Has anyone ever had a fort where all their dwarves didn't have brown skin, amythest eyes? I know I haven't, because with even starting ratios the first item listed (which is therefore the dominant gene) overrides all others. Obviously, something must be done; Toady isn't likely to get around to this soon.
I've had some moderate success by assigning increasing values to each of the more recessive genes, but [1...2...3...4...5...] has only gotten me into the 'B's. I propose that we test different formulae until we find one that's a good balance, the next one to try is [1...4...9...16...25...] but I'm not sure how it will turn out.
IMPORTANT: Your starting seven will ALWAYS use the raw file that the world was genned with, even if you change the raw in the save file. This is because (I think) they are predetermined at world gen. Immigrants and Reclaim mode, however, WILL use a modified raw file, so long as you edited the right one (the one in the world's folder).
Also, having all those reclaim parties bring lots of steel bars and nothing else (besides maybe lots of coal) will give any fort you plant to build there a really nice head start...
Something else we can do is rank the different eye/hair/skin colors and fit them to whatever curve we got. It would also help if someone who knows statistics (and/or genetics) can provide a formula and tell us how best to make a wide bell curve that will aproximate an even distribution. lastly, I'd rather have curve skewed to the right, because very rare eye/hair colors should stick in bloodlines by being dominant.