Battle Model Suggestion - Morale Changes

[Southern Hunter]

What I notice in my battles is that the troops are insanely brave. I am able to shoot (in particular) or melee (slightly less so) and kill close to 100% of an enemy unit before it begins to waver.

My own troops are similarly brave. Even skirmishers and such, having suffered 50-90% casualties, will happily be sent back into the fray.

This is clearly a-historical and I hope I don't have to post too many examples :P

In sieges, it is even worse, although I am led to believe this is because of some hard coded nonsense that CA have introduced.

In general battle, has the EB team experimented with substantially LOWER morale levels, to see if battles become more historical in terms of troops routing and leaving the field? Or more significantly, lines of troops having their morale broken by the consequences of other troops routing?

If not, can I suggest it.

I would be happy to conduct some trials and suggest how the values can be changed, if that is of interest.

Does anyone think differently?

Cheers,

Hunter

[Gask]

Try playing on medium battle difficulty as anything above does tend to create constant battles to the death. If you are playing medium then change your army abit, my battles usually always end in speedy routs. I wish there was a setting inbetween medium and hard.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Levies rout really easily. The elites are suppost to stay in there a long time, EB is like that on purpose to lengthen battles. If there is a general in the battle moral is really boosted. If the general is AI and/or really good then many times none of the troops will rout until he dies.

[Southern Hunter]

Levies rout really easily. The elites are suppost to stay in there a long time, EB is like that on purpose to lengthen battles. If there is a general in the battle moral is really boosted. If the general is AI and/or really good then many times none of the troops will rout until he dies.

I don't see levies or even 'normal' line troops routing easily.

I do see, as you say, the whole army hanging in there until the general dies, and the whole army has suffered 50% or so casualties.

I do see units suffering up to 90% casualties before routing (and then suffering the other 10% in retreat).

[LordCurlyton]

Levies rout really easily. The elites are suppost to stay in there a long time, EB is like that on purpose to lengthen battles. If there is a general in the battle moral is really boosted. If the general is AI and/or really good then many times none of the troops will rout until he dies.

*grumble grumble* Yes I've noticed that with the AI especially. Its giving me a real bugger of a time as I try and finish off the Romans in my Cathage campaign. Got this BEAUTIFUL merc army of 4 Merc Phalangitai, 2 Merc Phalanxes, 3 Lucanian Spearmen, 2 Merc Pelatastai, 4 Merc Samnite Spearmen, 3 Merc Samnite Heavy Infantry, a Merc Theurophoroi, and my Gen and I am getting assaulted by this Romani army which is turning out to be incredibly hard to beat that consists of 3 Generals (Leader, Heir [both with 60+ guys], and 1 other) and roughly 10-12 Rorarii + one cav unit and a triarii ro two (methinks). I keep thinking "Why is this taking so long/being as hard as it is?" and then I notice that they keep moving their Generals helter skelter while my entire line is tangling with the Rorarii, who must be getting some mad bonuses from the Generals. Having my line tied up like that is also conveniently bad for me since they eventually seem to wear me down thru attrition and MANY charges by their bloody Generals who refuse to die, even when they get down to the last man. I've turned out negatively thrice so far, mainly I think because I keep losing my general after a while (I never get 60+ Gens. Never. Rarely 50+ *pouts*), and its usually very close, since I usually rout one side and they rout the other, and apparently my side going is far worse than their side going because my phalanx/phalangitai units just seem to start folding soon after. Oh well got another tactic to try next time. I've just been convincing myself that there is NO WAY that this army should be putting up a fight, and yet I keep getting proven wrong (even the autocalc hates me). Well, now that I think about it there IS the rallying city army since I'm laying siege but its been depleted severely by a previous attempt and has only its general and maybe 50-60 troops (another one that escaped with one guy left in that battle...). But even then...meh. And its on Medium difficulty, too, which confounds me to no end. But we shall see.
*By the way, the fact that I'm getting this animated about a single battle (albeit a rather pivotal one) speaks volumes about the quality of your mod.

