Morale Question

[4spryt]

I just had a match (vrs Mercs) where their morale was down to a 9, I then killed another henchman warrior and the match ended instantly (the way it does when you have killed their entire WB); the odd thing is they still had a Champion and one unknown unit alive.

The match stats showed I had only killed 8/10 enemies, so I am kind of wondering how they could have a 9 Morale with a hero and another unit alive... and why the match ending was instantaneous, no war band failed morale check message?

Is this just one of those rare things that are possible but I've never seen until now or is this a Morale calculation bug?

[uddhava]

Its often possible actually. Its hard to kill all 10 units as their combined morale pool can be a lot higher.

In short: its perfectly normal

[4spryt]

Okay, thank you. =)

[Karond]

Alright.

So, the warband morale is adding up the leadership of each unit times 2. So if your warband has 4 units each with leadership 15, you would have a warband morale of 15*4*2 = 120.

Now, each unit that is killed lowers the warband morale by a set amount. For henchmen this is 9 points+their level. For heroes it's 12 points +their level. For leaders, 16 points+their level. Impressives is 18+their level.

You take a rout test if this goes on or below 40% of those 120 morale (48 in this case).

As we see, 120-48 = 72, so our warband of 4 units can lose 71 morale before taking a rout test.

We assume it's a leader, 2 heroes and an impressive all at level 10. Those units are worth:
26 leader, 22 heroes and 28 impressive.

With such a good warband morale, we will take our first rout test when we lose 3 units, irregardless of which units that is. 26+28+22 = 76, which is more than 71, so we take a rout test.

We could also lose our leader and the impressive, 26+28, but the enemy takes our banner from our wagon (-16 morale always), which is 26+28+16 = 72, which is more than 71, so we take a rout test. The exception of this is losing the leader 26, and the two heroes, 22+22, which together is 70. That's not more than 71, so the impressive can be the only unit left alive and win.

All good?

Alright, here are some special rules when it comes to morale:

* To succeed at a rout test, you need to have a hero or a leader alive. Impressives and henchmen can't take rout tests.

* If your last character able to take rout tests is currently stunned, you fail the rout test automatically.

* If warband morale at any point reaches 0, you automatically lose the game (which is what happened in your game 4spryt)

[kriscardiac]

Don't get that last point - what difference are you seeing with AI rout tests?

Originally posted by Karond:

* The AI doesn't follow the rout treshhold rules, depending on difficulty. They don't take their first rout test when reaching 40% of their warband morale, they usually take it much sooner, up to 65% If I remember correctly. This means the AI routs easier than you, and so you get less loot!!!

[4spryt]

@Karond:

Thanks for the detailed info, most of it I was familiar with (excepted the point about a stunned unit causing a fail).

I think I am surprised because I assumed a WB could not reach zero Morale with 2 units alive. Since they had a champion and an unknown unit alive, I thought "wait, what?".

I still don't totally understand to be honest, since I thought all units had to have Morale (other than zombies) which would mean 2 Merc units alive should have kept the Merc WB above zero. But both of you are saying this is possible, so I will defer to the more experienced players. =D

[4spryt]

Originally posted by kriscardiac:

Don't get that last point - what difference are you seeing with AI rout tests?

I think he is referring to the displayed number at which the route takes place.

I've not done a math check on normal, brutal, or deadly, but I checked the numbers on hard one day and technically they were set at 39% for both WB's not 40%.

I would be surprised if a route occurs at 65%, but next time I play Normal difficulty I'll do the math. I would think that if there is variation it wouldn't be more than 5-10% per difficulty, but who knows, I still seem to learn new things despite 600+ hours. lol

[wds_ncs]

Originally posted by 4spryt:

@Karond:

Thanks for the detailed info, most of it I was familiar with (excepted the point about a stunned unit causing a fail).

I think I am surprised because I assumed a WB could not reach zero Morale with 2 units alive. Since they had a champion and an unknown unit alive, I thought "wait, what?".

