Morale changes

[Zakky]

At the moment it doesn't matter you win or lose, you will end up losing morale from a battle no matter what.

I think winners should gain moral depending on how badly they win. If it was an even battle yet you managed to destroy your enemies in a crushing victory, then you should gain a huge morale boost. (Not sure if morale should be on average be around 80% and only allow to be higher than that when something special happens like a victory or mercenary. If it is to stay around 100%, maybe temporarily allowing morale to be above 100% then gradually reducing it over time wouldn't be a bad idea as well)

As for daily morale gain, it should probably be reduced and changed. Maybe at most you gain 1 morale per turn at most. You can still pay for entertainments in cities to quickly raise it however. Losing battles will definitely reduce morale a lot especially when you lose with more men and CS. If you retreat successfully, you will lose less morale from your defeat but if you scatter, you will lose more morale on top of the amount you already lose from losing your battle. If you won but your unit scattered, you will lose morale and will not receive morale bonus from winning.

Just an idea to change the current system.

[Anaris]

Soldiers don't like losing their friends. And it is at least supposed to be true that some units like battle more than others (three possible types: those that dislike battle, those that like battle, and those that are neutral).

Have you been making these observations with a variety of different units? Because unless you lose a large percentage of your unit, I believe there should be a decent chance of morale gain already when you win a battle.

[Wimpie]

We might need to gather some statistics on this one.

[Zakky]

We might need to gather some statistics on this one.

I agree with this one.

In all my years playing BM, I've hardly seen any case on gaining morale. Even when my unit was never touched while slaughtering enemies. I think when you say losing friends, it should be strictly from your own unit. Despite this, I've lost up to 20~30 morale depending on how far away my unit was from their lands. Usually you gain morale not from battles but turn changes.

[CryptCypher]

Aye, as much as it sucks to lose countrymen in battle, it stands to reason that resounding victory would provide at least a modicum of increased morale...

[Zakky]

I know men can become demoralized for losing their friends but let's not forget we are not recruiting peasants. We are recruiting professional soldiers who know what they've signed up for. I think they would be happy to have survived, won and gotten paid.

[Gabanus family]

I remember keeping mental notes of this, but moral increases do happen. Had Goriad in Eidulb fighting battle after battle against rogues. Most times even without casulties (important to note I think, never had casulties) I saw a moral decrease after the battles, but sometimes it would randomly increase after a battle.

[Zakky]

If it is only happening randomly, it definitely should be ironed out a bit more. It should be consistent not random. That's why I think unless your men scatter, retreat, or held their line despite heavy casualties, you should gain morale. You don't see men cheering for victories for nothing when they win.

[Wimpie]

I remember keeping mental notes of this, but moral increases do happen. Had Goriad in Eidulb fighting battle after battle against rogues. Most times even without casulties (important to note I think, never had casulties) I saw a moral decrease after the battles, but sometimes it would randomly increase after a battle.

Did some quick check with my character on BT who has been fighting monster/undead hordes regularly on his own with Archers. He always takes out the hordes without getting any casualty, but the morale loss usually is around 8%, sometimes only just as much as 1% though.

Although, this is 1 unit. As Delvin pointed out, there can be differences in likings from unit to unit. That's why would need some more statistics. I don't always check, but I haven't seen much morale increasing in my BM life either. At least to my best knowledge.

[Zakky]

For the past 3 battles where my character on a test island lost 4 - 0 - 9 men, his unit lost 2 - 16 - 4.

However, the unit retreated all three times.

Another character's unit on EC lost 10 morale while losing 0 man. The unit did not retreat and it won the battle.

Will definitely need more data but I don't think there is any good logic behind the morale gain/loss at the moment. So far, just losses and the result of battle doesn't seem to affect it that much.

[Zakky]

Gained 6 morale from fighting monsters without losing any man. So Anaris was right about gaining morale from winning but it seems it doesn't happen often enough. It should happen whenever you are winning and not losing too many men I think. Maybe as long as your loss is less than 20% you gain morale while 20% to 30% your morale should stay the same?

[CryptCypher]

Gained 6 morale from fighting monsters without losing any man. So Anaris was right about gaining morale from winning but it seems it doesn't happen often enough. It should happen whenever you are winning and not losing too many men I think. Maybe as long as your loss is less than 20% you gain morale while 20% to 30% your morale should stay the same?

(Pre-post edit: Huh. Went from a tie-in to a fully-fledged suggestion of mechanics pipedream. Woops.)

Tie it into training and cohesion. A well-trained, cohesive unit would logically face fewer devastating morale drops and more morale gains than a badly-trained and mismanaged unit of green recruits. A squad of privates out escorting staff sergeant McOorah to his favorite "midnight funhouse" should freak out and lose morale for any minor loss, up to devastating morale drop for serious loss or retreat under fire as opposed to an all-hands-on-deck tactical retreat, which would be relatively or completely bloodless and a non-issue to veteran forces... Whereas a veteran squad can lose vital manpower and still retain some semblance of dignity/fighting spirit, where a green unit would lose its !@#$ and face collapse/mutiny/desertion.

Not to mention, a unit's commanding officer (noble retainer, maybe marshals) being wounded should have some sort of tangible effect on morale. After all, these damn peasants are nothing without the chain of command, which that enemy volley just pincushioned and knocked out of commission. "Dafuq do we do now?!"

