Increasing zoo rating

[CivexITS]

Hello in 2023 guys. I think if you build exhibits with maximum suitability and guest happiness is 93+ (try to make small and straight zoo first to get this) but you cannot get 93+ zoo rating, the only solution is research and conservation.
Put the funding to max for all topics and you will see your zoo rating slowly increasing.

[Whimsy]

2024 and the biggest problem is still keeping these guests happy lol

[Zsi]

2024 and looking for advice. Glad this is still here

[Pyneappole]

I don't know wxactly what affects overall Zoo rating, but I would guess it is Animal Happiness, Exhibit Suitability, and Guest Happiness. I am assuming that you are trying to beat scenarios and not make "pretty looking" zoos as many ways to take advantage of exploits to improve these factors will make your zoo look pretty cluttered (for the human eye). Unfortunately I can't post screenshots, so hopefully my diagrams are clear enough.



For Guest Happiness, my best advice at this is to literally cram exhibits together. Better to have your path have multiple exhibits on both side with brief "animal viewing" than 1-2 exhibits with long-spanning "animal viewing". For example, the format below will be good for guest happiness and therefore Zoo ratings (where "=" is the path and "x" and "o" are different exhibits)

xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
===============
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx
xxxxxoooooxxxxx

Notice in the above format, I have 6 exhibits along the path. The following format below (which uses the same path lenghth) is typically bad as the whole path only has two exhibits, despite that the exhibits span the whole path.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
===============
ooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooo

Restaurants are far superior than any food court because they fulfill the role of food, drinks, bathrooms, and benches without needing any trash cans. Also you can fit restaurants easily in-between exhibits, while you can't do the same for food courts, such that guests will see animals as they enter the restaurant and will see animals as they leave the restaurant. In food courts (depending how big they are), guest happiness will start to go down once animals are no longer in their view (i.e. in the middle of the food court).



Animal happiness is more or less tied to exhibit suitability. Generally, I only follow Zoo keeper suggestions regarding terrain. For rocks, foliage, etc., I follow based on whether my actions add a "green happy face". There are also exploits to increase exhibit suitability. For example, "rock formations" (only available for arctic, rainforest, and alpine, I think) boost exhibit suitability but do not count as rocks, so you can just cram as many of these as you can too boost exhibit suitability and happiness. This makes these animals very easy to get ~100% exhibit suitability. Small rocks (i.e. the small plain grey one, the snowy one, or the underwater one) are better than larger rocks: you can place more before hitting "too many rocks" (sad red face). Foliage can be exploited using specific foliage that take up 1/4 tile as opposed to 1 tile: Add 1/4-size foliage spread around the exhibit until "green happy face" response becomes "red sad face". Then add 3x 1/4-size foliage around each 1/4-size foliage such that they fill up the rest of the tile (shown below). You will see that you continue to get "green happy faces". This is because the "limiting factor" of foliage is based on the number of tiles filled with foliage. But each foliage gives a boost to exhibit suitability, so using 1/4-size foliage can effectively give you 4x the exhibit suitability boost for 1x the foliage tile limit.

Where "x" is a 1/4-size foliage and "o" is a blank space. Every square of "x" or "o" is on "tile" (visible when you modify terrain). First you add the foliage spread about:
xooooxoooooxooo
ooooooooooooooo

Then add more foliage to fill the rest of the tile.
xxoooxxooooxxoo
xxoooxxooooxxoo

Sometimes doing these exploits will make the Zoo keeper say that you have too many rocks or foliage (even in red text), but the exhibit suitability will be a lot higher than if you didn't do them. Also if the Zoo keeper says there are too many guests around, as long as exhibit suitability meter and animal happiness meter are high, then this isn't an issue because a lot of guests around probably mean that the guest happiness is high.



Hope this is all understandable and will be helpful.