One thing I don't like about this mod.

[InferiorBeing]

Before anyone thinks I'm going to beat on this mod, let me just assure you of one thing: I won't. The mod is so interesting, cool and so creative it still amazes me that someone actually had what it takes to come up with something new. I'm tired of all these historical/realism mods like R:TR, EB, SPQR and C:TW. And best of all: to this day, I had yet to see a fantasy-themed mod/game that doesn't take place in a classic medieval Europe-ish world with all the same run-off-the-mill angry old wizards, gremlins, pixies and glittering knights every other fantasy game has; but places its location in the far east and gives us snake-like Copper Dragons, Fire-Lancers carrying the ancient Asia equivalent of rocket-launchers, towering, masked giants, Samurai, Warrior Monks, Hags, ghostly Geisha -ish ladies and those crazy Basket Ronin.

However, it seems as though this mod suffers from one of the main, most important, overshadowing problems that more than anything made vanilla unspeakably more boring than it had to be: unit morale, or lack thereof.

One thing this mod really does, is (Supposedly.), get the battles much cooler, with bright, colourful, almost cartoony Chinese spearmen, green-skinned, zombiefied Ashigaru and so on. Now, what really breaks the experience more than anything words can describe is watching how thousands of wacky-looking warriors of all kinds charge at each other and... break and run for the hills after the first two seconds of fighting, as soon as some six people had managed to die. In fact, it's so disgusting and fun-breaking that it almost gets me angry at the game. Cool battles aren't all that cool if the sides stop fighting and one of the armies spontaneously goes and recoils an instant after they had collided. All I really want is for the sides to fight longer. More fighting, less... well, let's just say that the way it is now, it actually takes longer marching the sides those few meters at each other than the actual fighting. Boo.

To define this a little deeper, as well as explain stuff and get everything out of the way, I sat up a pitched custom battle between one of the Chinese factions and the demon faction on a flat, featureless map without any hills or forests or any other morale -affecting features just to be sure, and with a fair mix of weak and strong, light and heavy units on both sides. During the course of the "battle", (The term "Battle" used in it's broadest form possible.), I made sure to face my weak units, like the Light Spearmen, off with the enemy weak units like their Zombie Ashigaru, and my heavies with the enemy heavies. On both sides, the fighting it took to rout was minimal. I'd understand that weaker units like Light Spearmen would be more prone to breaking, BUT NOT when fighting someone more or less EQUALLY WEAK! (On an un-related note, I'm surprised to see mindless zombies panicking in the first place, but that's probably related to the game balance.)...

So, well, what can you say about it? Are the units "supposed" to have more upgrades like chevrons and so on before entering battle, (Ala the SPQR -mod.)? Are there any way to manually increase unit morale? I really wish for the actual fighting between the formations to be longer. Firstly, it's cooler and more awe-inspiring, secondly, it gives more time to take screenshots, and lastly, I fail to see how it can be even remotely realistic that two armies of actual warriors would turn tail the moment someone actually got hurt.

Just my two cents. Thanks for hearing me out.

[Death_Sheep]

Well, demons are upposed to be terrifying, no? Fear causing units cause intimidation, and in essence facing charging terrifying enemy is more likely to break at the prenumberal ferocity of such an enemy. In custom battles, thids does seem to be an issue, but I have yet to find this during the SP campaign.

The battles I've fought have seemed well done, with the armies fighting until I've either out flanked them or driven a spearpoint through their enemies head whilst instigating a flanking charge (which is more often than not a way to get most any army to lose heart and flee). Morale in game seems fine to me, perhaps its just a few runs of bad luck with bad generals....?

[InferiorBeing]

You might not have understood from my post that the demons routed and rushed headlong off the field just as fast as everyone else.

[TB666]

Well I kinda agree.
The battles don't last long and is usually over before you know it.
I play on VH/VH.
Of course the game is still a beta so things will probably change.

[InferiorBeing]

Yes, I'm hoping that this is a beta issue and will be given attention.

[big_feef]

Yeah, weak morale seems to be an issue in the custom battles. Campaign battles, on the other hand, tend to be much more difficult. You will still have the advantage, but be prepared to suffer heavy casualties if you're evenly matched.

Example: One of my generals, in my Choson VH/VH campaign, who was out solo setting up towers, got ambused by bandits consisting of 1 unit of eagle archers and 1 unit of boar spearmen. I immediately charged the archers and tried to stay away from the spearmen. The archers didn't break until I'd killed all but 20-some of them; and by that time, the spearmen were up my rear.

I still won the battle, but I took casualties of about a third of my bodyguard. In a custom battle I set up after reading the original post; the archers broke after taking 12 casualties and the spearmen after taking 20. I lost 2 of the 48 bodyguards. This isn't really an accurate representation because the strength of the bodyguard in the campaign was 72; but it still shows a huge difference between the campaign battles and the custom battles.

[InferiorBeing]

Wow! That's freaking weird! o_0

[mike007]

Moral can be altered & i hope hoggy does it in the next version because it makes battle so much better. Nothing worse than sitting down to a good battle when the enemy breaks 1 min into it.

[InferiorBeing]

My thoughts exactly.