That should totally, totally be a thing by the way. Mutiny, desertion, and-or chain-of-command events would be amazing (scripted? random-ish?)... Hell, can you imagine a priest/diplomat/hero/marshal/ruler doing one of those gloriously infamous and rare speeches pre-major-battle, or receiving a divine omen or what have you, and affecting morale of all those in the region/adjacent who belong to the relevant army/nation/faith? Or diplomat, assassin, or trader pulling some sort of skullduggery/bribery/offered-beeches and suddenly a portion of Noble McHero's elite units decide they'd rather serve Clever McMoneyBags, or a portion of the newly-recruited archer battalion takes a nice forward-advance payment of 3/5/10x their daily pay and screws off to the nearest bar/"funhouse"? Perhaps they can be convinced to return to their prior employer by bribing/imprison/executing their mutineer commander, or just return on their own after a drunken night gone AWOL right before that major battle... Maybe Sneaky McDagger sneaks in and poisons their dinner: subsequent parade-march of brown-stained pants and unscheduled trips to the nearest crap-hole temporarily(!) damages unit morale/cohesion, because your elite paladins are no good if their stomachs are clawing their insides and the smell of dribbled feces permeates the once-proud ranks of your forward battleline. Can you imagine how much it would SUCK to crap yourself in a suit of platemail+helm? Not to mention the chafing, chance of infected hemorrhoids from dysentery-like "eruption", and having to be shield-buddies with a guy who smells like a giant tin can of rotted gluteous maximus... Hell, maybe some ingenious trader drops some MAJOR coin to "acquire" the enemy's ore shipments and replace their superior steel with some shoddy low-quality iron, which gives a one-time/temporary malus to recruitment center quality/weapons/armor/training/etc. Do this the turn of/prior to an RC's construction and you risk (semi?)permanent damage to what would have been a better RC, bumping it down a tier in overall or trait-specific quality, simulating the historic loss of vital supply routes, resources, intel, and manpower that severely altered the outcome of battles and wars in our history books. *cough shoddy aluminium making Japanese Zero's akin to wet tissue paper, and a massive lack of oil which severely limited their mechanized capabilities, allowing allied forces to decimate them with ease cough* (not to mention the cultural impetus for unassailable aggression coupled with a disdain for defensive tactics and the dependence on blitzkrieg-style one-off banzai attacks and suicide-upon-defeat that failed in the face of the allies' superior logistical train, defensive-offensive mixed tactics, and a drawn-out war that rapidly outpaced Japan's ability to supply its forces. Lets not even get into the death of millions of Japanese citizens through starvation/firebombing/etc that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki's deathtoll seem tame.)

Speaking of, to make nations/religions/regions more unique, perhaps one day we can go beyond mere RP and have mechanics of some sort of basic skeletal "culture system". Nations opt out by default, of course, but nations who want to follow a serious theme can opt into certain realm-wide or region-specific cultural mechanics that "may" RNGesus things on a broad spectrum, tailoring the realm to better reflect their chosen image. Opting out by characters/nations/regions would just default to the norm, eliminating both maluses AND bonuses. (which exist in a dualistic give-and-take fashion as common sense dictates) like unit cohesion/training (ex: Spartans=bonus to training, malus to raw trainee volume? Persian slave-army=malus to training, bonus to RC raw trainee numbers? Opt out is neutral, spartan is training-focus for fewer troops, persian is more troops for crappier quality?), population growth/birth rate, monster spawn rate (heresy/anarchy/demon cults), agricultural yield/stability/volume (locusts, pollution, nitrate deficiency, evil omen, slash&burn, slave labor, hunter-gatherer focus, whatever), tax collection/region loyalty (greedy=more gold less loyalty/productivity; less gold-higher-loyalty/productivity), paraphernalia availability/cost (ex: medicus corps/health focus means more and cheaper healers, or more numerous but more expensive healers (+1 gold per pay cycle?) or faster wound healing, with associated maluses for balance), so forth. Hell, it'd be extremely interesting if characters retain the culture the last opted into upon moving to a new/different realm, effectively making it so that different regions/cities within a nation are affected by the cultures of their citizens, creating an incredibly dynamic meta-cultural flux that affects the realm, its individual regions, and the lords/knights or those regions in interesting ways. Hell, one could strike out the mechanics bonus/malus altogether in favor of a random-event system where adopted cultural paradigms opt you into, or make more likely, the incidence of certain random events while detracting from the chances/impact of others?

Hey, we can fabricate documents to buy friggin CITIES. Why not add some fun and sow chaos into the ranks of noble and soldier alike by using tactics that bear historical precedent in their varied usage. Not to mention it adds plenty of fun for different classes and incredible depth to nations, religions, guilds, and the like.

[Wimpie]

Wait, there is no TL;DR?

[Bronnen]

The battle lasted for 1 hours.
You have gained 1 Honour.
None of your men were killed in this battle.
Morale of your troops falls by 15 points. Your men's equipment suffers 1 % damage. Combat training increases by 1 points. Unit cohesion rises 2 points.

Battle Results   (22 hours, 6 minutes ago)
Your unit participated in a battle in Girich. Your scribe has written down a battle report as a Scribe Note.

The battle lasted for 1 hours.
You have gained 1 Honour.
None of your men were killed in this battle.
Morale of your troops falls by 9 points. Combat training increases by 1 points. Unit cohesion rises 3 points.

The battle lasted for 1 hours.
You have gained 1 Honour.
None of your men were killed in this battle.
Morale of your troops falls by 5 points. Combat training increases by 1 points. Unit cohesion rises 3 points.

all three of those were victories.

[Anaris]

all three of those were victories.

All the same unit, or different ones?