Physiognomy Strategy

[gornard]

I'm playing for the first time as Abyssinia using the new african faces DLC. I've noticed that if you want to play the marriage game that your characters african faces seem to become standard european faces within a couple of generations.

Since i bought the DLC and for RP reasons, i'd like to keep my dynasty looking as sub-Saharan as possible. Since the islamic Ghanaians are off limits that pretty much limits me to my own courtiers and vassals. Any tips on how to accomplish this and still gain foreign alliances?

Also the intermediate faces when the parents are mixed, are they the same as arab faces or are they from a different set? Are two mixed parents capable of having black kids?

 

[unmerged(75409)]

I'm playing for the first time as Abyssinia using the new african faces DLC. I've noticed that if you want to play the marriage game that your characters african faces seem to become standard european faces within a couple of generations.

Since i bought the DLC and for RP reasons, i'd like to keep my dynasty looking as sub-Saharan as possible. Since the islamic Ghanaians are off limits that pretty much limits me to my own courtiers and vassals. Any tips on how to accomplish this and still gain foreign alliances?

Also the intermediate faces when the parents are mixed, are they the same as arab faces or are they from a different set? Are two mixed parents capable of having black kids?

I think you might be able to marry muslim looking characters and their kids will have 50:50 odds of coming out black.

Just turn any non-black kids into bishops and you should be alright

 

[VILIAMUS AVGVSTVS]

You pretty much can't worry about keeping the ethnicity if you are worried about foreign alliances, unless of course you marry off people from your court off to europe in spades and try to affect their courts(for instance I had created a mostly african looking court in Castille(and influenced Byzantium) in my Nubia-Abyssinia Game without making them related to my dynasty too much.

With the mixed children though, the interesting thing is that the kids always had their ethnicity = "turkish" when I glanced at their "charinfo 1" information when I put in the code, even if their parents were ethnically(notice culture has no effect) Ethiopian and Greek. So they basically will have all the facial features and hairstyles attributed to Turks in the Ruler Designer DLC if you want a frame of reference. That said if mixed "turkish" child eventually procreates with a ethnically Ethiopian it will have a 75% chance (it seems, not sure of the pure validity) that the child will look sub-Saharan.

 

[cybrxkhan]

You can edit your save game. Find the character in question, and change their graphical culture to whatever you desire.

 

[gornard]

You pretty much can't worry about keeping the ethnicity if you are worried about foreign alliances, unless of course you marry off people from your court off to europe in spades and try to affect their courts(for instance I had created a mostly african looking court in Castille(and influenced Byzantium) in my Nubia-Abyssinia Game without making them related to my dynasty too much.

With the mixed children though, the interesting thing is that the kids always had their ethnicity = "turkish" when I glanced at their "charinfo 1" information when I put in the code, even if their parents were ethnically(notice culture has no effect) Ethiopian and Greek. So they basically will have all the facial features and hairstyles attributed to Turks in the Ruler Designer DLC if you want a frame of reference. That said if mixed "turkish" child eventually procreates with a ethnically Ethiopian it will have a 75% chance (it seems, not sure of the pure validity) that the child will look sub-Saharan.

Thats pretty weird. I found a sort of work around. I switched to elective and any kids that i can't give a worthwhile marriage to, i'll marry them off to some one of African stock. That way i can have a pool of black dynasty members if any of them turn up with good stats.

 

[Ols]

I've managed to keep my dynasty black after 4 generations of outbreeding, so I think it really is just a question of pot luck. I assumed the DNA system was more complicated, but it seems characters are randomly assigned an ethnicity from one of their parents or potentially an amalgamation of both if their parents are very ethnically distinct. I wouldn't mind seeing a skin tone mod that can show ethnicity more accurately instead of having a small selection of tones for each ethnic group.