Morale - why do we find it difficult to believe?

[Whitey]

The question here is not only about the 'will to fight' it is also about the commanders, unlike us, those commanders didn't have infinite troops to reel out in battle after battle, neither would they have what we would call a 'balanced' army. I remember playing a few 'rules' games in classic STW, when I think 2/3 of my army had to be low-honour ashigru - that is closer to reality and the end results are closer to reality. You can end up with 2-300 men dead on each side and the battle ended. In fact I remember winning one battle and each unit still had over 50-men remaining. Personally I think it is half-brained to complain about unhistorical casualty rates when we are playing with unhistorical armies, however I am NOT saying that the Morale restrictions are better now. I prefer the original STW but would err towards a compromise - it is reasonable to say that the original armies did have quite 'brittle' morale, but that is not a bad thing, it forces more thinking on behalf of the player...

My conclusions for the game

Ashigru should be exactly as they were in the Original S:TW.
Koreans should have strict morale rules, but not as strict as Ashigru
Samurai 'should' be better in the Mongol Invasion than the classic campaign, simply because of the opposition and their attitude towards them...the same with the Mongol Cavalry to the Samurai.

in these battles, where is there to run...if the Samurai run, they are dis-honoured and forced to commit suicide, if the Mongols run there's a good chance that in some battles there would be no route home,

For those who like Sun Tzu, didn't he say something like if you put your own troops in a completely hopeless position they would fight like...well...men possessed...

The Japanese had their back to a wall and ALSO they believed themselves unbeatable

The Mongols had their back to a wall and again believed themselves unbeatable

Because of these factors, the Mongol Invasion can be taken as a special case for morale rules, and if that is so, look at some wars and casualty figures listed below, just damn well THINK for a second and heavy casualty wars are NOT so stupid, do we have no historians here???

My replies to previous rants…

as for the Charge of the Light Brigade being famous, that is merely because of the poem - they lost 36% casualties, the equivalent to about 38 men left out of a 60 man unit...over-hyped.

If you want high-casualty warfare, look at the ACW, 50% casualties for heavily engaged units were regular occurrences, does no-one remember the Sunken Road, hell – Lee lost half his army that day, and that was by no means spread evenly, some units indeed paid the price. Then look at the Russian Front in both world wars and tell me there is no president for units fighting to the end, no - look first at Verdun in World War I, entire battalions wiped out in no-mans land. Maybe you want the Somme for near 100% casualties, no - I think you should look at Ypres...which one? try 1...2...and 3, maybe we could look at the Pacific Wars, how may Japanese prisoners were taken at the start of the war??? no - I'll think of Banzai charges and the like, film clips of women throwing themselves of cliffs to avoid capture, perhaps we could look to the Napoleonic Wars, low-casualty battles right??? look at the records of heavily-engaged units at Borodino while they assaulted the Great Redoubt manned by a quarter of the Russian Artillery, you reckon companies were not wiped out to a man there??? in fact take the whole campaign as an example, how many men set out? half a million, how many returned? about 30-40,000 men, hmm...high casualty levels don't you think - true the weather played its part, doing most of the damage, but there were more battles than Borodino in that campaign. No, I have not finished, look at MacDonalds Corps at Wagram, poorly trained conscripts receiving 70% casualties before being pushed back, now try to imagine well trained YA running with 20 men left. Especially against barbarians. Even if you take that as an isolated incident you'd be wrong, Jena and Auerstadt nay have been great victories for Napoleon, but just because the Prussians were terribly equipped and totally out of touch tactically. They halved the size of Morand and Gudin’s divisions at Auerstadt before the French could reply, and Davout won the day. Do you want more examples? Any Napoleonic battle between the French and the Russians went the distance.

Quite reasonably you could say that these are still ‘isolated incidents’ and I would be inclined to agree, these are not repeated across whole wars, although 1 in 3 of the British soldiers send to the Western Front in WW1 never returned, that is not enough of a president to justify 1-in-12 returning from the plains of Totomi. This leads me to my third point, and the one that brings everything together – what do the battles mentioned above have in common? Aggressive leadership, and either misconception of enemy strength and a determined, prepared enemy or action in full knowledge before-hand of massive casualties.

Look at the Mongol Campaign, the Mongols prepared to meet what they had met when their 40,000 ‘scouts’ had discovered, an easily bearable, small, unprepared enemy. Their generals came ashore in the full expectation that anything they could charge they could beat, and would attack whenever they had the chance, and after all wasn’t that borne out by facts?

Now look at the Japanese position, a Mongol force which had caught them completely ‘on-the-hop’ had humiliated them, so in the time between the Mongols leaving and returning they wasted absolutely no time in preparing themselves, they believed absolutely that barbarians could not fight as well as themselves, their strategy was to throw them out of their territory immediately, and their troops fought like it.

