Ideas for Morale

[ArakDemonBlade]

While playing recently I had a few ideas for morale. I thought I would toss them out for consideration. Some of these I'm sure have already been suggested so I won't dwell on those too much.

-Morale on the Battlefield: I'm sure this has been suggested before and I think it would add an interesting angle to battles and provide a good mechanism for the AI to react when their lord is dropped in the first 5 seconds of battle or what not.

-Heroes give a morale bonus (or Leadership as a party skill?): I actually like the idea of making Leadership a party skill better than a straight morale bonus. If you have a large army, and one of your companions happens to have good leadership qualities, wouldn't it make sense to have them help lead the troops rather than trying to manage it on your own? I think this or maybe even making leadership a personal skill and toning it down a bit so that every point of leadership that every companion has adds a bonus (sort of like Trainer) to the whole army might make things a bit more interesting (you could also at that point talk about making vassals out of companions with good leadership scores if and when you get your own kingdom but thats a different topic of discussion  )

-Less Penalty for Party Size: I would think that party size up to a point should increase morale thanks to the whole "safety in numbers" thing. Eventually I could see things getting smelly but even then if the company is paid and the food keeps coming in I fail to see why a party of 70 men should have low morale basically by default just because their are 70 of them.

-Less fluid morale: Some may disagree with me, but I think morale should be a little less tossed up to "How many little battles have you fought today". While resounding victories and crushing defeats should have dramatic effects on morale, I think things could use some work here. My idea is to include a new "Long Term" factor in morale. Simply put if you go for a couple of months winning resounding victories against incredible odds, it should reflect on your morale over the long term rather than until dinner. Basically you would have a factor in your morale that starts at zero when the game begins. It would slowly go up as you picked up momentum and slowly go down when unpleasant things happen (loss against an equal or larger force, having to retreat). Its the sort of thing that doesn't go down easily once up but if it does drop (say you outnumber the enemy 3 to 1 and they crush you) it doesn't go up easily either. That all probably sounds confusing but the point is to keep you from having to grind fights to keep morale up after you have made yourself world famous and the single most powerful commander in the world. (An alternative and simpler method could just be a morale bonus based off Renown but I prefer to let morale go the other way if God decides to make an example out of you and your army.)

Please comment respectfully. I'm well aware not everyone will agree with my suggestions but good debate leads to better ideas.

 

[Art Falmingaid]

Large parties suffer a morale penalty, I think, to reflect your lessening influence per party member.  You are much better at keeping up the morale of a few people rather than dozens.

I agree with your companion's leadership skill having some effect, along with their inventory management skill.  Otherwise, its obvious those are just dump skills to keep them from being too powerful when you first get them.

Battlefield morale would be excellent.  Its annoying that you can be knocked out and your party suffers horrendously in morale and automatically retreats while nothing happens if you take out an enemy lord.  Nothing too drastic should happen, but at least something.

I absolutely 100% agree that morale needs to be more of a long term thing.  In a few hours excellent morale drops to average.  Bah.  It should be excellent for at least 24 hours and high morale for a week at least, barring any defeats.

 

[Spanish_Broomaker]

I get annoyed that if you are a merchant you cant maintain your party's morale high by doing good business, they seem to want blood to gain morale.  We need more options.

 

[Art Falmingaid]

I get annoyed that if you are a merchant you cant maintain your party's morale high by doing good business, they seem to want blood to gain morale.  We need more options.

seeing as you can make absurd amounts of cash trading, i would think adjustable wages would do the trick.  Merchants could afford to pay their troops a lot of money, enough to pay higher wages to earn higher morale.

Nice criticism, Broomaker.

 

[ArakDemonBlade]

seeing as you can make absurd amounts of cash trading, i would think adjustable wages would do the trick.  Merchants could afford to pay their troops a lot of money, enough to pay higher wages to earn higher morale.

I didn't think of that. I like that idea.

 

[Lomendil]

I think morale needs improvement.

The adjustable wages idea sounds really good, I think it can balance the problem of large armies morale. It can give you the feeling that you're not leading a little peasants force but a real professionnal army !

