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squaregear

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Apr 9, 2012
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I understand that some traits are supposed to be inheritable. Bad ones include harelip, slow, and imbecile. Good ones seem to be rarer, like genius, quick, and strong. Do these really get inherited? If I marry two geniuses together will they have genius kids?

From what I've read DNA is just for appearances. Is that right or does that affect these traits, too?

Does anyone know the mechanics of this? Or at least the odds of having, say, a strong kid with one strong parent? How about two strong parents?
 
they are inheritable but its not a given that a child will always get the trait, i believe they are slightly more likely to inherit the trait if there parents have it.
 
they are inheritable but its not a given that a child will always get the trait, i believe they are slightly more likely to inherit the trait if there parents have it.
Yes, having played a few eugenics oriented games, I concur. I might up the "slightly" to "significantly"; it's still a small chance, but it's much higher than with just one genius parent, which is much higher than with zero genius parents.

I also perceived that your odds of getting negative traits, instead, seems to increase if you have genius/attractive/strong parents. This could be my imagination, but it'd be interesting if it were intentional.

It's a lot of tedium, though, and sucks some of the fun out of the game. And you're big, exciting payoff (getting that strong, genius, attractive heir) is just as liable to result in a ragequit when he gets measles or a lousy education.
 
I don't know what the odds are, but it's not about DNA per se. Having strong, quick or genius grandparents doesn't increase the chances of grandchildren having the trait, only thing that increases the chance of getting a "genetic" trait is whether or not the parents have it.

At times I haven't gotten genetic traits for my children even if both parents have had the trait, but other times I've had twins both born with strong trait...
 
It does seems to have some effect, e.g. I had a character with "quick" trait who get a "quick" son with his (no genetic trait) wife and "genius" son with his "genius" mistress.
 
I also perceived that your odds of getting negative traits, instead, seems to increase if you have genius/attractive/strong parents. This could be my imagination, but it'd be interesting if it were intentional.

This is clearly true. It's been observed many times by different people. No one has run a statistical analysis, but it's a pretty clear trend. I do wish this would get fixed because I actually avoid positive genetic traits because of it. The chance of getting a strong genius isn't worth the cost of having your next king become an imbecile.
 
This is clearly true. It's been observed many times by different people. No one has run a statistical analysis, but it's a pretty clear trend. I do wish this would get fixed because I actually avoid positive genetic traits because of it. The chance of getting a strong genius isn't worth the cost of having your next king become an imbecile.

If I have two genius parents and their children inherit the imbecile or slow traits because of it, then that's one of the few times I permit myself to load from a previous save point. I'm no geneticist, but it just feels wrong to me :unsure:
 
This is clearly true. It's been observed many times by different people. No one has run a statistical analysis, but it's a pretty clear trend. I do wish this would get fixed because I actually avoid positive genetic traits because of it. The chance of getting a strong genius isn't worth the cost of having your next king become an imbecile.

Being an observed trend does NOT make it clearly true. At best this might be true. But everyone who reads this will be more likely to notice when their genius parents produce an imbecile kid. That will make them more likely to report it here, and that will make even more people likely to notice these aberrences. It is a viciously disinformative circle.

Until someone does a statistically valid survey, or a designer weighs in, you should ignore conjecture.
 
Being an observed trend does NOT make it clearly true. At best this might be true. But everyone who reads this will be more likely to notice when their genius parents produce an imbecile kid. That will make them more likely to report it here, and that will make even more people likely to notice these aberrences. It is a viciously disinformative circle.

Until someone does a statistically valid survey, or a designer weighs in, you should ignore conjecture.

I hear you. People have a tendency to over-report bad events because they notice them more. Which is why everyone thinks every random number generator in the world is broken because they are more likely to remember the time they got an odd bad string of events than the time they got a good one.

That said, sometimes those anecdotal observations are right. This is surely such a case. I've done my best to keep track of it, and it's been consistently true for me. Other people report similar. I leave myself open to learning that this is all just bad luck, but it's been too consistent too long in my opinion to be anything other than true.

Just as its important to pay attention to cognitive biases, it's also important not to place too much value in statistics. Your intuition is actually pretty good because it developed over millions of years to be good at the cost of getting eaten by a lion (see books like Blink). In this case, this isn't disinformation. But form your own judgment. Pay attention and see if its seems true to you. That's why spreading the word is important, so more people know to pay attention to see what happens.
 
Ok, I wrote a program to parse out a save file and look at the relationship between children and their parents. This is the results of just one save file, but here's what I got:

Children who are imbecils:
fathers 181
father was imbecile 7
father was slow 3
father was quick 4
father was genius 0
mothers 180
mother was imbecile 6
mother was slow 4
mother was quick 4
mother was genius 0

Children who are slow:
fathers 170
father was imbecile 1
father was slow 6
father was quick 5
father was genius 2
mothers 170
mother was imbecile 2
mother was slow 5
mother was quick 2
mother was genius 2

Children who are quick:
fathers 175
father was imbecile 3
father was slow 1
father was quick 9
father was genius 2
mothers 168
mother was imbecile 2
mother was slow 3
mother was quick 7
mother was genius 3

Children who are geniuses:
fathers 186
father was imbecile 3
father was slow 3
father was quick 2
father was genius 6
mothers 185
mother was imbecile 2
mother was slow 1
mother was quick 4
mother was genius 12

The reason some of the mother and father numbers don't match up is because at the start of the game some people only have a father listed. Those initial characters probably didn't have the inheritance rules directly applied to them, either. Parsing a file from a longer game would give better data, too (this one was saved in 1175).

Still, I think the numbers are pretty clear. It seems that there is a base chance to get one of these traits, but you're roughly three times as likely to get it if your parents have it. There doesn't seem to be a relationship between a parent with a good trait and children with bad ones.

If someone can get me a save from a much longer game. I'll try running it on that.
 
Could you also do a mother + father status
And even further, grand parents ?

What I wish to see is deep tree analyze. If you're too buzy to do that, I would be happy to look and modify your script to add that.
 
Children who are imbecils:
had two parents 180
both were imbecils 2
both were slow 0
both were quick 0
both were geniuses 0

Children who are slow:
had two parents 170
both were imbecils 0
both were slow 0
both were quick 0
both were geniuses 0

Children who are quick:
had two parents 168
both were imbecils 0
both were slow 0
both were quick 0
both were geniuses 0

Children who are geniuses:
had two parents 185
both were imbecils 0
both were slow 0
both were quick 0
both were geniuses 2

Not much help there, probably because my sample size was too small. If anyone can get me a really long save file it might be better.
 
hmm, personally I ran a game where i my first heir turned out to be a genius. I married only genius females in the main line from that point on, but kept other side lines alive..

some 200 years later, the a good portion (20 % or so), of the living descendants had bad genetical traits, mostly dwarfism or harelips. (my main line was infested with the latter). As far as I could tell, there was no dwarfs amongst any of the ancestors before they suddenly started sprouting out like flies..

on the + side, i had some 15-20 % with either quick, genius or strong as well, so it wasn't all bad, but was rather surprised to see the amount of bad traits popping out, as I was rather cautious about who i married my sons to.. it was definiatly more than any of my "normal" games where i simply go for claims or stewardship skill.

It can ofcourse all have been bad luck, but didn't seem like it to me..
 
I'd be very interested if you included all the genetic traits, not just the intellectual ones: strong, weak, dwarf, attractive, ugly, harelip, and so one.

Observation seems to suggest these are all related somehow.