Quote Originally Posted by econ21
I have not tried Chivalry TW (is it MP focussed?), but morale is a tricky issue to balance. I suspect morale was a little low in RTW. Without command stars, enemies did seem to dissolve rather quickly. Mind you, a similar thing could happen in MTW. Often zero command star armies of mine would chain rout a few seconds after a heavy cavalry charge, much to my chagrin. Because the AI is inevitably handicapped compared to a human player, I think bolstering morale is important to get a decent challenge. If it is too easy for a flank attack or other human trick to cause a chain rout, the battles become walkovers.
Chiv was originally MP focused, though it's expanding (and apparently expecting a release sometime maybe this month) and I found it to be quite interesting for morale.

Morale was reduced. But I found that to be a pro instead of a con, in light of other changes and tweaks. Because all the units had fairly low morale (except for the rare elites) you had to make your moves carefully. An engagement that wasn't fully support was doomed to failure. Small things in RTW like line cohesion became vital - if a unit was exposed and you applied even slight pressure it could rout.

The combat and movement was slower as well, making tactical moves even more deliberate. It was harder to speed that cav unit across the field for emergency flanking. Flanking also became more difficult as it requires exposing the flanking unit to some degree.

And since it was MP-focused, purchasing morale upgrades became a quite important key to victory. All-in-all, keeping your army together added to the tension and the intensity made it more enjoyable than RTW vanilla.

However, it worked mostly in MP. There wasn't a campaign so I can't really say how well the AI handled the changes, and I haven't played in a while.

Quote Originally Posted by econ21
One striking feature of the TW series has been how subtle morale is - it is influenced by so many modifiers, it's rather impressive as a simulation.
Agreed. And it does make it hard for CA to keep the AI challenging.