Franchise Community Challenge Discussion

[tigertimb]

Took me some time to put the Cat Zoo to bed - so many species meant a full trade centre.
So I added about 10 quarantines, dropped all the animals in there and set the speed to 5x slower.

That's getting to be my usual solution with a challenge zoo, with the expectation that when I come to play that zoo again, the first thing I'll do is take all the animals out of quarantine, back into the trade centre

 

[Jamiefrog]

Yeah, I was intrigued when I checked the maps to spot that the Indian Elephant was enriched by the Proboscis Monkey despite their territories not overlapping

Having taken on a big project for the last challenge, I'm keeping this one small, so using a fairly minimalist zoo, with the hope of zipping through the years
With the relative lifespans, it felt like any other animals would need far more management than the elephants themselves

Yes the zoo I'm building for this challenge has elephants as the only species I actually focus on. With their lifespan and the long wait between babies I'll be going at a faster speed than usual (I pretty much always play at 5x aging normally). But to give the guests something else to look at (and therefore getting more guests and making the zoo hopefully support itself moneywise) I'm adding a bunch of self-regulating exhibits as well as a few other habitats with long lived species (reptiles and birds mostly). But I use very few animals in them - and those are rejects from my other zoos - which means they are babies that didn't have good enough stats for me to either use them or selling them. Usually I release those immediately when they grow up but now they have somewhere to live out their lives. So they're not breeding which means I don't really have to "manage" them at all.
I have yet to add the actual elephants haha because I've been building money first, but hopefully I'll find a good balance there.

 

[Xrystal]

Took me some time to put the Cat Zoo to bed - so many species meant a full trade centre.
So I added about 10 quarantines, dropped all the animals in there and set the speed to 5x slower.

That's getting to be my usual solution with a challenge zoo, with the expectation that when I come to play that zoo again, the first thing I'll do is take all the animals out of quarantine, back into the trade centre

Ah, my handle on the zoos in general, is that the last thing I do before putting the zoo to bed until the next play through is the see if any of the animals are close enough to be replaced and do that swap over. That way nothing is needed in storage and because the zoo won't be played until the next time I choose to, they animals are safely stored .. in the zoo.

I'm currently down to about 20 animals in storage ( if memory serves ) after the big sell to get all that cash back after the basic build up. Hopefully the zoo will start making money enough to build a profit margin before adding the expensive elephants. So far the guests seemed to like spending money after adding a variety of animals and plenty of space. Definitely have that with this zoo rofl. So, just need to add those intermittent vending machines to give the thirst quenching options they are craving for rofl.

 

[Xrystal]

yes, just found another zoo ( one of my losing money A zoos rofl ) that have 11 African Elephants in .. and half are gold star so should have enough silver to get credit so, will start work on the Indian Elephant portion of the zoo so that after the challenge starts I just need to add in the elephants

 

[tigertimb]

yes, just found another zoo ( one of my losing money A zoos rofl ) that have 11 African Elephants in .. and half are gold star so should have enough silver to get credit so, will start work on the Indian Elephant portion of the zoo so that after the challenge starts I just need to add in the elephants

Whereas, I'm starting with very low stat elephants, and one fairly decent male and am now out of cc
So I've placed some in early and need to be hitting the 2nd generation before I'm expecting silvers for the challenge

 

[Xrystal]

Oh well, looks like my zoo is too expansive to be profitable .. the wages double the income so no way of making money even with selling off all males and replacing adults as soon as there are enough younglings to take over So guess a do over at some point today. Make a more compact zoo. 2 habitats 10 species and something for them to spend money on rofl.

 

[tigertimb]

Oh well, looks like my zoo is too expansive to be profitable .. the wages double the income so no way of making money even with selling off all males and replacing adults as soon as there are enough younglings to take over So guess a do over at some point today. Make a more compact zoo. 2 habitats 10 species and something for them to spend money on rofl.

So the moral is?
People are more expensive than elephants?

