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Nothing is more frustrating than watching your men turn their tails at a critical moment and watching them lose their heads.
Morale is, rightfully, the foundation of this game, and yet it is not fully understood by the VAST majority of players (myself included).
I've learned enough to realize that its difficult if not impossible to "stop a route" (at least a big one) by sending units into the fray. Usually even fresh units will route if they get too close. This is good, but also quite mysterious. How big is a "big route" how close can my 60 fresh H3 WM get to the route before they start to panic and run themselves? How big of an area do routing units "taint"? Exactly what goes into calculating morale? How often do units make morale checks? Whats the equation? How many factors are considered?
The mind boggles at the # of factors that the designers must have (to their credit) considered in calculating troop morale-- but what are they exactly? The manual is certainly no help, and after almost a year of play I am still at a loss to list every one of them, let alone decipher how they all fit together.
One of the most "mysterious" morale issues that I have noticed (especially with wavering or uncertain enemy troops) is this:
If you order an attack against a wavering enemy unit, almost immediately that unit takes a morale hit-- EVEN IF THAT UNIT COULD HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING YOU ISSUED THE ORDER! What I mean is, regardless of whether the unit could say "oh crap, those 3 units of Dachi are going to attack us", they seem to instictively KNOW that the Dachi are coming--almost instantly after you make the click. I've seen it happen time and time again-- an enemy unit is fighting my line (i mean in the HEAT of battle), I manage to free up some Dachi somewhere (pretty far off), and if I click them on the attack the enemy unit INSTANTLY runs. There is no way the enemy could know where my Dachi were going (but the combat engine knows!). If on the other hand I just click my dachi TOWARD the enemy (w/out attacking), the enemy will continue to fight until my Dachi get really close or I order the attack.
Now how could an enemy unit a good distance away, in the heat of battle, know that I have ordered them to be attacked by a unit they might not even be able to SEE?
It seems to me that as soon as an order is issued, the combat engine begins to calculate expected casualties. It seems like around the next 30-40 seconds of expected casualties are applied againt the unit's morale, and they bolt.
This can be QUITE frustrating for the other commander who has no idea why his men are running (and in fact those men probably have no idea themselves).
Could somebody (longjohn2?) confirm this observation?
Does anyone dare to attempt a list of morale factors?
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Well, the best general idea is to assume that your men don't want to die and make allowances for their wellbeing. And to conduct your operations skillfully so that you don't lose (routing means losing.. historically you couldn't really stop a big rout either). Your men are independent beings and they are not as fanatically absorbed by the idea of victory at all costs as you are.
Also, just keep playing and eventually you will get a good feel for it.
Matt
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Shogun 2 has arrived! Check it out here.
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Dionysus9,
I checked your theory on my LAN and it doesn't hold up. I don't see any additional morale penalty just by commanding and attack. There is a morale penaly from being in the proximity of enemy units. So it's possible for units to rout before contact. This penaly has a range of 1.8 tiles. That's 49 infantry men stretched out in a line which is a pretty fair distance. As several units converge from a distance on the enemy the morale penalties will accumulate and make it tough for the enemy units to stand their ground. Check out the morale penaly thread that I just added something to, and go to tootee's Shogun Academy site to see his nice documentation of all we know about morale:
http://shogun-academy.tripod.com/
MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~
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He's telling the truth puzz.
Tell your unit to charge an enemy unit that has 2 or 3 other enemy units near it.. and the targeted unit instantly reacts the moment you click.
But if you tell your unit to move right next to the enemy unit without attacking, you can literally PARK your unit right next to the enemy without them countering your move.
This is most noticable with archers. In the middle of a fight, when enemy archers are shooting at your melee unit, you take a free melee unit thats far from the melee and order it to attack the archers. The INSTANT you click on the attack order the archers switch target or change formation to face their long-away attackers. BUT if you tell this melee unit of yours to walk or even run RIGHT next to the archers, the archers never react, even when the YA is almost right on top of them.
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Dionysus.
I don't recall there being anything in the morale code that depends on whether a distant enemy is ordered to attack a unit or not, except when they get close enough that they break ranks and begin their charge, then their targets gets a penalty.
The only explanation I can think of is to do with the detail of how the code works. Each unit keeps a list of enemy units nearby, and it only considers the units on this list when checking morale. However, for efficency reasons this list is not always up to date, so sometimes for a few seconds a unit can be close enough to another unit to theoretically affect its morale, but isn't considered in the morale calculations, because it hasn't made its way onto the list yet. However, when a unit is ordered to attack, the unit and its target are added to each others' lists, and this could cause morale to drop.
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Edit of previous incorrect idea,
Where in the distant past I got the idea that certain actions forced a morale check I can't remember, but it can't be the case. In my own tests, I see the morale effects immediately when a unit moves into the range of a particulat effect, and Longjohn has recently stated in another post that a morale check is made on every animation cycle, so it's really a continous check.
I have observed in tests that when you move a unit, you may incur and additional morale penalty if the unit is within flanking distance of an enemy unit and it breaks ranks momentarily to move to the new position. If your unit was wavering before the move command, this can put it over the edge and cause it to rout.
Tac,
I did my test on a LAN game, and custom battle or single player is a bit different in that the ai can see the honor of your units and makes decisions using that info. Generally, my statements apply to online or LAN games. I'm not sure if you'r referring to online or single play, but I often forget to make that distinction in my posts.
MizuYuuki ~~~
[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 05-16-2002).]
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That makes perfect sense longjohn2, thanks for enlightening us. The effect, although barely noticeable, was really starting to bother me...but thinking of it as a morale check (even if the unit maybe should not "know" that it is in trouble) helps me understand what is going on.
Thanks Yuuki for putting in terms of a moral check and comparing it to ordering a wavering unit to move-- a related issue I had in the back of my mind when I asked my question.
And thaks Puzz for the links!
[This message has been edited by Dionysus9 (edited 05-12-2002).]
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Anyone interested in this thread should check out http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/003018.html
too
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Wait then! Longjohn, is it possible that by ordering an attack from a long distance (beyond the morale area[i.e. approx 1.8 tiles]), the attacker will be added to the defenders morale penalty list because of the attack order EVEN THOUGH the attacker is beyond the normal perimeter for effecting morale? I ask because it seems to me like the "list" adds an attacker regardless of its distance from the defending unit. I havent done ANY testing on this, so I could be 180 degrees wrong. It's just as likely that the attacker is only added to the list when it moves into the morale range of the defending unit.
???
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Dionysus IMHO you think too much.
But that's just MHO.
Matt
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Shogun 2 has arrived! Check it out here.
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Well then Mr. Khan, I'd dare say your Shogun2 project was a thinking overload.
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All the units on the list are tested to see if they're close enough to have an effect.