I agree for the long term thing too.

 

[Chel]

I've implemented a system of battle morale in my mod:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,36364.0.html

 

[ArakDemonBlade]

I've implemented a system of battle morale in my mod:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,36364.0.html

Sounds like an excellent solution to the battle morale problem. Though I would prefer to see a system in the default game, if that doesn't happen I'll just wait and hope you decide to port the system to Native when the next module system roles out. 

 

[Volkier]

Personally, while I don't mind party morale over food / wages / acts such as recruiting from prisoners etc. I despise even the thought of an on-going morale on the battlefield. I've discussed the reasons why in a few other threads on this matter, but mainly that the AI already cannot handle simple directions / orders / common sense - we don't need them to listen to you even less for whatever reason. That, and the fact that these are trained soldiers - not a bunch of excessively emotional metro-sexuals in need of therapy like a lot of these suggestions seem to make them out to be.

Sure, in extremes where you have 1 peasant tier troop against an army of 500-strong cavalry, it's obvious enough and realistic - but not when you have the player and one archer against 20 or 30 odd opponents as the player and the archer can realistically win through setting ambushes / distracting the opponents for one other etc. Now if the AI realistically grew some brains and instead of chasing around the player on a horse circling around them (while the archer slowly picked them off one by one) actually went for the archer, hid behind trees, and tried to lure the player out into the open where the conditions would be desirable for them, that is a different story - but until then, on going 'morale' would infact get in the way and make the game less realistic instead of more.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

Personally, while I don't mind party morale over food / wages / acts such as recruiting from prisoners etc. I despise even the thought of an on-going morale on the battlefield. I've discussed the reasons why in a few other threads on this matter, but mainly that the AI already cannot handle simple directions / orders / common sense - we don't need them to listen to you even less for whatever reason. That, and the fact that these are trained soldiers - not a bunch of excessively emotional metro-sexuals in need of therapy like a lot of these suggestions seem to make them out to be.

Sure, in extremes where you have 1 peasant tier troop against an army of 500-strong cavalry, it's obvious enough and realistic - but not when you have the player and one archer against 20 or 30 odd opponents as the player and the archer can realistically win through setting ambushes / distracting the opponents for one other etc. Now if the AI realistically grew some brains and instead of chasing around the player on a horse circling around them (while the archer slowly picked them off one by one) actually went for the archer, hid behind trees, and tried to lure the player out into the open where the conditions would be desirable for them, that is a different story - but until then, on going 'morale' would infact get in the way and make the game less realistic instead of more.

Ummm... A knight would be trained (As he would be nobility) on the terms of "Tactical Retreat" Also, men are humans in the end, and unlike nowadays armies, troops back then could say "Know what.. death aint worth these wages! **** you guys I didnt fight all these years to die! This is suicide! I'm retreating!" It only takes one frantic retreating soldier to start a chain of thought. Chels mod represents this ALMOST perfectly (needs a bit of tweaking, but works DAMN well)

 

[Chel]

I know what you mean Volkier, but the way I've implemented it -- it does not have the problems you described. All troops listen to the player as long as the battle is going fine or even less than fine (as long they are not getting slaughtered). Only very rarely do heavily wounded ones try to leave the fight. Things change as soon as one side has damaged the other too much compared to the damage they sustained in doing so -- the survivors from the loosing side then flee.

(and the player can rally his troops with a battle cry, as well as call reinforcements if he has any)

In the case of the player and one archer troop vs 20 troops, nobody is going to panic at the start. If, however, the player+archer team manage to kill or severely wound 10 out of 20 enemy troops without getting any wounds themselves, the remaining enemies are going to try to flee. If they get reinforcements, or manage to kill the archer while retreating, they might very well come back into the fight.

 

[Volkier]

And what about if the player starts to shoot the retreating soldiers? Again - real life situation, (and was a rather common tactic in a lot of wars) - the troops would be less likely to try and run off. But this can't be implimented too well with the game even if tried.

