Modding units morale

[BeeSting]

Don't touch the morale.... instead:

1. lower the missile attack rating for archers from 5 to 8.
2. lower the "wait to attack" factor from your usual 1 to 0.5.
3. Raise the defense level.

[BeeSting]

Don't touch the morale.... instead:

1. lower the missile attack rating for archers from 5 to 8.
2. lower the "wait to attack" factor from your usual 1 to 0.5.
3. Raise the defense level.

correction: 1. lower the missile attack rating ranging from 5 to 8.

[NicSO]

But in that case routs willl still occur at same level and kill ratio willl stay the same only the battle will be prolonged which is good combined whit moral stats rising:-)
In fact I willl try to raise defence value, not armour or shield.

I think morale is important because of killl ratio as I said not directly battle length!!!

[BeeSting]

But in that case routs willl still occur at same level and kill ratio willl stay the same only the battle will be prolonged which is good combined whit moral stats rising:-)
In fact I willl try to raise defence value, not armour or shield.

I think morale is important because of killl ratio as I said not directly battle length!!!

This has been extensively discussed on forums. The morale calculation is pretty complicated in this game, and I wouldn't change it for the accuracy of realism and for the fact you will be throwing many things off balance. The reason why enemy units route so easily is not the fault of the morale system, but because you hardly ever face an enemy army led by a general who has higher command rating than yours. Nor would they survive to fight another day with their suicidal tendencies in a battlefield facing a human opponent.
Lead your army without a general and you will find your army routing just as easily as the AI's.

Also, remember that defense skill value does nothing to stop a missile; only armors and shields may stop an arrow from killing a man. So, to balance the whole spectrum of making your man less killable, you have to lower the missile value as well. And I have an opinion that missile units are too over powered here. Even the advent of gunpowder didn't have the same damaging affect as arrows do in this game. Arrows just don't pierce through armors and shields, maybe composite bows of central Asia may have, but not in the scope of RTW. You may as well get rid of the melee units altogether in this game considering that some archers are advanced as an 18th century musket unit.

Most slingers save for the Balearic slingers remain at 4. But the Balearic slingers were reputable to exceed the skills of Cretan archers or arguably more deadly, so I gave them 8.

Most stock archers were rated down to 5 save for the scythian, dacian, egyptian, and other eastern stock archers. Mainly due to the fact that they were familiar with composite bows; they were given 6 attack. For elite archers, like the cretan and barbarian fantasy archer/melee units, I gave 8.

However, for foot javelins I raised it to 9 base and for mounted I gave 8.

You will find the game more challenging this way and realize how you've been exploiting the AI with overwhelming archer units.

[Bob the Insane]

I have to say that after my personal testing I find that adding 2 points to the morale of every unit make for better battles...

While things may appear a little odd for one on one fights (peasants not breaking until they receive like 50% casualties) it is much better for large combats...

Testing with Britain vs Gual, Warband vs Warband. I had ten units on each side meeting in a long line head on head fight... Before the morale addition you would always get one or two units routing on contact with the enemy right at the start of the battle which would naturaly have the effect of lowerin the morale of the other units on that side. I think what is occuring here is unforseen effect of the morale system when you have large scale battles. When you have one, two or even three unit battles you do not see this but something happen is in larger scale battles to promote the chance of large scale routs (with or without generals).

I have already bumped up the defence stat of every unit by 6 points and this has had a good effect on slowing down the casualty rate during a face to face fight. This modification alone produces longer running battles when dealing with smaller numbers of units. But in a large battle it appears that factors other than casualties influence morale failures. The work around of bumping morale up a couple of points (in addition to the defence stat adjustment) allows for the larger battles to develop at a slower pace without actually slowing down the action. Flanking attacks and gangin up on a unit will still cause a pretty rapid rout (and arguable that they should) but at least units do not run from a straight, equal head to head fight so quickly...

I have personally found that these changes inhance the survivability of infantry in particular making them more important to the battle... Cavalry is less overwhelming as the infantry able to defend itself and does not break and run so quickly...

This also has the benefit of causing units that have routed to return to the fight sooner...

[NicSO]

This has been extensively discussed on forums. The morale calculation is pretty complicated in this game, and I wouldn't change it for the accuracy of realism and for the fact you will be throwing many things off balance. The reason why enemy units route so easily is not the fault of the morale system, but because you hardly ever face an enemy army led by a general who has higher command rating than yours. Nor would they survive to fight another day with their suicidal tendencies in a battlefield facing a human opponent.
Lead your army without a general and you will find your army routing just as easily as the AI's.

