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madnezz

Bad Traits on Horses

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I have 60+ animal husbandry and I am breeding the following two aged horses:


 


 


Honeyhop:


 


It has fleeter movement than normal. It is a tough bugger. It has a strong body. It has lightning movement. It can carry more than average. It has very strong leg muscles. 


Mother is Old fat Dancesweet. Father is Venerable fat Rockflash. 


 


 


Wildfast:


 


It has fleeter movement than normal. It is a tough bugger. It has a strong body. It has lightning movement. It can carry more than average. It has very strong leg muscles. 


Mother is Venerable fat Windzafir. Father is Venerable fat Dreamflea. 


 


 


This was the offspring:


 


It has fleeter movement than normal. It is a tough bugger. It has a strong body. It has lightning movement. It has very strong leg muscles. It seems overly aggressive.


Mother is Aged fat Honeyhop. Father is Aged fat Wildfast. 


 


 


Neither parent has had a genesis cast.  This happens about 50% of the time now.  Is this intended or something new?


Edited by madnezz
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There has always been a random chance/risk to get any trait when breeding. You just have a higher chance of getting the traits of the parents, than any other traits  and even higher if both parents have a trait. Getting bad traits from parents with no bad traits in not unusual.


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This happens to me with 60+ AH at times. Luckily I am also a Fo priestess (which helps a lot with animal breeding) so I can get rid of these when they pop up. Otheriwse you just have to cull the foals whenever this occurs.


 


You had 5 traits from the parents shared that passed on, you lost one good shared trait (Carries More) and picked up a random bad trait. That happens, not really that infrequently, because for each breeding, you always have ONLY an X success% to pass on any good trait, never 100%, and ALWAYS have a Y% to toll up a random bad one, never a ZERO%.


 


Personally that is one reeason I cull out horses with "neutral" traits such as tough, keen and fierce -- even though they are not "bad" traits, and with enough "slot points" to keep all of the good traits, the more traits you throw into the pot, the more chance of a neutral trait taking a "success" slot that might have otherwise gone to a "keeper" trait like Carries More.


 


I see foals just like this one, all the time, coming from very good 5-trait breeding stock. It just happens now and then, it's like a bad miss in a fight. Warriors have bad rolls in combat too. It's why its a RNG game -- random rolls are never all success or zero failure.


Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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It seems overly aggresive isnt a bad one isnt it? I never noticed any kind of problem with this trait.

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I've got 88AH and it happens to me all the time too.  I also don't understand why overly aggressive is a bad one, if it gets in a fight it might frenzy and such.  To me this is great when a spider tries to take a swipe at the horse I'm riding, but it is on the bad list so when a Fo priest uses Genesis it is usually the first one to be removed.  


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It comes off with genesis, so the game considers it "bad."  To me it is more a neutral like Keen, but because I can actually remove it, I much prefer getting a foal with aggressive, than with fierce or keen.  The only two non-speed traits I tend to keep, are Strong&Healthy, and "Spark" (mostly because I am not really sure what "Spark" does, beyond rumors, and hate to weed it out if it turns out to be nice.)  Strong & healthy probably isn't that great since I don't get diseases that much, but back when I sold horses more than now, I noticed people immediately grabbed up my 5-speeds with that trait, so I started keeping it.


 


Otherwise, I am happiest getting a horse with the 5 speed traits and ONLY the five speed traits, because I seem to have my best luck getting 5-speed foals from those. Any time neutral traits get added in, I seem to spin the roulette wheel more, and run a greater chance of losing a critical  "keeper" trait.


Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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Pfffffffffff 50 AH, 4/5 horses have at least one bad trait, several 2 and 3.


 


I bet there i$ some relation to ratio.


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My alt has 64 AH.  It seems backwards that I had better luck breeding 5 speed stock when I only could produce 5 trait horses, but now that I can produce 6 traits, I have more "bad" foals.   I understand the math, and how it works, and the results I am now getting are consistent with the programming, but ...just seems questionable that the higher the AH you get, the harder it is to consistently produce the horse that is in really highest demand... straight 5 speeds.


 


Almost makes me wish there was a switch, whereby we could set the "effective" AH skill you would use for any breeding.


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My alt has 64 AH.  It seems backwards that I had better luck breeding 5 speed stock when I only could produce 5 trait horses, but now that I can produce 6 traits, I have more "bad" foals.   I understand the math, and how it works, and the results I am now getting are consistent with the programming, but ...just seems questionable that the higher the AH you get, the harder it is to consistently produce the horse that is in really highest demand... straight 5 speeds.

 

Almost makes me wish there was a switch, whereby we could set the "effective" AH skill you would use for any breeding.

Edited by Lithien
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Good Advice, I will keep working at it,  Thank you.

