Victoria 3

Victoria 3

[1.9] Morgenröte - Dawn of Flavor
Some critiques and suggestions about Paleontology, Archaeology, and Zoology.
Hi I just did my first playthrough with this mod and really enjoyed it. my favorite things to do are fill a zoo with animals, build dinosaur skeletons, and explore ancient ruins, but i had some issues with each of these that were too long for just a comment and I'd really like to see addressed in future. Some of these might be intentional measures to stop the AI from going crazy or bugs i was unlucky enough to get but here goes:

Paleontology:

-Paleontologists
This was where most of my interest was since I really love dinosaurs. I really wish my paleontologist would not get exhausted so often. I also found it annoying that there wasn't a way to tell if my paleontologist was exhausted other than just remembering the last time I did something. I would have to cancel his task of classification to see if it was possible to mount or remount. I wanted to collect and properly mount every fossil, but the fact that even remounting them has such a long cooldown made the process incredibly long and tedious.
I often found myself with way too many fossils from all the expeditions I could do but couldn't mount them cause my guy was exhausted so I think the experience would be a lot better if the exhaustion was lowered, applied to expeditions instead of mounting specimens, or was removed all together. Maybe even the ability to recruit two paleontologists would alleviate the problem and would make the automation button more useful. It would also make sense with historical paleontology with things like the bone wars between Edward Drinker Cope and and O. C. Marsh. and the cooperative expeditions of Henry Fairfield Osborn and Roy Chapman Andrews.

-Museum Specimins
Not a mechanical ust for a bit of flavor I think it'd be really cool if the museum showed the specific fossils or reconstructions or old paintings of the dinosaurs when you go to their page and read the description, they all seem to have the same picture of some kind of hadrosaur. There are lots of photos, paintings, and sketches for a lot of the animals.
Also, I don't remember which but there were either two different entries for one of the plesiosaurs. I'm not one to be super mad if non-dinosaurs get lumped in with dinosaurs expecially in the 19th century but its just a bit weird that some non-dinosaurs are with them while some are categorized as general or special fossils. If there is some other reason for this then nevermind.
Ooh and I would LOVE to see more pterosaurs than just pterodactylus. The most famous/influential ones discovered in the victoria 3 timeframe that should DEFINITELY be in the game are Rhamphohynchus and Pteranodon.

-Velociraptor description nitpick
And lastly I hate to be the "acktually 🤓" person but it's my favorite dinosaur so sorry here we go: the description on that page for velociraptor is rather outdated by modern science but also isn't right for early impressions of the animal. It's totally fine to have outdated descriptions and stuff but I think it'd be more appropriate if they reflected older ideas of early paleontology from the game's setting. The description mentions pack hunting which I don't think was theorized or commonly thought of for velociraptor or any dromaeosaur until at least the 1960s or 1970s with Michael Crichton's book. And them being pack hunters is something that has come into debate again in recent years as well because pack hunting is a pretty specialized trait that is mostly only found in mammals with very advanced social structures. The niche velociraptor occupied anyway, based on its size and diet, was probably closer to a fox or coyote than a wolf, meaning pack hunting probably wasn't necessary. If velociraptors or other carnivorous dinosaurs in general hunted in packs, it would probably be either only in small family groups of 2-4 like tigers or bears (maybe in couples like modern dinosaurs, birds) or in very loose and uncoordinated associations like komodo dragons or crocodiles.
The use of the animal's famous claw is also probably not accurate, nor was it really discussed until the dinosaur renaissance of the 60s-80s. There's still debate but nowadays scientists think it was used more likely for piercing and disemboweling or holding on to prey while either the arm claws or teeth do most of the damage, rather than slashing as the description says. Most of what was known about velociraptor and close related animals in the 1920s when it was found was just that it was a lot smaller and more agile than its much larger cousins.

Archaeology:
I don't know as much about this subject so no issues with flavor but just had short mechanical complaints: I think the odds to get the special artifacts was just too low, even for the AI. The AI in my game found every planet, every element, every dinosaur but one, etc. But they only found ONE special artifact, and I never found any. So I think either you should just have more luck getting them or make expeditions not take as long/have shorter cooldowns. I also had the issue here of getting a LOT of minor artifacts but there wasn't really anything fun to do with them.

Zoology:
Collecting all the animals was something I really wanted to do but I ran into trouble: For most countries I could boost relations to get region-specific animals from them, but two countries in particular, the Cape Colony and Australia, refused to give me any no matter how much they loved me because they were both subjects of Britain. Now this alone would be fine but the mechanic to work around it, smuggling, appeared to be totally bugged. It was always grayed out saying I must have a not-busy zoologist, but I run into the same issue of it being impossible to tell if my zoologist is exhausted or if he is busy what he is busy doing (He's busy even when I don't tell him to do anything). I can't click on scientists or any characters from this mod in the same way that I can click on agitators, rulers, or generals to pull up their page in the basegame.

Anyway I really love the mod, it really feels like something that could be a proper expansion to the game like royal court for ck3 but its a free mod!!. Sorry for making you read so much if indeed you do, just wanted to give as detailed feedback as possible on the main things I took issue with. Keep up to good work :)
Last edited by DefinitelyNotRuby; 26 Jun @ 5:52pm