Also, it doesn't work overly well with the micro-small battle-maps we have right now. If retreating and running away / scattering is to be implimented, you should be at least able to either run from, or chase a scattering group of men over the battle-field for a fair bit rather than just have "thats it, im out of here, let me just walk 3 steps to the 'exit'" attitude. Otherwise, there is really no practical point to this at all other than an even more frustrating insubordination from your troops.

And about the tactical retreat - that was exactly my point - if your troops start to flee, your whole army would start to flee too despite of the initial sacrifice of those 30 out of 60 infantry being a deliberate tactic. (with the other troops waiting on a hill behind). Unless you code in a 'moral code' for every single AI soldier - which would drown your system.

Then there is the whole 'fighting to protect your family' or whatever other moral codes that some humans might have which others may not. Again, unless you would need to program every soldier separately, your soldiers would simply mechanically flee when a certain code value is met. You can't tell them that unless these guys hold this hill with their lives, their whole nation would be wiped out by the enemy / etc. In short - you can't program morals or feelings. And any attempt to, in my opinion, would only create more unrealistic and silly situations rather than reduce them. Sorry I disagree, but I really sincerely hope that 'morale' improves outside and stays out of the battlefield - even if the explanation is something as simple as 'all your troops are high on "magic smoke" or opium before each battle'

 

[DamienZharkoff]

And what about if the player starts to shoot the retreating soldiers? Again - real life situation, (and was a rather common tactic in a lot of wars) - the troops would be less likely to try and run off. But this can't be implimented too well with the game even if tried.

Also, it doesn't work overly well with the micro-small battle-maps we have right now. If retreating and running away / scattering is to be implimented, you should be at least able to either run from, or chase a scattering group of men over the battle-field for a fair bit rather than just have "thats it, im out of here, let me just walk 3 steps to the 'exit'" attitude. Otherwise, there is really no practical point to this at all other than an even more frustrating insubordination from your troops.

And about the tactical retreat - that was exactly my point - if your troops start to flee, your whole army would start to flee too despite of the initial sacrifice of those 30 out of 60 infantry being a deliberate tactic. (with the other troops waiting on a hill behind). Unless you code in a 'moral code' for every single AI soldier - which would drown your system.

Then there is the whole 'fighting to protect your family' or whatever other moral codes that some humans might have which others may not. Again, unless you would need to program every soldier separately, your soldiers would simply mechanically flee when a certain code value is met. You can't tell them that unless these guys hold this hill with their lives, their whole nation would be wiped out by the enemy / etc. In short - you can't program morals or feelings. And any attempt to, in my opinion, would only create more unrealistic and silly situations rather than reduce them. Sorry I disagree, but I really sincerely hope that 'morale' improves outside and stays out of the battlefield - even if the explanation is something as simple as 'all your troops are high on "magic smoke" or opium before each battle'

Add a command function to allow troops to exit map such as unmounted horses do now. Problem solved

 

[Chel]

Allright, you have your points.

But I think shooting your own troops for fleeing is too extreme to be implemented in a game.

And I've made battlefields about twice as large in my mod.

The way I've done it, if you sacrifice 30 low tier infantry, and have 30 higher tier infantry or knights waiting behind a hill, they will not flee even if the enemy did not take any damage at all in killing the 30 low tier infantry.

Fighting to protect your family -- a battle cry ability simulates that to some extent.

Perhaps if you just tried it, you would see it differently.
It really does work very well in battle. Only possible thing to fix is removal of routed troops from the map once they reach the edge of the map.

 

[ArakDemonBlade]

So there seems to be severe division on the battlefield morale front. 

What about opinions on some of the other suggestions? We got a couple but I'm curious to hear more.

 

[Art Falmingaid]

i am more for extending the duration of high morale than anything else.  i am tired of not being able to go 1 week without fighting someone to maintain morale.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

i am more for extending the duration of high morale than anything else.  i am tired of not being able to go 1 week without fighting someone to maintain morale.

1 week? Sometimes five minutes! Yes it needs alot of extending

 

[ArakDemonBlade]

Lets face it, sometimes there just isn't a battle big enough handy to get morale out of the dump.