As beautiful as all of the biomes in the game are - I'm partial to the temperate biome myself, though taiga and alpine are up there too - I personally think the game suffers a bit in terms of biome variety. Though there is a decent temperature split - two cold, one temperate and two hot - I think that it suffers a bit in regards to variation, mostly in that four of the five biomes are forested and two of those forested biomes, taiga and alpine, are very hard to distinguish from each other (in my opinion, anyway).
So, I'd like to present a couple of extra biomes that I think could spice up the game a bit. I won't pretend that these are novel by any means, but I've also come up with rough ideas for challenge maps that could accomodate them.
Grassland / Steppe
(image credits: Brett Snyder, Gerhard Pils, Matt Lavin)
I'm genuinely a bit surprised that this biome wasn't represented at launch, given the United States-set of the campaign and its prominence in the country's interior; perhaps it's being saved for when the campaign inevitably gets expanded when Dominion comes out? I digress.
The grassland / steppe biome could be to the temperate biome what desert is to tropical; a very open, (in this case only relatively) dry environment with lots of space to build a park in. Like desert, the lack of tree cover means that dinosaurs wouldn't need forest here, and the biome's tree options - trembling aspens immediately come to mind as a Zoo Tycoon 2 oldie - would be decorative brushes, as the desert's cacti and palms are. Wildflowers and sagebrush could serve as good, lower-lying decorative flora items. Tornadoes are the most obvious calamity choice here.
My main choice for the challenge is the American midwest, in line with the campaign's focus (though not the challenge's more global approach, I'll admit). Perhaps the idea behind the challenge could be that carnivorous dinosaurs are causing problems for the local ecosystem and need to be wrangled, and that tornadoes are much more common on the map than in any other maps that have tornadoes - other places besides America the map could be set include Central Asia and Patagonia, though the flora might need to be adjusted to fit those locales.
Tundra
(image credits: Paxson Wolber, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Jerzy Strzelecki)
Perhaps something of a reach given the focus on more-often-than-not massive animals that have been purposefully engineered to not have any cold-barring integument, but if they can survive in boreal forests, than surely they can handle arctic tundras, right?
Similar to the grassland biome in that it is a dry, open counter to a more forested biome, in this case the taiga (and by extension the alpine biome). Small spruce trees are the best bet for a tree-based floral brush, and again, they would be purely decorational - the main grass brush would be intermingled with mosses and lichens, and the shrubbier decor brushes would ideally be things like lupines and willows. Snowstorms would be carried over from the taiga biome, perhaps with even greater intensity. Though the above pictures depict the biome without snow, I wouldn't be bothered if a Planet Zoo approach was taken and it was always covered in snow to make it more distinct from the grassland biome.
My two main picks for the accompanying challenge are Alaska's North Slope and the Siberian tundra; wherever it is set, I think that the challenge of housing dinosaurs in such a hostile, frigid environment is enough of a draw for its premise, though perhaps a feather gene (or a frog DNA suppressant) would be necessary to keep smaller animals like raptors and smaller ornithischians comfortable (and, during snowstorms, alive). Perhaps the DLC that would go alongside this hypothetical update could be polar-themed and include non-tundra-but-still-high-latitude taxon like Leaellynasaura and Nanuqsaurus. Greenland, northern Canada and northern Scandanavia are other possible settings for the map; the Antarctic Peninsula is another option, albeit a distinctly unrealistic one.
So, I'd like to present a couple of extra biomes that I think could spice up the game a bit. I won't pretend that these are novel by any means, but I've also come up with rough ideas for challenge maps that could accomodate them.
Grassland / Steppe
(image credits: Brett Snyder, Gerhard Pils, Matt Lavin)
I'm genuinely a bit surprised that this biome wasn't represented at launch, given the United States-set of the campaign and its prominence in the country's interior; perhaps it's being saved for when the campaign inevitably gets expanded when Dominion comes out? I digress.
The grassland / steppe biome could be to the temperate biome what desert is to tropical; a very open, (in this case only relatively) dry environment with lots of space to build a park in. Like desert, the lack of tree cover means that dinosaurs wouldn't need forest here, and the biome's tree options - trembling aspens immediately come to mind as a Zoo Tycoon 2 oldie - would be decorative brushes, as the desert's cacti and palms are. Wildflowers and sagebrush could serve as good, lower-lying decorative flora items. Tornadoes are the most obvious calamity choice here.
My main choice for the challenge is the American midwest, in line with the campaign's focus (though not the challenge's more global approach, I'll admit). Perhaps the idea behind the challenge could be that carnivorous dinosaurs are causing problems for the local ecosystem and need to be wrangled, and that tornadoes are much more common on the map than in any other maps that have tornadoes - other places besides America the map could be set include Central Asia and Patagonia, though the flora might need to be adjusted to fit those locales.
Tundra
(image credits: Paxson Wolber, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Jerzy Strzelecki)
Perhaps something of a reach given the focus on more-often-than-not massive animals that have been purposefully engineered to not have any cold-barring integument, but if they can survive in boreal forests, than surely they can handle arctic tundras, right?
Similar to the grassland biome in that it is a dry, open counter to a more forested biome, in this case the taiga (and by extension the alpine biome). Small spruce trees are the best bet for a tree-based floral brush, and again, they would be purely decorational - the main grass brush would be intermingled with mosses and lichens, and the shrubbier decor brushes would ideally be things like lupines and willows. Snowstorms would be carried over from the taiga biome, perhaps with even greater intensity. Though the above pictures depict the biome without snow, I wouldn't be bothered if a Planet Zoo approach was taken and it was always covered in snow to make it more distinct from the grassland biome.
My two main picks for the accompanying challenge are Alaska's North Slope and the Siberian tundra; wherever it is set, I think that the challenge of housing dinosaurs in such a hostile, frigid environment is enough of a draw for its premise, though perhaps a feather gene (or a frog DNA suppressant) would be necessary to keep smaller animals like raptors and smaller ornithischians comfortable (and, during snowstorms, alive). Perhaps the DLC that would go alongside this hypothetical update could be polar-themed and include non-tundra-but-still-high-latitude taxon like Leaellynasaura and Nanuqsaurus. Greenland, northern Canada and northern Scandanavia are other possible settings for the map; the Antarctic Peninsula is another option, albeit a distinctly unrealistic one.
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