Unit Morale Issues

[NachoFoot]

I recently started playing and I chose hard (since normal was just too easy). However, in one of the field battles early in the campaign, I rode my men out to break a siege on my fortress. Our forces were evenly matched but mine broke when only 15% of my men were gone. The enemy's men broke when there were only 15% of them left. I lost with about 80% of my men remaining.

Is this a flaw in the game or do I need a mod to adjust this?

[Elitewrecker PT]

Harder battle difficulty has hidden buffs to AI stats.

[dog]

let me guess most of your units were ashigaru. low rank ashigaru have very low morale you must keep your general close to them or they will route very quickly

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

If you're defending a siege, you'll want to know that your units will fight to the very last man as long as they're on the top level of a castle. The only times that you'd want to take a chance sallying out are when you have some cavalry that can delay, distract, or assassinate a general, when you have overwhelming local superiority, when you have a reinforcing army to link up with, when you're sure that you can cut off an enemy's reinforcing army, or if you have no other choice with the enemy infantry routed but several groups of archers are shooting you to bits.

[NachoFoot]

Is there any mod that removes all bonuses and keeps the hard strategy game play?

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

Not really. It's not a flaw in the game design. Just learn more about the game and improve your gameplay.

[BastardSword]

It's definitely not a flaw. Once you have better morale stats then you'll find that you make the enemy rout very quickly while your guys will practically fight to the death.

There are a few things that will improve morale:

- units ranking up will get more morale

- a higher-ranked general will give troops more morale. Anything that improves "command" will improve morale. Several general perk unlocks will improve morale, look at their skill tree. The Ashigaru commander perk is good for giving ashigaru higher morale.

- some buildings will improve morale for units recruited there, like the hallowed ground building chain.

- morale is also affected by how units do in a battle. If they start to kill off the enemy, their morale will improve. If they start to die off, their morale will drop. So I like to build an armory in a blacksmith province to give my units max morale. This protects them from dying especially from arrows, and prevents their morale from plummetting. You can also upgrade an encampment to improve morale. I think it's best to improve armor because nothing but a blacksmith and armory will improve it, while attack stats and morale stats will increase as a unit ranks up and as the general ranks up.