Morale effects

[Tamur]

hi all,

First off, I will say that I am no expert modder, so this is likely old news. But I've been experimenting recently with modding the export_descr_unit file, specifically the stat_mental attribute of all units. I've played numerous mods, all of which either leave this attribute alone for fear of unbalancing things, or make across-the-board small changes (i.e. +3 to all of them).

There are quite a number of threads over the past two years examining this, so after searching through them, I decided to start messing about with this value a lot.

I'll skip my process, since that's not really the point of this post. I will say, though, that I am already using double-HP, 70%-90% movement, and that is really required for this sort of effect I think.

Anyway, once I got it balanced to what I thought was good (this is entirely personal, but stat_mental's first parameter was set to a high value of 40, low of 6), I started seeing battle effects I had never seen before though I've played thousands of battles over the past two years. Thought I'd share a few and see if others have seen the same via morale mods (and perhaps less drastic morale mods).

NOTE: these are "formations" that stick around for a few minutes, not ones that simply appear and disappear in a moment.

1) The Bulge.

This is where you pile the bulk of your infantry into the centre of your line. The weight of all those infantry pushing forward shoves the enemy line back till it's curved, like so:



2) The Rotating Line.

I had one battle where I loaded weak units on my left wing and strong units on my right by mistake. The result? A battle line that had rotated over 45 degrees from its initial position before the enemy routed as my weak units backed away and my strong units pressed forward.

3) Resistance Circles.

It may have simply been luck, but I just finished a battle against two Macedonian family members where the enemy line was fractured and eventually turned into two pockets of resistance, both centred around enemy generals. I left a hole for each of them to rout through. But it took the death of one general, and the return of rout-chasing cavalry, to get these resistance circles to break up.

Several more to describe, but this is long enough for now. Again, I'd like to hear from others who have seen these sorts of things and hear what sort of morale modification was done to achieve it.

Anyone wanting the details of the mod (which are fairly simple), feel free to ask.

[Dutch_guy]

What about the length of the battles, they were longer ?

And I'm sure a lot of people 'd be interested in the mod, you've certainly made me curious enough, so by all means reveal the details

[Tamur]

What about the length of the battles, they were longer ?

Yes, definitely longer. I'd make a rough guess that actual combat -- from the time the first units attack each other until the last one routs -- is 4 times to 6 times longer. You have plenty of time to look around, and it even makes general cam a bit more fun! Movement on the field before and after of course takes a bit longer with the movement mod but not significantly longer.

I think that's why I am seeing these combat formations. The engine has all these causes/effects built in, the physics of war, but there's no time in a vanilla battle for them to show up because units rout so easily.

I'll post up the relevant files sometime in the next little while.

[Tamur]

oki, here are the files...

Zip file

Make sure to back up or rename your export_descr_unit.txt and descr_battle_map_movement_modifers.txt files, then unzip this file into your /Data folder. It only replaces these two files.

This is for a 1.5 vanilla install of RTW. Let me know what you think, and if you see the same sorts of behaviours.

[professorspatula]

To be honest, I'm not sure what you're getting at.

If you are trying to suggest the value of the morale stat itself changes the way a unit fights, then there is no evidence of this, and a few test battles 1 on 1 with 2 identical units (one with 12 morale, another with 30) shows neither unit has an advantage over the other.

It just seems you're describing what can happen if a unit is given the opportunity to fight for longer. This is what just about all major mods do - by a combination of lower killrate (using different attack/defence/armour, hitpoint and lethality ratings etc) and by increasing morale. It's the lowering of the kill-rate that really gives units a chance to spread out and form those shapes you mention. Just lowering killrate in effect raises the value of the unit's mental stat (the slower rate a unit suffers casualties, the lower the rate of morale loss, thus unit fights for longer as if it had more morale.) By giving units 2 hitpoints, you've also lowered the killrate anyway.

Really the morale/mental stat in itself isn't that great a deal. Sure units are prepared to fight for longer, but it's the relevance of the mental stat to the other stats that will provide you with decent battles, and allow you to see these shapes or formations unfold.

[Dol Guldur]

Some mods are significantly raising morale.

Did you find the berserkers becoming too overpowered?

p.s. you have "4+" in your eastern peasant morale entry.

[Tamur]

Thanks Dol Guldur & professorspatula. I'll get that 4+ fixed, apparently a leftover from the modification.

professor, thanks for the info on kill rate, etc. I had modified the kill rate with the simple double-HP change, but I had not seen this sort of thing happening, so I assumed it was because of the morale changes that I was seeing longer battles with more interest in how they played out. With your info, and searching around a bit more, it does appear that the kill rate is considered the affector of this rather than morale.

So, mistaken conclusion. Everyone can go about their business now, nothing to see here.

Oh, and Dol Guldur, I haven't tested it with any factions besides the greeks, roman factions, parthians, and carthaginians. I'll have to get up north sometime soon and see if the berserkers are a bit over the top.

[Tamur]

On the other hand...

I just ran a series of tests, since I am insatiably curious about this sort of thing, and found a very strong correlation between morale setting and time in battle. If you're interested, you can see the results here in the good old Ludus Magna.