I still don't totally understand to be honest, since I thought all units had to have Morale (other than zombies) which would mean 2 Merc units alive should have kept the Merc WB above zero. But both of you are saying this is possible, so I will defer to the more experienced players. =D

Read the first part of his post again; morale value and morale impact (when a unit is downed) aren't the same. Any unit that has a higher morale impact than morale value is going to reduce the WB morale pool by more points than they contributed in the first place, which is how you reached 0 WB morale despite units with decent leadership scores still being up--their contributions were negated by that imbalance in already dropped enemies.

[kriscardiac]

Theres the amount a unit adds to the pool, and the amount it's loss takes away. They can be very different.....Zombies, we're looking at you.

So you might have brought your level 10 captain with only 3 leadership (what where you thinking?) - he only added 6 to the morale pool, but when he goes OoA he takes 26 away. And you rout. Or, in your example, the whole warband goes to zero morale and routs, despite only losing one unit.

[Karond]

Originally posted by 4spryt:

@Karond:

I think I am surprised because I assumed a WB could not reach zero Morale with 2 units alive. Since they had a champion and an unknown unit alive, I thought "wait, what?".

Alright, you know that a level 10 henchmen is worth 19 morale points when they die. Imagine this henchmen has 6 leadership. That means they contribute +12 points to warband morale, but when they die, the warband morale goes down -19. That's a 7 point difference.

What happened in your game was that the AI units had many units who didn't have a high leadership. If you take my example above of 5 henchmen with 6 leadership, we get 60 warband morale. Each loss is -19. So after just losing 4 henchmen we are already at 60-(4*19)= -16 morale. That's less than 0, and so we automatically rout even with one guy left standing.

----

Okay guys, check this screenshot out:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=926469967

EDIT: Aren't the ogres cool? Lost brothers.

[wds_ncs]

Erm, 81 is his morale after already losing units, though. If it were ~137 before he started losing units, which is plausible looking at that meter, it's still 40%.

[4spryt]

Originally posted by wds_ncs:

Originally posted by 4spryt:

@Karond:

Thanks for the detailed info, most of it I was familiar with (excepted the point about a stunned unit causing a fail).

I think I am surprised because I assumed a WB could not reach zero Morale with 2 units alive. Since they had a champion and an unknown unit alive, I thought "wait, what?".

I still don't totally understand to be honest, since I thought all units had to have Morale (other than zombies) which would mean 2 Merc units alive should have kept the Merc WB above zero. But both of you are saying this is possible, so I will defer to the more experienced players. =D

Read the first part of his post again; morale value and morale impact (when a unit is downed) aren't the same. Any unit that has a higher morale impact than morale value is going to reduce the WB morale pool by more points than they contributed in the first place, which is how you reached 0 WB morale despite units with decent leadership scores still being up--their contributions were negated by that imbalance in already dropped enemies.

Thanks! Totally missed that.

@Kris and Karond: thanks as well, guess I'm a bit dull minded today

[kriscardiac]

Originally posted by wds_ncs:

Erm, 81 is his morale after already losing units, though.

This.
Probably started with 137 morale.

[Karond]

Originally posted by wds_ncs:

Erm, 81 is his morale after already losing units, though. If it were ~137 before he started losing units, which is plausible looking at that meter, it's still 40%.

Aww, damnit, I overlooked that. Well, disregard that 40% thing then, I'll edit it out. Very clumsy of me, nice eye ;)

[wds_ncs]

I was just looking for another way the game cheats in the player's favour to argue with the next person whining about the difficulty. :)

[Bobby Boy Freed]

I was down to only my two ranged units out of 7 and I knew the end was near. I almost groaned when we passed the rout test knowing that I was going to lose one or maybe both, but I kept retreating and got off a couple of good shots. I killed one more of their units and they routed with still 2 more warriors than I had. I couldn't believe it! Just being below critical morale doesn't always mean you will lose.