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[GoblinCookie]

Splitting the different races up by species would prevent them from interbreeding, and wouldn't really accomplish anything that didn't happen in Vanilla.

The reason why civs tend to wind up homogeneous very quickly in DF is partially because DF's genetic system doesn't store any recessive traits (it doesn't blend traits together either, but that's besides the point).  Civs are generated with a full spectrum of colors, but with every pairing, one genetic variant is lost completely.  If a brown-eyed parent and a blue-eyed parent have a child in DF, that child will have either brown eyes or blue eyes - and the other variant will be lost from that family tree, with no chance of cropping up later as a recessive trait (like blue eyes would in real life).  Over multiple generations, the chances of not winding up with everyone in a civ looking the same becomes very slim indeed.  The regular goblin-induced culling of the population doesn't help either.

That would not normally cause any dissapearance of traits because most families have multiple children.  Given a decent number of people there is no way that any traits will ever dissapear.  The problem is given the thin spread of historical characters in most games per civilization there is not a decent number of people. 

In real life it works somewhat differently, but not that differently.  Isolated or mostly-isolated countries (roughly equivalent to entities in DF) do tend to wind up with a mostly homogeneous population over several generations, assuming that there aren't any social stigmas preventing interracial marriage (which there usually are, at least for a few generations) or frequent influxes of new immigrants to add fresh genes into the mix (which are common in the modern age of fast communication and travel, but were pretty sporadic in ancient times).

In DF there is only a small amount of immigration from one entity to another (which is fairly realistic for the time period), and no stigma against interracial marriage once it does happen (which is less realistic), so 'minorities' are rare to begin with and they become assimilated into the majority race very quickly.  The chances of finding multiple colors within a civ in DF are therefore even rarer than they are in real life.

But apart from this, 'mixing bowl' nations are common today, thanks to fast communication and travel, which makes DF's homogeneous civs seem 'unrealistic' to players from these countries, even though it was closer to the norm for most of human history, except in immigrant-populated countries like the United States or Australia, or major trade-route cities like Ancient Rome.

The 'race as caste' system isn't realistic in the slightest, but if you like an ethnic rainbow in your civ, then I can't think of any better way of doing it.

Other than the way I just did it!

The problem is caused by the fact that only historical characters genetics are traced, non-historical characters are given the average traits of the historical characters of their civ.  Most games have a large number of non-historical characters and the historical character limit bottlenecks the historical characters, causing an 'averaging of the average' since the bottlenecked original historical characters end up breeding with the promoted extras that have average traits.

In my test game there was no immigration precisely because there are no other mountain gnome civilizations.  Yet after over a thousand years the whole spectrum of gnome variation can still be seen in my gnomes.  The answer is rather simple, if you want a more varied genetic pool increase the number of historical characters per site (both are controlled by different hard numbers).  There is no need to bother with making seperate castes or creatures at all. 

[DizzyCrash]

That sounds a bit advanced, iv never heard of that technique before, also I am having trouble envisioning what you are saying, I just want to have blonds and redheads in the same civilization XD

I simply meant create one creature for white people, another creature for brown people and so on but put them all in as creature options in the entity file.  Otherwise you end up with two white people producing a black baby which is silly.  And as far as I am aware it is quite possible to have blondes and redheads in the same civilization, there is just a certain tendancy towards sameness.  Increasing the number of civilizations to maximum (300) would if combined with a 1000 year time frame result in a mixture, provided there is a high number of historical characters. 

Take the default number of historical characters and increase it to as high as your memory allows (in my case it seems to be 45000) and cut the total number of sites so the ration of historical characters per site is high per site.  The cause of the problem you describe is that most characters in the game did not actually exist in world-gen except as population numbers. 

When they are historicised (that is when you encounter them in either mode) they are given the stock race generated right at the world-gen start, which tends to only have one hair colour, eye colour and skin colour.  If you ramp up the number of historical characters so that the majority of all sites are made of historical characters then you should have realistic genetic variation develop naturally, if you have a high number of civilizations. 

The world's people becomes more generic the fewer historical characters there are per site.   If you had 45 as the site limit and 45000 as the historical character limit then everyone in the world would probably end up as a historical character.

Thing is, the way I and alot of other people play we dont want 100 civs ya know? I Like there being only one for each species so that I can easily go into the history of the world and document it, writing down every god in every religion, every titan, every great king or queen throughout history, all these things I love to document and with so many civs this isnt a option.

[DizzyCrash]

If its that damaging to immersion you can just cut out the darker skin tones, tanned people giving birth to fiarer children is not unheard of nor is it as immediately noticeable as two white people having a darker skinned baby.
The reason it doesn't bother me is cause in adventure mode its just not that common to see people giving birth, fortress mode i suppose but I can make my piece with it, even if it doesnt make perfect sense it still is just alot more interesting than the alternative.

