on soil, and weather slows down the game a little as well. As long as we have a river we should be fine, right? If all else fails just build a well. 
Children I generally set at 20/20%, which, thus far, has led to me having 3 children and 3-5 babies (I forget exactly) in the aforementioned 160-dwarf fort.
I think each of us should be free to turn weather on and off as we please; it affects little enough that I think that should be determined by our individual desires for reduced lag.
Um...if you don't have a river, and you don't have an aquifer, what are you going to build a well
to? The cavern lakes??
So I'm assuming there will be 2 zip files to be shared, one is the initial newb pack that includes DF and all the nice init graphics dinit stuff set already so we can all use the same *if we want to* and if you like something else you can change it yourself. And the other zip being saves that are passed around. This way, most players will probably be playing with the same init and stuff, just to make things easier.
I can certainly pack up the game itself, with Ironhand graphics, and our chosen set of init options into a separate zip file to make available to those without a strong preference for something else.