A final note on the Samurai concept of warfare; as many here will know better than me, the Samurai had a completely different approach to warfare – alien to our own. It was based around personal achievement and for a good deal that was more important than survival…the very concept of the samurai was ‘looking for an appropriate time to die’ as a literal translation, actually it comes closer to the Samurai searching for a worthy cause to sacrifice his life for, and as such find his reason to live – the freedom of your country from barbarian invaders is a serious reason to fight and die for. Samurai thought less about victory and defeat and more about personal honour, they also worried little about people dying around them – they cared little for death due to the above and the universally believed concept of re-incarnation.

Now think of the huge casualties suffered in campaigns and wars fought from a European mindset and that mindsets joy of life, is it any wonder that we would see such huge body bag counts in this war?

[Algesan]

First, divide your eras into pre-Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic. The Napoleonic era is the dividing line between Ancient and Modern warfare. Units in Modern warfare tend to take higher percentage casualties than Ancient units before becoming ineffective.

Second, there are variations among cultures but more in tactical situations and individual unit morale at the point of crisis. A far more realistic way to depict units commited to battle would be to assign them a random honor rating when initially making a morale check. It should be in a range about the average we are assigned, but the possibility of craven and elite honor units should occur.

Note: The method used in STW is workable and good for the simulation for the reasons below. I am not suggesting it for a change. It would be interesting though.

Thirdly, the historical and current standard for a unit is 30% casualties rendering it ineffective, at least for the action they are in. There are many examples of units exceeding this percentage and continuing to fight, but there are many examples of units routing or otherwise balking with less casualties. So 30% is a fairly safe number to base your morale ratings on.

Using this as your base you then modify the unit morale by situation (flank attack, nearby units, formation, charging, etc.), terrain, unit morale bonus, commander bonus and casualties. If a core unit hits 30% casualties, then it should have a 50/50 chance of routing.

For STW, the core units are YS and SA with no morale bonus. So all other things being equal, honor 0 YS/SA should rout half the time at 30% casualties.

[Whitey]

The Napoleonic Wars was definatly a watershead, I seem to remember some of the reasons being given for this, the advance of Nationalism and Liberalism leading to fanatically Patriotic AND freely motivated troops, the rise to predominance of battlefield artillery as a casualty-inflicting force, the accepted method of generalship (Napoleon in the tactical attack), the doctorinaire attitude favouring shock (élan) over firepower prevailing in spite of the growth of range and accuracy of weapons of the time, and as the period was an unarmoured one, the shock was designed to be by weight of numbers rather weight of armour, such as the Romans (with their Infantry) The Monguls (heavy Cavalry) and the European Knights of the 12-15th century.

About dividing my examples into pre and post napoleonic, you know very well they are all napoleonic or post-napoleonic

About the 30% loss rendering units ineffective, the reasons behind this are only partially known to me - I know that 30% loss would break the formation of a specific unit, but as when we fight in STW very few generals use the 'Hold Formation' and 'Stand Ground' commands the battles evolve into a messy slogging match. Could you please enlighten me as to the other reasons for this?

Back to the Watershead between modern and historical periods, it is sure that you cannot simply draw a line through history and say 'everything before is this' and 'everything after is this' but then I know that is not what you were saying, Japanese armies did not conform to the normal rules, that is what I was saying with my references to Japanese social structure is that they cannot and did not obey the same rules for morale that can be used for Western wars, the reason I mentioned the very Western Wars that they cannot be compared to is because the Japanese obeyed a stricter system and therefore anything possible in Western Warfare was bound to be less than what was capable in Japanese Wars,

I do not support that all units will fight to the end, and the closest I have come to combat is blank-round platoon attack excercises so I can not tell how units WOULD react to it, however they would be more sturdy than they were in the original, and not quite as sturdy as now...


...I think

[Gothmog]

Totally agree man.

That's why in origianl STW, I decided to turn moral OFF whenever fighting Daimyo and his heirs. Because first of all, if the game allows killing Daimyo and his heirs as an effective way to wipe a clan out, better to do it hard, better to do it with honor.

Secondly, in Japanese history, a samurai without his overlord became ronin. And ronin had very very low social status. Granted, during the warlod period, when a warrior's skill was in high demand, there was a possiblility for them to be rehired and became samurai again. However, the chance was pretty remote and also they may not want to be hired by a rival Daimyo who eliminated their own clan.

So it's not uncommon that a whole legion of samurai committed Sepekko after their lord died. And in such a critical battle, most warrior SHOULD fight till the bitter end, knowing that they had nothing to lose already.