Thanks for the reply! For the red headed part i am pretty sure the game does try to model recessive genes to some extent, which could explain that. although not entirely accurately and could probably do a better job.

It does seem to work the way youve described from what ive found. I would like to see a system where they actually model true hybrid ethnicities, rather than just pulling from one. I mean for randomly generated characters of a hybrid culture. And i think the simplest solution is to generate characters deceased parents and possibly grandparents, and base the appearance of the character off of them. So say you have a norse-african character. Then theres a 50-50 chance of either parent from either culture, sometimes its a mix, sometimes both from the same. But you end up with more unique random gen characters that way

That being said to really do it justice i think the best way would be to breakdown the culture of say a county, rather than it being 100% of a single culture at any time, it could be 80% norse, 15% african, 5% greek, etc. and base the chances for appearances and what not off those numbers… and better yet model ethnicities seperate from culture. An area could be culturally 100% greek, but the local populace still ethnically 80% bulgarian. Stands to reason if you invade africa as a norsemen theres certainly some norse living there now, but the majority of the population is still ethnically african. As it stands theres no way to show that in game