Moral peep?

[paleologos]

Hello again...
Does any of the RTW/EB gurus know if there is a way to see the moral of a unit during combat with the boni or penalties applied?
How low does the moral of a unit have to fall before the unit rout?

This question did not consern me much while playing RTW vanilla but in EB unit moral is sometimes ridiculously high.

The timeframe of the game is to the best of my knowledge the "Golden Age" of Greek mercenaries and those guys were notorious for their lack of commitment (I don't really blame them) to the cause of their employers.
They were derogatively called "ripsaspides" - shield droppers and in EB routing troops of Greek culture are heard screaming "riptete aspides" (in Greek!)- "drop your shields" (so as to run faster for their lives) although they never actually do that in the game. ( Congradulations to the developers, really great work, "God is in the details".)

I find it unrealistic that a unit of levied hoplites that starts the battle with 160 men would hold their ground until only 20 of them (or fewer) are left alive. Even Spartans prefered to disengage in the face of overwhelming odds - as they did at the Battle of Lechaeum (391 BCE) of the Corinthian War (Thermopylae was one of few extraordinary situations where the survival of an entire way of living rested upon buying time for the others to organise.).

So if anyone can shed some light to my questions I would really appreciate it.
Thanks.

[antisocialmunky]

As far as I know there isn't a way. All I can say is that units with excellent morale(12) like Classical Hoplites pretty much stay in the fight until the very end. Units with morale 14(Classical Hoplites with 1 exp) are pretty much guarenteed unless they get hammered by every single morale - will end up all dying on the field.

Morale with hoplite and other hard to kill units in generally is kinda whacky if you keep them in guard mode and not moving they take forever to kill so their loss rates become rather low. As far as I know kill rate is probably the most variable modifier.

Other modifiers include:
Scary Unit
Fire
Flanks on 1, 2, or 3 sides
Outnumbered and really badly outnumbered(as far as I can tell there seem to be 2 levels)
Tiredness
% of unit left
Routing friends

[paleologos]

I know they get a moral penalty for getting shot at their backs while already engaged and that this penalty is higher when the arrows are aflame.
If I cannot see their current level of moral for any unit does anyone know how high every penalty is and how low does total moral have to fall before they run off?
If two scary units are nearby do penalties accumulate? If a general and a command unit are nearby do boni accumulate?
Has anyone investigated this?

[antisocialmunky]

I think the command/inspiring boni stack. The scary units don't stack, 1 scary unit is all you need.

You can see the steady/wavering thing in the mouse over status info

[Ludens]

Has anyone investigated this?

There is some old research in the Ludus Magna, but this was for the first patch so it may not be up to date. In any case, it does not answer most of your questions.

[vartan]

Why? Because that's a large claim to make. One that is arguably very false. Or...if true, does not automatically mean that the alternative way-of-life would've been "worse", whatever that means.

In any case, I've come to learn that the inner workings of the Total War engines are like dark matter and the search for the Higgs Boson. That is, we are like the scientists in Geneva today in that we both are looking for something that we have such a low likelihood of finding considering its tendency to evade our epistemological grasp.

[paleologos]

Why? Because that's a large claim to make.

The claim was made by a large number of historians and is now mainstream historical thesis.
I will only agree with you on the basis that studying hypothetical history is a folly engagement.
In any case I was referring to the way the Hellenes of the time were perceiving the Persian attempt to assimilate them and the way they would instinctively (and in many ways irrationally) react to the "Borgy" type of argument that "resistance is futile" - a rational analysis would conclude that there was merit in that argument. Anyway, human beings are boundedly rational and who more boundedly rational than the Greeks?
Also the Hellenes of the fiercely independent city states did not have a sense of a common Hellenic identity (one city state defeating another would not make any cultural difference to the defeated) right up to the point they had to defend against a foreign culture.
The successful Greek defence paved the way for the Delian League which in turn led to the Golden Age of classical Greece and then the Athenian Dominion and the Peloponnesian War. Constant strife in the Greek south weakened the southern Greeks so that it became possible for Philip II of Makedonia to pusrue his plan of unification. Alexander's excuse for invading the Persian Empire was to avenge the "crimes" the Persians had committed in Makedonia and the rest of Greece. His success would not have been possible without the participation of all the Hellenes although without the Lakedemonians (they would only go to war if they had the leadership) and resulted in making the Hellenic language the lingua franca of the time which a few centuries later facilitated the spread of a religion we now take much for granted.
I think that's about enough of a history lecture, if not more and I hope you will forgive it.

By the way, what is the likelyhood of us having a Creative Assembly guy letting us in at least some of the "inner workings of the Total War engines" ?

[Cambyses]

Other modifiers include:
Scary Unit
Fire
Flanks on 1, 2, or 3 sides
Outnumbered and really badly outnumbered(as far as I can tell there seem to be 2 levels)
Tiredness
% of unit left
Routing friends

Also, I believe their is a big hit when their general either flees or worse is killed/leaves the battle. The penalty seems to be much worse depending on the capability of the general, but I suspect that might be to do with simply losing previous bonuses, rather than gaining negative ones.
Some units also get a negative modifier from fighting certain types of troops. ie archers and light troops dont like fighting cavalry, which is similar to the scary unit thing but not quite the same.
Also, troops can be scared by hidden enemies emerging close to them.
Last one I can think of is "worried about exposed flanks" when a unit is isolated but is not actually yet engaged on the flanks and rear.

Then of course there are all the positive modifiers, but thats probably a different thread.

[vartan]

Thermopylae was one of few extraordinary situations where the survival of an entire way of living rested upon buying time for the others to organise.

I can't believe you just said that. To your question I'll just say that there are clearly no precise morale indicators in-game anywhere. There are morale level indicators, though, and this is simply an engine feature. You've met it many times by hovering your cursor over the unit.

Other modifiers include:
Scary Unit
Fire
Flanks on 1, 2, or 3 sides
Outnumbered and really badly outnumbered(as far as I can tell there seem to be 2 levels)
Tiredness
% of unit left
Routing friends

And most importantly: Not necessarily in that order. Just play around with the MP EDU custom battle. It's the best sandbox, second only to two-comp setup (either run by yourself or assisted by an Internet adversary).

[paleologos]

I can't believe you just said that.

Why?

About a month ago I played a random battle in vanilla BI. The computer gave me Romano-British and as adversaries Germans. I swiftly grouped my cavalry and attacked the Germanic cavalry to wipe them out.
I left the others as they were, unattended. The AI had placed two units of legionaries at the center of my battle line. These guys routed at the sight of two units of night raiders IIRC, without being engaged at all (what I mean here is that they were not "worried about their flanks", nor were they fired upon nor did they take any casualty at all!). All my infantry in that battle routed before my cavalry returned but the grail knights eventually won the day.
I found strange the ease with which my troops routed in that battle but in EB it is the opposite extreme.

Anyway part of my question is about how many "moral points" each demoralising factor steals from a unit and how low does the moral have to fall before the unit is totally disheartened. Is it zero or less than that?

[Pobs]

ZCB,

I seem to remember the mods mentioning that the 'battle setting' has a big effect on morale bonuses so if you are playing on 'hard' or 'very hard' battle settings they will hardly ever break... that is why 'medium' battle setting is recommended....


cheers,


Pobs

[paleologos]

I always play my battles on medium. Anyway if anyone knows what I am really inquiring about please don't be shy, do share your knowledge.
Thanks.