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Possible the only skill were we are punished for gaining high skill as we have more chance a bad trait will popup.Im trying hard not to get to 90 skill for that reason


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Personally that is one reeason I cull out horses with "neutral" traits

....

I see foals just like this one, all the time, 

Edited by Cista

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You see many bad traits because you are over 60 AH and you cull out the neutral traits :)

 

Read Lithien's post, she explains it excellently. You need to fill up your horses' slots in every generation. 

 

 

Look again at OP's horses. They have 60AH, their breeding pair have the exact matching traits (including the same matching "extra" neutral trait to fill up that extra slot), and they claim that over half their foals are getting bad traits that replace one of the coveted speed traits. Not a wildcard extra trait, but they lose a speed trait and get a bad trait in its place.

 

 

I have a fairly new herd now, I did not say I got "many" bad traits only that they were not infrequent. Before I left the game for 1.5 years, I had a breeding stock of 5-speeds that almost NEVER got any bad traits, ever.  I even bred often the mother and son, sister and brother and rarely got smacked with the "inbreeding" penalty.  That was because Genesis seems to not only remove a bad trait but act as a sort of vaccine against future offspring getting the removed trait. If you Genesis a lot of horses, over time you get fewer and fewer and fewer bad traits in each succeeding generation. I am not sure if Lithien ever used Genesis on her stock early on, perhaps she can let us know. I got almost none on my old deed (Fo priest as my main) with a breeding stock I had for a very long time, they all had five speeds and it was very rare for them to pick up extra traits. I mostly just had to cull out an occasional Keen, Fierce, or Tough  since I could not "inoculate" against those, (as I said I would keep the Strong and Healthy ones since people really liked buying those).  I culled the neutrals because the more traits you are rolling for, the more chance of an occasional bad roll on a trait you care about.  That's why I actually prefer bad traits over neutral traits, I can "cleanse" a herd easier with Genesis rather than trying to make sure every single horse has the exact same traits beyond the critical five, and as soon as I level a new tier of AH, I have to redo my herd to get all the same extra traits again, which becomes numerically harder the more traits you add to the pool.  Also those horses with extra traits are less valuable to sell (or even give away free) unless the buyer would also have the same higher AH -- any less than me, and they risk losing one of the speed traits in their own foals because they cannot sustain six or seven or eight trait foals. Exeption is people buying riding/work horses who never intend to breed them themselves. 

 

OP is an example of someone who is following your advice but it does not seem to be helping them very much.  

Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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On a related note, I have heard (and operated under this assumption) that genesis'ed traits on grown horses can still be passed on. Genesis on the foal keeps the "removed" trait from being passed on by the older horse version.


 


It appears to be true; though, I have not extensively tested.


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Clarifying if I ever used genesis on my stock early on:


 


No. I didn't have a Fo-priest until long after all my breeders were 5-speed. I did get one for drizzles (oh how I love that spell), and whenever I chose to genesis a foal, I marked it in granger, since my customers early on were extremly suspicious of genesis'ed horses, so those horses were only kept for personal riding/cart horses. These days I don't have the favor to spare for genesis.


 


Since I am still on my first cup of coffee, and brain is barely functioning, I decided to load granger and check if any of my breeding stock had the genesis mark, then realised that of course not. They all have max number (for me) traits, so they can't have been genesis'ed - and that reminded me that I have always used only max-traited horses as breeding stock, so at no point has my breeding stock been genesis'ed at all - so no inoculation has been possible.


 


It is an interesting theory, that I haven't disproven - I am just not able to contribute to it at all, as my horses are bred from wild up to 8 traits with no genesis'ed horse ever being part of the breeding stock. I haven't bought a horse or traded a horse either (to avoid inbreeding), so I actually can say for sure, that none of my breeding stock have a genesised horse in their heritage, so no inoculation has been possible.


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A great thread here with a lot of interesting information on horse breeding. Before moving to Xanadu I never had much interest in all this since I would just buy the few horses I needed from others. Now since there have been only wild horses at the start I have started breeding some of my own and this and other threads on the subject have been helpful for a more detailed perspective of the process. Still, I find that breeding horses doesn't really appeal to me much and no doubt when I have a few decent ones to use I will cut back to my usual 4 horses, or maybe a few more now.


 


=Ayes=


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If by chance anyone is wondering, the zombie versions are breedable with their living counterparts. Of course use a zombie sire, as zombie mares dont live long enough to gestate (zombies go poof after 24hrs).


 


However, theres nothing really special or unique as a result, afaik. The zombie version doesn't keep its living traits, and the impact on the breeding pool is akin to a wild horse.


