I think it is in the mod's best interest to keep things simple at first.
Bear in mind that CKII mechanics were designed just with intra-species reproduction anyway and what most people are asking for is hard to mod correctly, as it would require mechanics beyond the original scope of the game i.e. for racial groups as a supracategory of cultural groups and rules for inheritance of those.
So, yes, a "race trait" is a must if the culture groups aren't also race exclusive. The latter 1:1 map is problematic, since you would need a separate culture group for half breeds and to generally disable heritage education. The separation between race and culture group is probably better.
Given that rules do exist for genetic inheritance, namely the DNA attribute of characters, some mods resort to using the graphical_cultures as a way of representing this (i.e. have a set of portrait packs for each race and then mix and match what cultures are allowed to use which portraits). This may serve as an additional guide as to which half-races to choose, since they would have to use portrait elements that are "compatible" with one another.
This again, was originally meant to reflect the physical, genetically inherited aspect of ethnicity, and a child is assigned a specific portrait pack given its parentage on birth. Note that this could be superseded with "set_graphical_culture" if one would want to have other inheritance rules, but this is needlessly complicated.
Therefore, either: (A) have the child be of a given race based on its graphical culture (e.g. an orc-troll marriage could only result in children with either the "orc" or "troll" trait, but not both, if we have, say, orcgfx and trollgfx as graphical cultures) or (B) have the half-breed offspring be stillborn.
Exceptions would only need to be made for those cases that matter (i.e. the ones you could not do without). I count three, the ones which do figure more prominently in canon: half-human/half-elves, half-human/half-orcs and half-orc/half-ogres (I am assuming no draenei on the Azerothian continent for half-orc/half-draenei). Adding conditionals for those would not be such a burden and a couple more "half-race" traits would make sense. The question remains as to how well are portrait packs able to represent this -- one possible example:
(1) orcs and half-breed resembling orcs more than anything else would be in orcgfx, humans and half-breed resembling humans more than anything else would be in humangfx etc.;
(2) another example would be to give each half-breed its own graphical culture, say orcogregfx.
I'd say to go with (A) for pure races, otherwise (B) with exceptions handled by (1), but you may need to see what works for you.
Also, have the opinion penalties between different race combinations (i.e. the set in "opposites") higher than the usual different culture group penalties (indeed, racism is a thing in Warcraft lore). This will make AI inter-species marriage less likely overall. This is because of the point made in the following paragraph.
Last and not least, let us not forget about political dynamics. Marriages are after all a way of securing political alliances. I don't know the map all that well, but it might merit looking into what other possible exceptions could be made for racial alliances that might emerge naturally in-game between the powers on the map (the rival of my rival could be a friend, so why not obtain a royal marriage with them? Child proceeds to perpetuate a dynasty of half-breeds that unites the two kingdoms...) Note the emphasis, since not every tribe/count/baron needs to be considered for this. They won't end up mattering that much anyway.
What I wanted to say the most is that there is no need to spend time on all the possible combinations available when there should be just a few that ultimately matter in an average playthrough.
tl;dr Use race traits and keep things simple (discard half-breeds entirely or use just a few). Playtest/mindtest to see if it all makes sense/adds to the gameplay.
Bear in mind that CKII mechanics were designed just with intra-species reproduction anyway and what most people are asking for is hard to mod correctly, as it would require mechanics beyond the original scope of the game i.e. for racial groups as a supracategory of cultural groups and rules for inheritance of those.
So, yes, a "race trait" is a must if the culture groups aren't also race exclusive. The latter 1:1 map is problematic, since you would need a separate culture group for half breeds and to generally disable heritage education. The separation between race and culture group is probably better.
Given that rules do exist for genetic inheritance, namely the DNA attribute of characters, some mods resort to using the graphical_cultures as a way of representing this (i.e. have a set of portrait packs for each race and then mix and match what cultures are allowed to use which portraits). This may serve as an additional guide as to which half-races to choose, since they would have to use portrait elements that are "compatible" with one another.
