Scare Tactics

[Rurik the Chieftain]

Hey! It's me again. I've set up this thread so everyone can discuss their most devious morale-destroying techniques . Know how to rout thousands of soldiers with peasants? I'd sure like to know! Try not to post too obvious stuff
(dude, use elephants) as most people already know these things.

[Maltz]

I remember reading somewhere there is a CA coder explaining how morales are calculated. Just pulling fade memories out of my head, factors that reduce morales (not counting "a priori" conditions such as ambushed, general's traits) are:

(1) Outnumbered

The most common kind of routing. Outnumbering gives a huge morale reduction. I think it works as any single unit sums up, in a certain radius, the number of friendly and enemy units. If there are far more enemy units than friendly units, then "outnumber" condition is established and the penalty given.

(2) Unit depletion

Morale penalty is correlated the degree of unit depletion. I guess there are certain thresholds. For example, 1/2 left = (-2), 1/4 left = (-4), etc.

(3) Arrow fire

I am not sure whether the number of arrows also affect the degree of morale reduction.

(4) Melee situation

Losing badly certainly sounds worse than winning easily. In Vh settings your men always start to blink whenever they engage in melee for this reason - they always lose badly.

(5) Flanked

Charge from behind gives the most penalty, while flank from the side is about half of that.

(6) Animals

Elephants, wardogs, chariots all reduces morale.

(7) Routing friendly units

The higher status the routing friendly unit, the stronger the effect. If everyone is running away, you want to run, too.

***

As you can see, you want to create local advantages that you outnumber the enemy in that given spot, killing them quickly, and perferrably charging them from multiple directions. That will be the simplest routing condition.

[Slon]

Pelting them with pila/javelins also hits morale hard. This is especially useful against Naked Barbarians and other lightly-armoured troops. They will take huge casualties and may even rout before they get into melee range.

Against cavalry: Incendiary pigs (against elephants mostly) and camels (against horses only) scare them.
Against infantry: Berserkers and scythed chariots frighten them.

I think that surrounded enemies also feel somewhat more frightened, too.

Also, if you have Arcani or some other ambushing troops, or if you are in a forest, you can try ambushing the General to end the fighting early. Still, don't count on winning battles like this with horrible troops. I was fighting a spear warband and a general (2 units total, about 150 men) with my group of 6 units of town watch (Brutii, Rome). I thought I would win the battle by completely surrounding and flanking the spear warband, but instead, all my troops just chain-routed. Also, don't be fooled by their "spears." I had a general charge uphill into a well-formed line of these guys and they flew off of the map, litteraly! They are basically almost as horrible as peasants. If you want a unit to hold something, I recommend getting half as many units of Principes or Auxilia (later in the game).

Overall, I find that killing the general is the most effective way to get routs because all of his troops are hit equally by his death. Also, the AI usually uses the excellent tactic of charging the general into a tightly-packed phalanx to start the battle off, so killing the enemy general is usually a fairly simple task.