I would agree, If love the option to start with either a flat map it a pre-terraformed map. Maybe something like this will already be possible at launch, simply by continuing an empty WS zoo.ДЄ dedicated option while starting the zoo would just feel better, though. This is not possible, if every embossment is completely dependent on the player's action.ДЄlternatively (or additionally?), I would love to be able to load a player-created surface when starting a new zoo. Larger hills are way more difficult, resulting in uneven surfaces and require lots of smoothing.Д¬) As mentioned, it has its own appeal (and a huge one for me as well!) to incorporate a given shape into a zoo layout. ДЄ) Even as it is possibel to build up hills and cave out canyons, it takes away quite some money from the zoo's balance.Д«) The terraforiming tools are adequately sized for small (enclousure sized) ground alterations. The thing is (and I could confirm this during the beta), that. If those values could be altered on the fly with the result displayed in real-time, even better!ДЄdditional refinements, such as hight-dependent tree placement and ground textures as well as lakes placed in terrain depressions would just be the icing on the cake. Very little options would be neccesary: seed, width of the hills/mountains (basically the horizontal scaling) and also their hight. My suggestion was, to implement a basic procedural generation tool (no complicated noise patterns would be needed), which would create some hills and valleys at the start of a new zoo (only if desired, of course). I don't think this'd be very hard to implement, so I really hope its an option.ДЄctually, I've made this suggestion already as part of a multiple-whishes post, but wanted to emphasize the proposal in a dedicated thread - now as I have played the beta. I'd like to spend time figuring out the best way to work with pre-exisiting hills, rocky outcrops, lakes and rivers that I haven't necessarily shaped precisely to my liking. This would make things get a bit stale after just a couple of zoos. My fear is that, if all starter maps are flat, with only trees, that each new zoo I start in franchise will be a similar experience, only differing in how animals are affected by climatic variables. For example, in Cities: Skylines, there's a whole group of people (and a YouTube channel) devoted to starter map design, which makes the game much more playable. That way, the devs wouldn't even have to commit time to map design - the community would sort it out (I can guarantee that I'd upload at least a couple). (i.e., only terraforming, plants, rocks and some effects, e.g., waterfalls) to be uploaded to Steam as starter maps for franchise.

I think this could be easily implemented by allowing sandbox zoos without any infrastructure, animals etc.

To me this is a concern, because I enjoy trying to fit a zoo into a pre-existing landscape - in franchise I won't want to spend lots of money and time terraforming at the start just to get an interesting map. I'm also guessing that we'll be unable to use other player's saved zoos in franchise, which is fine, except that it would mean that all starting maps in franchise will be flat. This is less an issue in sandbox, since (I'm guessing) we'll be able to effectively get pre-terraformed maps from the workshop (as saved games without any infrastructure / animals that people upload). I'm concerned that starting maps, especially in franchise mode, will all be flat to begin with. I have posted this in a longer post about general thoughts from the beta, but this is a big one for me, so i thought I'd post it here too.

Planet zoo maps