This again, was originally meant to reflect the physical, genetically inherited aspect of ethnicity, and a child is assigned a specific portrait pack given its parentage on birth. Note that this could be superseded with "set_graphical_culture" if one would want to have other inheritance rules, but this is needlessly complicated.
Therefore, either: (A) have the child be of a given race based on its graphical culture (e.g. an orc-troll marriage could only result in children with either the "orc" or "troll" trait, but not both, if we have, say, orcgfx and trollgfx as graphical cultures) or (B) have the half-breed offspring be stillborn.
Exceptions would only need to be made for those cases that matter (i.e. the ones you could not do without). I count three, the ones which do figure more prominently in canon: half-human/half-elves, half-human/half-orcs and half-orc/half-ogres (I am assuming no draenei on the Azerothian continent for half-orc/half-draenei). Adding conditionals for those would not be such a burden and a couple more "half-race" traits would make sense. The question remains as to how well are portrait packs able to represent this -- one possible example:
(1) orcs and half-breed resembling orcs more than anything else would be in orcgfx, humans and half-breed resembling humans more than anything else would be in humangfx etc.;
(2) another example would be to give each half-breed its own graphical culture, say orcogregfx.
Example (2) meshes in nicely with the philosophy of (A) but suffers from (A)'s flaw of strongly correlating race with culture (since initial random portraits will use the character's culture to determine which portrait pack to use) and may needlessly duplicate some things.
Example (1) is less redundant, but may be more difficult to construct from a graphical standpoint.
Given an assignment code for the half-races such as: if character has graphical_culture = humangfx then, if both parents have humangfx he is "human", else, for each possible different graphical_culture that either of the parents may have, assign it the half-race trait and/or graphical_culture based on said different culture;
one can easily see that this last step needs to do some additional logic when graphical_cultures are also half-breed exclusive as in example (2) and will lead to different behaviours. In the case of (2) half-breed+pure breed may result in either half-breed or pure breed and half-breed+half-breed will never give pure breed while in (1) half-breed+pure breed will show the same bias toward the pure breed that the half-breed has and therefore half-breed+half-breed will give pure breed if they show the same bias
Example (1) is less redundant, but may be more difficult to construct from a graphical standpoint.
Given an assignment code for the half-races such as: if character has graphical_culture = humangfx then, if both parents have humangfx he is "human", else, for each possible different graphical_culture that either of the parents may have, assign it the half-race trait and/or graphical_culture based on said different culture;
one can easily see that this last step needs to do some additional logic when graphical_cultures are also half-breed exclusive as in example (2) and will lead to different behaviours. In the case of (2) half-breed+pure breed may result in either half-breed or pure breed and half-breed+half-breed will never give pure breed while in (1) half-breed+pure breed will show the same bias toward the pure breed that the half-breed has and therefore half-breed+half-breed will give pure breed if they show the same bias
I'd say to go with (A) for pure races, otherwise (B) with exceptions handled by (1), but you may need to see what works for you.
Also, have the opinion penalties between different race combinations (i.e. the set in "opposites") higher than the usual different culture group penalties (indeed, racism is a thing in Warcraft lore). This will make AI inter-species marriage less likely overall. This is because of the point made in the following paragraph.
Last and not least, let us not forget about political dynamics. Marriages are after all a way of securing political alliances. I don't know the map all that well, but it might merit looking into what other possible exceptions could be made for racial alliances that might emerge naturally in-game between the powers on the map (the rival of my rival could be a friend, so why not obtain a royal marriage with them? Child proceeds to perpetuate a dynasty of half-breeds that unites the two kingdoms...) Note the emphasis, since not every tribe/count/baron needs to be considered for this. They won't end up mattering that much anyway.
What I wanted to say the most is that there is no need to spend time on all the possible combinations available when there should be just a few that ultimately matter in an average playthrough.
tl;dr Use race traits and keep things simple (discard half-breeds entirely or use just a few). Playtest/mindtest to see if it all makes sense/adds to the gameplay.
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