[vjmdhzgr]

The reason why civs tend to wind up homogeneous very quickly in DF is partially because DF's genetic system doesn't store any recessive traits (it doesn't blend traits together either, but that's besides the point).  Civs are generated with a full spectrum of colors, but with every pairing, one genetic variant is lost completely.  If a brown-eyed parent and a blue-eyed parent have a child in DF, that child will have either brown eyes or blue eyes - and the other variant will be lost from that family tree, with no chance of cropping up later as a recessive trait (like blue eyes would in real life).  Over multiple generations, the chances of not winding up with everyone in a civ looking the same becomes very slim indeed.  The regular goblin-induced culling of the population doesn't help either.

That might be true, but it's mainly because they're generated that way. If you generate a world with only five years of history where nobody that's been born since the start of time has become an adult, you'll still find whole civs having the same hair, eye, and skin color except for a few people that probably match the characteristics of a nearby civ meaning they probably migrated.

[GoblinCookie]

Thing is, the way I and alot of other people play we dont want 100 civs ya know? I Like there being only one for each species so that I can easily go into the history of the world and document it, writing down every god in every religion, every titan, every great king or queen throughout history, all these things I love to document and with so many civs this isnt a option.

The number of civs is not the main issue, the actual issue is the number of sites in the game vs the total number of historical characters, which is capped at a certain number.  In a large world with maximum sites, the total number of sites is limited to 2000 but the total number of historical characters is limited to 15000, meaning that there is only 7.5 historical characters per site out of a population of normall 200ish.  The only way to increase the total number of historical characters is to go into advanced world gen and manually set the number to be higher.

If you want to have only one civ per race (maybe two) go into world gen and create a pocket world with only 5 civilizations and 15 sites.  Using the default number of historical characters (15000) you will then have 1000 historical characters per site, meaning that the whole population is now historical.  Without any genetic bottleneck then we will not see the generation of any races by the game and you will see the whole spectrum of colours for your creature in one civilization.

That might be true, but it's mainly because they're generated that way. If you generate a world with only five years of history where nobody that's been born since the start of time has become an adult, you'll still find whole civs having the same hair, eye, and skin color except for a few people that probably match the characteristics of a nearby civ meaning they probably migrated.

No you will not because the initial historical characters of each civilization are spawned with random colours.  By this I do not mean everyone older than the world because a lot of these are 'ascended extras', characters that were not historical characters for the majority of their simulated life. 

The older the world the more the problem exists.  That is because when a world hits it's historical character limit it's historical population is forced into a continual bottleneck, losing more and more variation as time goes on.  Migration hardely affects things because the game only keeps track of the genetics of historical characters.

[DizzyCrash]

Thing is, the way I and alot of other people play we dont want 100 civs ya know? I Like there being only one for each species so that I can easily go into the history of the world and document it, writing down every god in every religion, every titan, every great king or queen throughout history, all these things I love to document and with so many civs this isnt a option.

The number of civs is not the main issue, the actual issue is the number of sites in the game vs the total number of historical characters, which is capped at a certain number.  In a large world with maximum sites, the total number of sites is limited to 2000 but the total number of historical characters is limited to 15000, meaning that there is only 7.5 historical characters per site out of a population of normall 200ish.  The only way to increase the total number of historical characters is to go into advanced world gen and manually set the number to be higher.

If you want to have only one civ per race (maybe two) go into world gen and create a pocket world with only 5 civilizations and 15 sites.  Using the default number of historical characters (15000) you will then have 1000 historical characters per site, meaning that the whole population is now historical.  Without any genetic bottleneck then we will not see the generation of any races by the game and you will see the whole spectrum of colours for your creature in one civilization.

That might be true, but it's mainly because they're generated that way. If you generate a world with only five years of history where nobody that's been born since the start of time has become an adult, you'll still find whole civs having the same hair, eye, and skin color except for a few people that probably match the characteristics of a nearby civ meaning they probably migrated.

No you will not because the initial historical characters of each civilization are spawned with random colours.  By this I do not mean everyone older than the world because a lot of these are 'ascended extras', characters that were not historical characters for the majority of their simulated life. 

The older the world the more the problem exists.  That is because when a world hits it's historical character limit it's historical population is forced into a continual bottleneck, losing more and more variation as time goes on.  Migration hardely affects things because the game only keeps track of the genetics of historical characters.

I dont see a setting in perfect world builder for historical character spawn rates, also i dont want to use a pocket world, i like makign it a continent of maximum size that I build and design from the ground up.

[EuchreJack]

This is a good mod idea.  I like it.

Nobody else has said this, and it needed to be said.

[DizzyCrash]

This is a good mod idea.  I like it.

Nobody else has said this, and it needed to be said.

Oh thank you very very much! I was starting to feel like nobody liked it at all... Getting a little embarrassed about putting it up ya know? This means so very much to me.

