How, exactly, does +1 Max Morale/Obedience/Nutrition/Vigor work?

[Olleus]

It clearly doesn't increase the actual maximum, because it never goes above 9. So, if nothing else, it's a really poor choice of words for a tool tip. It clearly does something though...

For that matter how do these 4 stats work *exactly*? The effects of putting no/some/full guards while camping are transparent, as are the different accommodations at villages, but beyond that it's mysterious to me. Morale and obedience drop on their own... sometimes? Changing rations has a direct effect on nutrition, and sometimes on the other stats? Marching makes some of these stats drop down some of the time? The first few points of march seem to have a much smaller effect then using them all up, but it seems so random it's hard to figure out what's actually happening...

I tried looking around on the steam guides, google, the wiki, and reddit, but there doesn't seem to be any proper answer anywhere. Which is surprising as this might be the most fundamental mechanic of the game, but maybe my google fu just sucks lol.

[Phyroks]

I think the -1max is just to make sure you cant be buffed up so high and has no real important meaning, BUT
...From the little experience I have with the game...

It also seems like Vigor and Obedience slowly creeps towards nutrition value, so having nutrition 3 makes them both drop or raise towards 3. Morale im not so sure, it seems to be always high if you dont force march and can pay salary.

Im rather sure that when it says you have 5 Vigor it means you have 5.0-5.9 Vigor and dont actually know how bad it is, so doing something can take 1.2 of the stat and can sometimes make it change 1 or 2 because of it...

Each unit has different march/walk value, so i presume force march hurts the ones that actually cant go that far, so when I had lot less mounts it felt like the cost was way worse for few points. Btw if you dont use up all your movement you can use it to hunt without vigor loss, or if simply dont use it at all, you gain stats (force march reverse effects)

These are all just my observations from playing the game so far, I sometimes only give them half the food if the Vigor and Obedience allow it, morale seems to be rather easy to keep in check. Have fun experimenting.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by Phyroks:

Have fun experimenting.

But experimenting is *exactly* what I don't want to do! That's why I created this thread lol, in the hope that someone has done all the experimenting work and I can just read their conclusions.

I'm 60+ hours in, so have done a fair bit of experimenting myself and have a very rough idea of how things work. But pinning down whether, for example, I should keep Nutrition at +9 by having 150% rations all the time, or if keeping it at ~7 is enough to keep my movement points at their maximum is hard. That's because I don't know the underlying rules, there are hidden variables (like some value of morale/obedience/... after the decimal points), I can't force march an exact number of points every turn, there are inevitably some other modifiers in play, the make up of the party might affect it, and so on.

Sure, I could spend a day testing different builds rigorously controlling for each of those variables in turn to see exactly how things work, but considering how long the game has been out and that it has a pretty strong following, I was hoping that had already been done.