One of the negative feedback I have about this otherwise great game is the terrain management. Tools are rudimentary and the islands are limited and deformed. Generally, you'll have 'pockets' of land connected by small alleyways. Which can make for a difficult time building. Add in the aweful elevation restrictions and this game can become a nightmare.

Here's a great example. There is absolutely no reason why this shouldn't fit there but there is, they call it terrain constraint. IE; elevation.







So, with time, I came up with a few simple ways of reducing frustration of building on these very restrictive islands.

In most zoo people have experienced, they will have pathways going around the pens so the public can go around and have better viewing. In this game, we have viewing galleries and that's all that matters. Visitors do not contribute viewing stats to pathways so therefore, the less pathways you have, the better.

Instead of building and trying to cramp buildings around enclosures, build a pathway in the middle of the 'pockets' so that said 'pocket' is split in 2. This way, you can have multiple pens straddling your walkways and you can snug building next to each other in the middle, increasing coverage. Just make sure your viewing galleries are well connected and offers a good view of the exhibits.

Casual players might want to build this way but this will spread your buildings appart making it more difficult to cover efficiently.

Instead, use a central pathway and push your enclosures to the side.

Or, if you don't have the room for 2 sides, push everything on one side so you only have to use one pathway. It's the same principle. This will centralize your coverage and make for better ratings in the end.

The most frustrating aspect of this game, for me, as been trying to place down buildings. The islands are very restrictive and the elevations makes it even more challenging. After spending countless hours destroying and leveling the terrain and destroying again and leveling again and destroying and leveling, I started flattening the area I wanted to build on first. That changed my whole experience.

If you build your pathways in the center of the 'pockets' like I suggested, it is very easy to clip buildings next to each other on the pathway and not lose any space to elevation restritions. You can push your elevation problems to your enclosures. Dinos don't care about elevation or hills neither does trees. Only water needs to be flat but dinos needs very little water so that shouldn't be a problem. If you don't have enough room for water in your enclosure, it's a good indication it's too small.

I usually don't put much thought into it. I just drop a creation lab and flatten everything to that creation lab and push any elevation problems to the enclosures. Once the pen is closed up and completed, I just smooth everything to a nice gentle slope so I don't have any problems driving around with my jeeps.

Work in progress.

You want to level your construction area and push the elevation to your enclosures.

The creation labs are large and offer absolutely no benefits other than creating dinos. However, they are the release point of any dino you will hatch so it is a good idea to have some galleries covering the release area and have water and food close by.

If you use my center path technique, and you've flatten the ground so everything snug together perfectly, you can easily have a creation lab on each side of the 'pocket' garnished with stores, viewing galleries and management buildings AND have plenty of room to carve up nice pens for a large population on both side of the pathway.

Going one step futher, you can split each side into 2 enclosures. Having less creation lab minimizes your operational cost, maintenance load and electric usage while maximizing your living space.

Closed creation lab release setup.

Just open the gate for the pen you want the dino you hatched in. Even use helicopters to knock them out and bring them to another enclosure if you please. Just don't forget about them. As long as there is food/water nearby, your dino will come out of there running like a kid after ice cream when you open the gate.



One creation lab for 2 enclosures.



One creation lab for 3 enclosures. NB, use of helicopter strongly recommended.



It is a little slower this way to populate empty enclosures but the benefits outweight the disadvantages. Once your pens will be populated, your creation labs are mostly idle and are a waste of ressources. Again, the less the better. I usually have a large enclosure with the very social herbivores like the edmonton, the cory, galli, strat, few diplo, paras, ect. It is a good idea to have a dedicated lab just for that one maybe but that's it. All my other labs manages 2-3 enclosures.

Something very important in the game that people neglect is the monorail. If you do not have a good monorail system, your rating will suffer drastically. Not only does your monorail manage transportation of visitors, it also acts as a viewing source. Thus you are losing both transportation stats and viewing stats at the same if not properly built.

I usually build stations at the edge of the 'pockets' on each, every, sides. They don't take alot of room and I usually have no problems fitting them in corners of 'pockets'.

However, I feel this is trivial. What I think is most important to your park is NOT going from point A to point B with the monorail. instead, you want to straddle your monorail all over your enclosures so that you get the extra viewing stats. There is no congestion or traffic data of the monorail. Visitors don't seem to care if it takes 4 hours going from one station to another. You can have a monorail that goes 4 times around your whole island before getting to the terminal, they just don't seem to care.

So like the pathways should be used to a minimum, the monorail line should be going all over the place, specifically over your enclosures. Think of it has a mobile viewing platform.

Examples;




About the monorail; Did you know you could connect your pathways with the monorails? However, like power, if the station breaks down, it will disconect everything down the line. So it might be best to still connect your park throught out because, unlike stations, the pathways don't break down.

Hope this helps. GLHF