Hello, I'm Rose. Welcome to my Zoo Tycoon 1 page. My eventual goal is to create a comprehensive Zoo Tycoon 1 guide, but this may not be done for a long time. For now, I'll just be sharing strategies I use in Zoo Tycoon that I have not seen covered elsewhere online. If you're looking for a more complete game guide and walkthrough, check out Steven W. Carter's Game FAQs Strategy Guide.
Guests find prehistoric animals, introduced in the Dinosaur Digs expansion, more attractive than conventional animals. While most of the methodology used for normal zoo animals also applies to their extinct counterparts, these creatures are trickier and more expensive to house. The following guidance will help you and build exhibits at your own pace while minimising costs and preventing destructive dinosaur rampages, plus some other useful tips. Note that for simplicity I will be referring to all prehistoric animals, including the ice age mammals, as "Dinosaurs".
Dinosaur exhibits usually need to be larger than regular zoo animal exhibits, and therefore require you to purchase more fencing. Additionally, most dinosaurs are strong enough to break and escape through standard zoo animal fencing, which encourages the use of much more costly, dinosaur-specific fence types.
Fortunately, you can omit both dinosaur fencing and risk of escape entirely through clever use of terrain elevation. Dinosaurs (and all other animals) cannot cross cliffs that are 2 or more levels higher than them. If you lower all the terrain in your dinosaur enclosure by 2 levels, you can use any type of enclosure fencing around the perimiter and the dinosaurs won't be able to touch it. It can become even weaker or broken from decay and this still won't matter, so you won't need maintenance workers to prevent dinosaur escapes. Additionally, scientists and other staff ARE able to walk across cliffs that are 2 levels higher or lower than them, so you won't need to do anything special to make exhibit gates accessible to them.
The above technique is already significantly cheaper than using dinosaur fencing on flat terrain, but there is an even cheaper method - to raise the terrain surrounding your dinosaur enclosure by 2 levels. This way, you only pay to modify the land around the perimiter of the exhibit, rather than the whole area within. I will add some visual examples and a cost comparison for this later.
There are a few things to note about "cliff-enclosed" exhibits. Firstly, no matter how weak or broken your fence pieces are, they must form a complete circuit in order to qualify as an exhibit. If any are deleted, the game will not recognise your exhibit and - even though they can't get past the cliffs - the dinosaurs will believe they've escaped and your guests will start running for the exit. Secondly, while this is not essential, building fences on the outside edges of your cliffs (at the top of the cliffs rather than the bottom) will make exhibit perimiter easier to see and manage, and I find it looks a bit nicer as well.
Even though dinosaur exhibits are larger, scientists walk at the same speed as zookeepers, so it often takes them a long time to reach dinosaurs and clean up after them. Additionally, visitors can only see 10 tiles past fences, so whenever a dinosaur retreats to the rear of an eclosure that spans further than 10 tiles back, it will become too far away to see. Therefore, it's best for dinosaurs to stay at the front of their exhibits.
This can usually be achieved with tactical water tile and object placement. Dinosaurs cannot traverse shelters, rock formations, or large rocks. Non-swimming dinosaurs (which represent a majority) cannot traverse water tiles, but most require at least some fresh water in their exhibits, and all dinosaurs require rocks. As such, you can use these elements to create a moat (and/or wall) that prevents them from moving back any further than 10 tiles. This limitation will not diminish their enclosure suitability, health or happiness; scientists will be able to reach them more easily; and guests will always be able to see them.
There are a few caveats. Most dinosaurs want 10% fresh water tiles, but some only want 5%, which is often inadequate to create a moat from one edge of the enclosure to the opposite edge. In these situations, you can fashion a curved moat that confines them to a corner. You can also utilise large rocks, rock formations, and shelters if the dinosaur wants them. Make sure you position the exhibit gate somewhere at the front, since scientists can't cross moats. Dinosaurs will only poop where they can walk, so poops won't appear on the wrong side of the moat. However, newly laid dinosaur eggs CAN appear on the wrong side, as they can spawn on any land tile in the enclosure. Fortunately, the game will tell you if your scientist/s can't access an egg, and you can move it accross the moat yourself.
This technique won't work with swimming dinosaurs such as the plesiosauris, but since their enclosures only require a small island of land, they are at least easier for scientists to care for than terrestrial dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs will trample and destroy foliage when they're unhappy. This can be extra problematic when your dinosaur is unhappy from an unsuitably planted exhibit, but keeps stomping on whatever plants you give it.
The good news is, if you've created a moat to keep your dinosaurs at the front of the enclosure (as detailed in the previous section), you can simply position all its plants on the other side where they can't reach them. This solves the cat-and-mouse problem of constantly having to replace trampled plants while waiting for your dinosaur to calm down, and ensures that the plants will be safe if ever the dinosaur gets angry again when you're not looking.
This guide is a work-in-progress, and the following is a list of subjects for which I plan to add guidance in future.