Global morale, negative numbers, and potentially a problem

[marcpennington]

I'll apologize in advance that I don't have any save files to attach on this, as I'm learning the game in PBEM.

But I have noticed that it seems like the armies reach the global morale breaking point very quickly. In a Mill Spring's PBEM I played, the Confederates reached that point within a few hours of battle time, with little of the combat in game indicating an army-wide rout circumstance. Against another opponent, I played the Wilson's Creek 7:00 AM start scenario, and both our army's dropped below the global rout threshold simultaneously at precisely 9:40 AM.

I was putting this off to just learning the system, until in my switch sides replay of Mill Springs against the former opponent, I noticed one turn when my opponent's global morale dropped by a huge amount in one turn. Looking at the turn history, I saw I had charged one of his units and that regiment took a -8.2 morale hit. Now it starts to become obvious why in a small scenario like that, when a single regiment ends up with a moral somewhere in the -6 range (with regiments in general having a moral in the 2-3 range at fresh status), plus they're aren't many units in the overall scenario to counter-balance one extremely low level moral unit like that, why the average overall global morale will drop so quickly.

So, perhaps, is morale supposed to be capped at a low point of 0? That would prevent single combats from breaking an entire army as above. Alternatively, if negative morale values are needed for some other reason, perhaps the game needs a much more active rally mechanic. As it is, switching a whole brigade to rally formation is impractical in many cases. And the urge unit mechanic is useful for a small morale boost, but probably not anywhere near powerful enough to counter-act.

If the above problem is real, it's one that will be more obvious in smaller scenarios (one regiment's negative morale having a bigger global effect), than in the bigger ones, so could probably be verified very quickly in one of the smaller ones.

[Chromey]

good point

[Erik Rutins]

Actually, this is part of the design. The negative morale a unit can exert on the army morale is capped at the negative of its starting max morale. So a Morale 3 regiment can at most count as -3 morale towards army morale, even if it's actually -10. It still means that if your best units rout, your army will rout faster. It's in your interest to manage the morale side of the game to avoid brigades getting to their morale break point and rallying units in the negatives (and pro-actively withdrawing them from combat before they get into the deep negatives).

Regards,

- Erik

[zakblood]

and pro-actively withdrawing them from combat before they get into the deep negatives

is how i play tbh, manage this well and you win more than you draw or lose tbh, it's march to action, attack / assault to contact, hold when you need, rally to recover, withdraw if the odd's aren't in your favour

[marcpennington]

Those comments make a lot of sense, as I said I'm still learning the system and need to use rally more effectively.

But back to my original point, I think even with negative morale capped at say -2.4 for a 2.4 max morale unit, it still creates problems in the smaller scenarios. It would make my head hurt to do the math, but say if there are 8 regiments in the scenario (around the number for Mill Springs), and morale starts at 2.4 and breaks at 1.4, a single regiment taking a beating and dropping to -2.4 would account (as a guesstimate from the top of my head) for almost half the global morale drop towards the breaking point. And given how few other units there are, it would be a drop that would be very hard to recover from.

Maybe in small scenarios, the global morale breaking point should be placed much closer to 0--- or even at 0.

This really won't be an issue in larger scenarios like Bull Run, with so many more units, where one combat wouldn't determine an entire battle, and when one area of the front breaks, there are plenty of other units to "sponge up" the morale loss, and time to put that low morale section of the front into rally mode.

[zakblood]

manage it well, and it's not so much as a issue with the smaller battle more than the bigger ones, you just need to rest and recover more often in some battles to recover morale, the days of fighting all day every day are gone with this one, as it's simulates real life and makes you rest and recover more, while at first it's hard, it gets easier and then second nature to fight, rest, by hold if your winning, or withdraw and hold if you lost the encounter...

altering stance and brigade orders are key, when and which one wins battles, wrong ones looses men and guns and more often than not, both plus morale[;)]