 

[Jamiefrog]

Whereas, I'm starting with very low stat elephants, and one fairly decent male and am now out of cc
So I've placed some in early and need to be hitting the 2nd generation before I'm expecting silvers for the challenge

Are you doing african or asian elephants? Because I don't have any grown to give you right now but if you want I'll message you when some of mine grow up for selling. We'll make sure to be online at the same time, decide a specific time I'll drop them for like 1 cc on the market for you and you'll grab them and we'll hope no one managed to snag them before you. And if they're nabbed by someone else we'll try again when I have more.
Because I'm happy to help and the last thing I need is more CC - I keep earning way more than I ever manage to spend (and I've never even tried to earn them, they just keep rolling in anyway )

 

[tigertimb]

Thank you for the offer, but I like that there's a bit of a challenge
Which was my choice, as I just spent my CC on 19 lower stat females, instead of a couple of overpriced good ones

Assuming each give birth, that gives 9 or 10 reasonable females, and 8 unwanted males:
- sell the low stat originals and the males and I'll soon have some CC and can start the loop over again

I'm sure you'll find more deserving recipients for your kindness . . .

 

[Jamiefrog]

Thank you for the offer, but I like that there's a bit of a challenge
Which was my choice, as I just spent my CC on 19 lower stat females, instead of a couple of overpriced good ones

Assuming each give birth, that gives 9 or 10 reasonable females, and 8 unwanted males:
- sell the low stat originals and the males and I'll soon have some CC and can start the loop over again

I'm sure you'll find more deserving recipients for your kindness . . .

Wanting a challenge is a mindset I totally respect.
And seems you have a good plan in mind already.

~

General tip for everyone:
If you want more offspring out of your female elephants than the several-years-long interbirth wait allows (even when you move out offspring to another habitat the wait is still long) you can move her to another zoo and she'll be able to breed immediately again.
So for this challenge if you want to go that far you could actually either set up 2 zoos and switch the females back and forth as soon as they give birth. Or you can put her in the trade center as soon as she's given birth, go to another zoo and place her there but cancel immediately so she doesn't actually leave the trade center (the game just thinks she now belongs in zoo nr 2), then go back to your challenge-zoo and place her back with her male. As long as you've removed her babies from the habitat she'll now be able to have babies immediately again.

So this method allows you to get a lot of babies out of the same female. Backside is that it seems to affect how many stars she's able to gain when you move her constantly. But since stars are not relevant for this challenge maybe you don't care.

It's quite effective, I did this when I first started out to build my elephant herds faster. Not really bothering anymore since I have plenty of elephants these days.

 

[tigertimb]

hmmm - feels like a cheat code than a strategy
but confess I do something similar when initially setting up zoo exhibits
- after they breed, send them to the trade centre and back again and they're then ready to breed again, even if they state one breeding event per lifetime
- (same thing happens between save and load)

but I also noticed similarly with the * rating. I had a bunch of 5* cheetahs after the big cat challenge, that I thought I might stash in my cheetah zoo ready for the next challenge
but once I took them to there, they were all back to 2* or 3*, so returned them to the cat zoo, where they were back to 5*, and stored them there

 

[Jamiefrog]

hmmm - feels like a cheat code than a strategy
but confess I do something similar when initially setting up zoo exhibits
- after they breed, send them to the trade centre and back again and they're then ready to breed again, even if they state one breeding event per lifetime
- (same thing happens between save and load)

but I also noticed similarly with the * rating. I had a bunch of 5* cheetahs after the big cat challenge, that I thought I might stash in my cheetah zoo ready for the next challenge
but once I took them to there, they were all back to 2* or 3*, so returned them to the cat zoo, where they were back to 5*, and stored them there

I agree it might feel a bit cheat-y, but as DrGluon says; is it really cheating if it's in the game?
I'm not likely to do it myself because I feel like I'll be overrun with elephants (because you have to put all those babies somewhere while they grow!) but might resort to it if the challenge seems to be going badly towards the end of the week and just try to handle the fallout with a billion babies haha.