[Dooz]

The cool thing is, it depends where you recruit your troops from. Not only are there differences between units based on experience and eliteness, but also the type of government they are recruited under. You'll find your bravest and best troops from Homeland (Type 1) governments, and the less centralized the government, the less willing the locals are to fight for you. So type IV gov't is going to yield a lot less loyal troops who'll rout a lot easier.

[Southern Hunter]

The cool thing is, it depends where you recruit your troops from. Not only are there differences between units based on experience and eliteness, but also the type of government they are recruited under. You'll find your bravest and best troops from Homeland (Type 1) governments, and the less centralized the government, the less willing the locals are to fight for you. So type IV gov't is going to yield a lot less loyal troops who'll rout a lot easier.

OK, I had no idea about that. Cheers.

[Southern Hunter]

Try playing on medium battle difficulty as anything above does tend to create constant battles to the death. If you are playing medium then change your army abit, my battles usually always end in speedy routs. I wish there was a setting inbetween medium and hard.

Yes I am playing on VH/M

[Atilius]

What I notice in my battles is that the troops are insanely brave. I am able to shoot (in particular) or melee (slightly less so) and kill close to 100% of an enemy unit before it begins to waver.

My own troops are similarly brave. Even skirmishers and such, having suffered 50-90% casualties, will happily be sent back into the fray.

This is clearly a-historical and I hope I don't have to post too many examples ...

Lowering morale causes at least two problems. One of EB's objectives was to have longer, more tactically interesting battles. Obviously, lowering morale will shorten them. In addition, lowering morale leads to greater, even absurd, imbalances in casualties, since it's usually not too hard to kill every last man in a broken unit.

Anyway, the loser's army is usually (and a-historically) wiped out regardless. With higher morale, the winner at least suffers a more realistic fraction of the loser's casualties.

[Thaatu]

Plus, hammer and anvil tactic would make battles last under five minutes, as AI really has no idea how to counter it.

[Southern Hunter]

Lowering morale causes at least two problems. One of EB's objectives was to have longer, more tactically interesting battles. Obviously, lowering morale will shorten them. In addition, lowering morale leads to greater, even absurd, imbalances in casualties, since it's usually not too hard to kill every last man in a broken unit.

Anyway, the loser's army is usually (and a-historically) wiped out regardless. With higher morale, the winner at least suffers a more realistic fraction of the loser's casualties.

Are you sure because you have tried it?

Lowering morale SHOULD shorten battles a bit. Then again, I have not tried it, so can't tell what actually happens.

I agree that if the player still turns up with more troops every time, then the battles MAY turn out to be even more unbalanced. The pursuit of routing troops is rather boring but effective.

[Caratacos]

I believe Atilius is refering to battles in Vanilla (where morale is lower). You can route the enemy fairly easily and then slaughter them all as they run, resulting in a heroic victory. That's how you end up with all those heroic sites all over the map (that's how i did anyway). I haven't had a single heroic victory in EB yet. mostly because i always make sure the enemy is weaker than me so i can crush 'em

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Is the general just a nobody or someone with lots of morale traits? Someone who is a terrific leader in that respect should have the units fighting harder/longer for him. I hope that awful leaders have quickly routing/fleeing units also, but I don't get into many serious battles with guys who just shouldn't be there in the first place (usually try to get them 'reformed' into good managers at least).

[Domitius Ulpianus]

Umm in my humble opinion the morale settings in EB are just PERFECT!

The first difference I noticed between Vanilla and EB was the duration of Battles...in EB you actually get to shoot, flank charge...etc..in Vanilla everything was over so quick...there was no place for any sense of "glory" even in full stacks battles.

Please don't touch it. There are some other things that might need some adjustments...IMHO this is not one of them.

Thanks.

[Fondor_Yards]

EB upped the morale to stop the short battles you see in Vanillia, in specific the chain routs that always happened. Those battles were so lame, you could chain rout any army within like 2 minutes because the AI is so bad.

Generals and buildings in the city they were recruited in also really matter. I've had general who have given over +8 to morale with his traits *And I've also seen some that give like -6, bah stupid generals*. As for buildings, you might be surpised at how many add to morale. Pretty much all temples give at least +1 morale, the bigger ones and the war ones even more. Then you have half of the unique buildings, Celtic Hero Cults, and many governments, they really add up after a while.