I wrote about this in another thread, but it was a bit confusing trying to describe without the use of any pictures. I've decided this would be better put in its own thread instead of buried inside another long thread.

I have tried to figure out how know which parents would produce which children, and I think I've figured it out. It is a simple mathematical average of the parents when assigning each "head" a number.

I began charting which children resulted from which parents as my villagers had babies. To help me keep track, I assigned a number to each "head" from the male_heads.png and female_heads.png that came with the game. There are 30 heads for each so the numbers simply go from 1 to 30.

The first two pictures show how each villager is numbered. So now each villager is assigned a number so the family trees can be represented by numbers.

The last picture is of the chart I created. It shows the family trees of each child and its parents. The parents are listed with their corresponding numbers. Each boy and girl child is also listed with their number.

That's when I noticed that the children were almost always close to the average of the numbers for the mother and father.

For example: If a father's number is 12 and the mother's number is 18, their average would be 15.
12 + 18 = 30.
30 / 2 = 15.
The average of parents 12 and 18 is 15.

These parents will most likely have a child #15 (boy or girl). The children can be off the average by a point or two, so the parents may also produce child #14 or #16, or even #13 or #17. Every now and then when the parents' numbers are far apart, the resulting child could be as much as 3 points off the average.

So if the average number from the parents is 15, you will get children:
13-14-15-16-17
With 15 in the middle being most common and 13/17 being less common.

If the parents' numbers are close together, such as 15 and 16, they may produce children:
13-14-15-16-17-18
So 15 and 16 are most common, but you can get a child numbered 13, 14, 17, or 18. The further you go from the middle (the average), the less likely the chances are you'll get that child, but it's not impossible.

Many people, myself included, lose most of their black and blonde haired villagers and end up with mostly brown and red. If you look at the "head" pictures, you'll notice that black and blonde are the two ends with brown and red in the middle. Given that the children are the average their parents, this explains why so many of us end up with mostly brown and red haired villagers since they're more likely to be the average of the two parents.

There are some exceptions to this rule which I haven't figured out if it's another pattern or just a infrequent random child being produced in order to bring into the game a few children that are different. I've noted these exceptions by showing their numbers in gray boxes. You can see how the resulting child is not at all close to the average of the two parents. The more exceptions I get, the more I can try to see if they're caused by anything specific, such as maybe anytime you put certain parents together (maybe those parents produce random children?). I've considered other hypothesis, but I don't have enough examples to figure out if any could be true.

For now, using the average of the parents very closely predicts which child they will produce. I hope this helps answer the question of the genetics between the parents and children. Using this helps give us some way of figuring out how to get (or avoid) a certain child when mating parents together.

This shows how I numbered each villager:



And this shows the chart I am using to track the parents and children. Notice that each parent and resulting child is numbered. At the far right of the chart is the average of the parents (using their numbers). You can see how close the children are to the average of the parents. This is how you can figure out the genetics in the game.



Please let me know if this makes sense to you all. If not, let me know, and I'll try to help explain whatever part is confusing.

Wow thats a lot of work. Good show. I was curious to the villagers heads. I've never had a #1 woman nor #3,4,5,30 men at all in any of the 5 villages on my game. (Only recently got 1 of #2 and 7 women)

(Wants the different men!)

Looks to check numbers




10 + 11= 21/2=10.5? 28+19=47/2=23.5?

Is this correct?

PS: Both these little girls were a surprise with their looks considering their parents!

Yes, your calculations are correct. Both of these are examples of the children that appear to be randomly chosen and do not reflect the average of their parents at all. I've added this to my list, hoping I can eventually figure out if there's a pattern to these exceptions or if they're truly random.

I also thank you for posting their pictures. I add anything that I can confirm with a picture to my list. I have to actually see the parent and children to be certain the correct numbers are being used. That way I know the exception indeed did happen and it's not just an accidental error of some kind. The more of these exceptions I can find, the more likely I have a chance to figure out what causes them (if they aren't random).

Do you have other children that do fit into the "average of the parents" pattern? I'd like to also confirm that others are getting the same pattern between their parent/child combinations.

I don't know if they are completely random; it could be a grandparent.

this is so helpful. the math is confusing but i got everything when i saw the charts. The charts a re helpful, thanks.

Wow I second what Wisegal said thanks 4 posting

thanks alot for those breeding charts and explanations for VV! what a lot of work! i never knew there were so many different villagers available!

do you have a total count for how many combos there are?? am i understanding there there are 900 available?????

Hee! I thought of that and if they were from a large tribe then definitely. I have seen the grandparent effect but these 2 little girls are from a tribe of 26 with 4 dead. I started putting the father and mothers names for a last name to keep up with who was who. But that doesnt mean that their grandparents on the other side of Isola didn't pass on genes

ATTEEENTTIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have discovered a genetic breakthrough about the noises of the villagers! The noise that the MOM makes will be in the noise family that the child makes. Lets say there was a mom that said "whew". She had kids and they all said "he he hee". The ones that were girls all said "whew" when they grew up. The ones that were boys all said a peaceful sounding "hey" when they grew up.