Also, remember that defense skill value does nothing to stop a missile; only armors and shields may stop an arrow from killing a man. So, to balance the whole spectrum of making your man less killable, you have to lower the missile value as well. And I have an opinion that missile units are too over powered here. Even the advent of gunpowder didn't have the same damaging affect as arrows do in this game. Arrows just don't pierce through armors and shields, maybe composite bows of central Asia may have, but not in the scope of RTW. You may as well get rid of the melee units altogether in this game considering that some archers are advanced as an 18th century musket unit.

Most slingers save for the Balearic slingers remain at 4. But the Balearic slingers were reputable to exceed the skills of Cretan archers or arguably more deadly, so I gave them 8.

Most stock archers were rated down to 5 save for the scythian, dacian, egyptian, and other eastern stock archers. Mainly due to the fact that they were familiar with composite bows; they were given 6 attack. For elite archers, like the cretan and barbarian fantasy archer/melee units, I gave 8.

However, for foot javelins I raised it to 9 base and for mounted I gave 8.

You will find the game more challenging this way and realize how you've been exploiting the AI with overwhelming archer units.

My arceher units are in my opinion to weak, slinger units on the other hand are to strong.
I changed only defence skill value because I didnt want to change anything else and I want armour and shield values stay the same at this moment.

Im playing hours and hours with morale modded and game is PERFECTLY balanced and nothing strange occured just yet no matter of discussions on other forums...

Im gonna keep u informed...

[MorgTzu]

At Bob,

I'm with you, I raised Armor and morale for all infantry and foot missle units by one point unless they were already over 10. This made a difference and I am going to raise the moral by another point tonight. I only play and test on very hard battle level. Without opening the VH versus M debate, what has your experience been in the long game at VH level. I want the AI to still have the Bonus that they get at VH (remember...this is not a VH-M debate) but have the longer battles, less chance of chain routes.

BTW, I raised Armor as opposed to shield or defense due to personal preference, I tend towards the side of the camp that says missle units are a little strong. I personally dont use any missle unit except peltasts in my armies. It was boring in STW, MTW to stand off and win every time, and the same holds true for RTW. Just to ramble a little further off topic...I love the challange of playing Dacia on VH/VH 1.2, but once i would get chosen archers, i could end the game any time I wanted. I spent a weekend just seeing how far i could go with 90% chosen archers, not even Rome's Best could stand before me.

I love this topic as it seems the easiest way for the non hard core moder to customize the game to his liking. I am thankful for your posts and others that have contributed much to the layman's world of modding text files...Red Harvest, you get much appreciation from me as well. Soon, i expect to see people posting their packages of the 3 or 4 files (unit, building, etc.) with various tweaks. I have thought about it but dont have the special status at any forums needed to post downloads (despite following the forums for many years, i usually just read and not post much). Have you (or you Red Harvest) tried Dearmad's Building mod? I really enjoyed it, after making dogs, screchers, druids and hurlers non-buildable I have almost got a game that gives me a challenge. Now if I can just get the AI to stop charging me with their Generals (I am thinking of lowering their HPS back to one to see if the AI will calc their odds better and not fling themselves on my pointy objects so quick), any thoughts on this? Perhaps different topic?

Enough for now. Thats more than I have posted in a while. May your line be straight...

[Bob the Insane]

I have only been testing the mods for a little while now and I don't play at VH difficulty (with out getting into a debate I don't all the AI bonuses). I normally play at Hard (I don;t micd the AI getting a morale boost), but I am testing all this stuff at Medium for balance. I don't really want to upset the balance that CA has created (other than nerfing Egypt a bit) so I want my change to simply draw-out the gameplay a bit longer...

Thus I can not really comment on the impact my changes are making at the VH level but I assume that most of the AI units will become near enough unroutable unless you subject them to massive morale penalties...

At first I did not really like the idea of a morale boost as it seemed unreasonable that the most untrained troops would fight so hard, but it is the "large battle effect" that pushed my decision, Very rapid morale failure occured much too quickly... I mean in some of my tested to up to 1000 troops on each side you would get nearly half the army routing on contact with the enemy after only minimal casualties, bizaar... The large change to the defense scores I made meant that troops lasted longer in combat so the depopulation of units was not so rapid. The game is still pretty quick (no hour long battles) but neither will your units desolve before your eyes before you can react... Morale failures can still happen quickly if your are not paying attention and line to get broken up and yoou unit get flanked or ganged up on but a straight head to head fight between equal units can last ages...

Raising armour and lowering attack scores for missile weapons is not something I want to do as it could make siege assaults too easy for the attacker and i like to keep missile weapons as the great equalizer between lower and higher quality units. No matter how elite you are a volley of arrows is pretty deadly... If historical record states that the RTW archers (and other missile weapons) are too strong I would rather reduce their attack values and ranges...

Personally I think the mods to the units is only part of the whole parcel, at least for the SP game... If units are overpowering perhaps they should not be nerfed, but simply made more expensive and harder to acquire. Perhaps missile troops should fall into this catagory...