I have a question about the Red Dawn banner.

[Uomelt]

First off:

1. How does it work? Does it automatically detect certain names?

2. Would one call a mudskipper a land-based animal or a freshwater animal?

[SherpDaWerp]

How does it work? Does it automatically detect certain names?

There's a list of words that connect to land- and water-based animals, hard-coded somewhere in the game. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but alongside Red Dawn (land-based) there is also the banner Very Fishy (for marine-based animals).

Such a list will never catch edge cases without them being manually input, which might include "mudskipper". Instead, it looks for more general marine-based (dolphin, fish, shark, turtle, etc.) or land-based (cow, horse, tiger, rabbit etc.) names. These names don't have to be the entire animal, either, you can have a <thing> dolphin and because it's still got "dolphin" in it, it'll still be counted as marine based. A safe bet is that if an animal is on the list of randomly-generated options that starting nations can be assigned, it's probably classified as land or marine based.

I did look for whether there is a banner for air-based animals (birds), but I couldn't seem to find one, so the game might classify birds as land-based given that's where they nest.

2. Would one call a mudskipper a land-based animal or a freshwater animal?

I would call it "amphibious", although the game likely wouldn't recognise it as either. If an animal isn't on either the land-based or marine-based list then the game won't give you the banner(s). This is wrong; see Trotterdam's post below.

If you want to get the banner(s) then I suggest you change your animal to "fish", then to "horse", then back to whatever you want; the game will (IIRC - it's been a while since I unlocked those two banners) instantly read your animal as being on the lists once you save your settings and give you the banners.

[Trotterdam]

All animals that the game isn't specifically coded to recognize as water- or air-based are assumed to be land-based.

[Uomelt]

All animals that the game isn't specifically coded to recognize as water- or air-based are assumed to be land-based.

thanks