[GoblinCookie]

This is a good mod idea.  I like it.

Nobody else has said this, and it needed to be said.

The problem that the mod was set up to solve is quite real, so it is good mod idea as such.  As tragic as it is DizzyCrash set out to fix a problem that he/she did not understand the actual mechanics of, leading to the sub-par solution that is this mod.  But I hate to see DizzyCrash be discouraged.

I dont see a setting in perfect world builder for historical character spawn rates, also i dont want to use a pocket world, i like makign it a continent of maximum size that I build and design from the ground up.

There is such a setting.  It is called Population Limit and is set at 15000.  That means that the game tries (and usually fails) to keep the historical population at 15000.

The main constraint is memory, you can set Population Limit to 100000 but my computer crashes if I set it so high.  As I keep telling you, what matters is Population Limit against Site Cap. 

There is no requirement to play a pocket world at all, it is just that if you cull your site cap on a large region then the region is going to be rather empty. 

From what I gather you seem to want to play on a world with a few civilizations that have a large number of sites.  That creates another problem because of these numbers in the entity files.

Code: [Select]

[MAX_STARTING_CIV_NUMBER:100]
[MAX_POP_NUMBER:10000]
[MAX_SITE_POP_NUMBER:120]
The first number is the total number of historical characters given to the civilization to start with, this is 100 which means a civilization gets 100 people, some of which will then marry and have babies, usually lots of them since there are plenty of historical slots for them to fill.  The key thing is that this 100 have random traits but they are small enough to lead to a race forming. 

The second number is the total number of historical characters that the civilization is allowed to have, normally it will not affect much since it is 2/3rds of the world limit.  If you were however to have a large number of sites per civilization and a small number of civilizations, that is over 100 sites then it would cause a problem.

The third number is the total number of historical characters per site.  This is the real diversity killer since it keeps a high historical character limit from actually being used.  It is the reason why in the game I submitted there are still non-historical characters in the world despite there being the population limit for it.

[vjmdhzgr]

This is a good mod idea.  I like it.

Nobody else has said this, and it needed to be said.

The problem that the mod was set up to solve is quite real, so it is good mod idea as such.  As tragic as it is DizzyCrash set out to fix a problem that he/she did not understand the actual mechanics of, leading to the sub-par solution that is this mod.  But I hate to see DizzyCrash be discouraged.

I dont see a setting in perfect world builder for historical character spawn rates, also i dont want to use a pocket world, i like makign it a continent of maximum size that I build and design from the ground up.

There is such a setting.  It is called Population Limit and is set at 15000.  That means that the game tries (and usually fails) to keep the historical population at 15000.

The main constraint is memory, you can set Population Limit to 100000 but my computer crashes if I set it so high.  As I keep telling you, what matters is Population Limit against Site Cap. 

There is no requirement to play a pocket world at all, it is just that if you cull your site cap on a large region then the region is going to be rather empty. 

From what I gather you seem to want to play on a world with a few civilizations that have a large number of sites.  That creates another problem because of these numbers in the entity files.

Code: [Select]

[MAX_STARTING_CIV_NUMBER:100]
[MAX_POP_NUMBER:10000]
[MAX_SITE_POP_NUMBER:120]
The first number is the total number of historical characters given to the civilization to start with, this is 100 which means a civilization gets 100 people, some of which will then marry and have babies, usually lots of them since there are plenty of historical slots for them to fill.  The key thing is that this 100 have random traits but they are small enough to lead to a race forming. 

The second number is the total number of historical characters that the civilization is allowed to have, normally it will not affect much since it is 2/3rds of the world limit.  If you were however to have a large number of sites per civilization and a small number of civilizations, that is over 100 sites then it would cause a problem.

The third number is the total number of historical characters per site.  This is the real diversity killer since it keeps a high historical character limit from actually being used.  It is the reason why in the game I submitted there are still non-historical characters in the world despite there being the population limit for it.

The maximum starting civ number isn't actually the population civilizations start out with, it's the maximum amount of civilizations that can be generated for that entity at the start of world generation. It's a surprisingly easy mistake to make as somehow I myself even ended up thinking it was the starting population of a civilization specifically defined as one breeding pair on each number, even though I've actually used that token to limit certain entities to one civilization before.

[GoblinCookie]

The maximum starting civ number isn't actually the population civilizations start out with, it's the maximum amount of civilizations that can be generated for that entity at the start of world generation. It's a surprisingly easy mistake to make as somehow I myself even ended up thinking it was the starting population of a civilization specifically defined as one breeding pair on each number, even though I've actually used that token to limit certain entities to one civilization before.

Yes that is right  .  The maximum starting civ number defaults to 3 as well.

The game does create an initial starting population but it is the historical population of it's first site rather than being specially defined.