What makes an area easier then another

I found one of the easiest ways to simplify the game without hacking or removing many sources of Fun is to lower the population cap. I found that once my fortress grew to 100 dwarves or beyond, I couldn't figure out how to manage all of them and keep them working productive jobs. So instead they all just sat around throwing parties and pestering my productive dwarves. Until you get enough experience to handle a fortress that size, try lowering the cap to 40 or 50 dwarves.

To do this in v0.31.08, edit data/init/d_init.txt and change the value of this line:

[POPULATION_CAP:200]

Note: your actual population may still go above the cap you set, you just stop getting new immigrant waves after you reach or surpass that cap. And apparently births don't respect caps. Also I think (but I haven't tested) that you can change this mid-game if you save and quit first.

If you want to use the tileset in fullscreen mode, locate and modify the [FULLSCREENX:800], [FULLSCREENY:600], and [FULLFONT:curses_800x600.bmp] configuration lines to match the specifications from the tileset list. The FULLFONT directive should match the filename of the tileset you downloaded. If you want to use the tileset in windowed mode, search for the [WINDOWEDX:640], [WINDOWEDY:300], and [FONT:curses_640x300.bmp] lines instead, and change them to the correct values.

Source: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Tilesets

The 800 and 600 values are dependent on the size of your new graphics and the size of your screen. A tileset with 16x16 tiles will be 256x256 pixels large, and the target resolution will be 1280x400, unless you change the tile width and tile height in the same file.