 

[Xrystal]

I used to jump between multiple zoos for these type of challenges. Which is fine for those animals that you only have to spend a short while in the zoo for. But with these long term animals. It's probably easier to just run them generally and build up the rest of the zoo while you wait for them to grow up and breed. In the mean time guests are hopefully enjoying the babies and spending all their money.

What I am doing now is, similar to my Alphabet Zoos and World Zoos and the Zoolympic Zoos is to have a set of Sanctuary Zoos which are based around the challenges. Seeing as the challenges repeat, the animals are there for next time with very little setting up needing to do after the initial setup is done.

Currently have about 6 Sanctuary Zoos so getting there. More zoos to store animals in when not active rofl.

And, looks like I was up to 70 animals in storage last time I looked not 20. But definitely better than the 190 I am usually sitting on while actively playing rofl.

 

[Xrystal]

This is better .. All but the Elephants are in place. Need to double check my Indian Elephant collection. Seeing as the animals I have are dime aplenty on the trade center, extra animals are sold or released and the best of the rest kept for the next generation alongside an unrelated male etc.

So, all in place to expand out the habitats and now making enough money to hire additional zoo keepers and build a quarantine or two in case they can't handle the feeding cycles.

Staff buildings are at the top behind the tree line. A single Safari Transport station is right next to the entrance with a path on either side for those that don't want to visit the animals yet rofl.

Definitely proves that starting out small is the best strategy rofl.

 

[tigertimb]

Looking very nice - but is that transport ride designed to handle high speeds around tight curves - or maybe it's intended to fling the guests into the enclosure

As stated - mine very bare bones:
Got Indian elephant habitats setup for Grassland and Tropical; just starting a Temperate one and will probably round it out with an Aquatic habitat
Then African elephants to add on the other side of the entrance

I've trained all my elephants to be cave dwelling, and hence solving the shelter requirements

 

[Xrystal]

Looking very nice - but is that transport ride designed to handle high speeds around tight curves - or maybe it's intended to fling the guests into the enclosure

As stated - mine very bare bones:
Got Indian elephant habitats setup for Grassland and Tropical; just starting a Temperate one and will probably round it out with an Aquatic habitat
Then African elephants to add on the other side of the entrance

I've trained all my elephants to be cave dwelling, and hence solving the shelter requirements
View attachment 427701

The transport rides going through the habitats are only at 5 miles an hour .. so very slow.

Found some Indian Elephants in my old GHI zoo. They've just had babies and won't have time to have more under normal circumstances .. but .. I am hoping that the 'cheat' mentioned will help get one more set of babies. It's only 2 females and a male but I put their babies ( which includes an adult female I need to pair up with a new male ) into the new GHI zoo just before maintenance hit. So I will just have to acquire some more females and a male ready to take over.
I'll probably do the same with the African Elephants.

Rofl .. cave dwelling elephants

My warthogs kept escaping from the 5m stone walls by simply walking through them rofl. But think it is a curved barrier issue so think I have stopped it from happening again by putting a mini barrier just inside the main barrier wall to stop them from poking their heads out and scaring the guests rofl.

 

[tigertimb]

My warthogs kept escaping from the 5m stone walls by simply walking through them rofl. But think it is a curved barrier issue so think I have stopped it from happening again by putting a mini barrier just inside the main barrier wall to stop them from poking their heads out and scaring the guests rofl.

I normally just line the wall with plants that reduce their traversible area so they can't get at the wall
- strangely; even though they can go through a solid wall, they can't walk through a flower!

 

[Xrystal]

strangely enough though, back in beta I had a baby ostrich do the same but with a straight wall so maybe not curve limited but maybe baby limited rofl

 

[tigertimb]

When I've spotted it, it's normally the act of maturing when close to a wall - they transform and end up as an adult on the wrong side of it

 

[Xrystal]

When I've spotted it, it's normally the act of maturing when close to a wall - they transform and end up as an adult on the wrong side of it

That could be true. The baby ostrich though ... repeatedly ran towards the same barrier segment during beta every time it was put back in.. it was as if there was no barrier there at all.