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In the old forums someone made a suggestion detailing a system for selecting the traits in a foal based on the traits of the parents. Rolf replied that he liked the idea and I assume the algorithm suggested was at least semi followed by Rolf when he built the current breeding system. Unfortunately I didn't save the post but I based the tool I made in python around the post. Here's the python code I have for simulating a breed between two horses.

    def SimulateBreed(self,  partner):            totalTraits = maxTraits        pool = {}        for t in self.traits:            if self.gender == "M":                pool[t] = 2            else:                pool[t] = 3        for t in partner.traits:            if partner.gender == "M":                if t in pool:                    pool[t] += 2                else:                    pool[t] = 2            else:                if t in pool:                    pool[t] += 3                else:                    pool[t] = 3        pointsUsed = 0        for t in pool:            pointsUsed += pool[t]        numRandomTraits = math.ceil(((totalTraits * 6) - pointsUsed)/5)         possibleTraits = []        for t in traits_base:            possibleTraits += [t]        for i in range(numRandomTraits):            if choice([0, 1]) == 1:                t = choice(possibleTraits)                if t in pool:                    pool[t] += 2                else:                    pool[t] = 2        selected = []        if len(pool) <= totalTraits:            for t in pool:                selected += [t]        else:            while len(selected) < totalTraits:                pointsUsed = 0                if len(pool) <= 0:                    break                for t in pool:                    pointsUsed += pool[t]                j=  randint(0,  pointsUsed - 1)                i = 0                for t in pool:                    i += pool[t]                    if j < i:                        selected += [t]                        del pool[t]                        break        return selected

For those not familiar with python here's how it works.

First off it builds a weighted pool of traits based on the parents. The stud's traits have a weight of 2 and the mare's traits have a weight of 3. If both parents have the trait then it has a weight of 5.

Tally up all the weights.

totalTraits is the max number of traits you can have in a foal based on your AH. pointsUsed is the tally from the last step. The formula for solving the potential number of additional traits to add to the pool is as follows ⌈(totalTraits * 6) - pointsUsed)/5⌉

For each of these new traits it has a 50% chance of not adding it. If it does add a trait, randomly pick the trait from all the possible traits(including ones already in the pool). If the trait selected isn't in the pool it's added with a weight of 2 and if it is already in the pool the trait's weight is increased by 2.

If the number of traits in the pool is less than your trait limit then the foal gets all the traits in the pool. Otherwise traits are randomly picked until the limit is hit.

So for example if you're AH is 50 and you can have 5 traits and you breed two horses with identical traits. then you'd have a pool of 5 traits each with weight 5. So the number of potential new traits would be ⌈(5 * 6) - 25)/5⌉ which comes out to 1. There's still only a 50% chance that it gets added and there's a chance it'll pick one of the traits already added. So the odds of getting a new trait come out to roughly 13 in 36 or ~36 percent

At 90AH with matching traits you'd have ⌈(9 * 6) - 25)/5⌉ which is 2 possible traits. So the odds increase to 9 in 18 or 50%. And because at 9 traits you only have 1 trait left that won't get genesis-ed off odds are you'll be picking up one of the negative ones.

Because of that ceiling function up until 60 AH if you breed two horses both with the max number of traits you can pick up at most 1 new trait. 60AH and above and you can get 2 new random traits that neither parent had. So if you want the best odds at 5 speed horses it's best to stick to 50AH and use two parents that have all 5 traits.

If you're breeding horses that have more traits than your limit then it's possible to eliminate having any random traits crop up and you can determine the traits you get in your random selection(but not the exact selection).

This is of course all under the assumption that Rolf implemented the breeding algorithm exactly as suggested. If he didn't then my wall of text is pretty worthless :P.

Edited by Theodis

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Afaik it was Gaeron's, and he made the comment that Rolf appeared to have deviated in places.


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 I made the mistake of raising my AH over 50.  I should have linden to all the breeders who were around me.  But what did they know?  They had 80 AH and that 80 was a good number.  Because of how often i get trash horses, I have started to level a alt up to 50.  he isn't far at this point and will become my breeder.  Sure, it is inconvenient since i don't priem him up often, but its better then making babies that need to be killed off which equals a total waste of time all together as you wait another 10 days for another to pop out.

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70AH and its like ever since they removed the cooldown on genesis I get an extra pair of bad traits on the stuff im breeding, did the dev say okay, no more cooldown on gen so lets give everyone extra stuff to cast on.

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14 hours ago, Fairyshine said:

I believe this is happening again. 

Nothing has changed, it's still just broken. I ran simulations and found that higher AH hurts your chances to breed the horses you want to. The instant you hit 60 AH you're already screwed. See this thread for details:

 

The whole trait inheritance system needs to be rewritten, in my opinion. A vastly simpler system could produce occasionally random but saner results.

Edited by thorgot
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