Why can't "something" break when I post?

In any event, I do think that morale should be implimented, but that there should be a check box for it. I also think that different units should gain more resistance with battkes fought, and that troops defending the town where they were "born" and other situations like that should get big morale boosts.

Heh looks like I am way outnumbered, even by just one responder! Anyhow it looks like I am the only one who would want "no routing" - I am a bit surprised. I guess having it in gives the option of having spells that make units less likely or even immune to routing....

Other positive is all the duplicate posts make this look like a very popular thread, so people take a look to see the awesome OP that started it all.

I think not having a morale system detracts from the game. There are already enough fantasy/medieval games where units work like robots, react instantly to your orders etc. Why not spice up gameplay ? Even a limited approach like in Fantasy General would be interesting. If a unit is getting hit repeatedly, it becomes disordered for a while (or until you give 'rest') order, losing some combat stats temporarily. If a unit is being hit hard, it may become broken, severely lowering combat stats with no timeout. You have to rest with it to recover full combat potential. In this way, Fantasy General simulates morale while still keeping things fairly simple.

I don't know, to me it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.  It sucks when an army routs, especially when you're only (in your mind anyways) a few moments from obtaining a goal (winning the battle, holding a certain point for X minutes, etc).  But I have sometimes paid for my stubborness in keeping badly damaged units in battle when, in hindsight, I might have done better had I saved them, quit the field of battle, and come back later.

Most games that have this feature often have some form of veterancy, where battle-hardened units are less likely to flee than green troops.  And I'm sure there will be spells and such that give boosts to morale, should routing be a feature.  If not, this is an excellent idea.

Wow, my bad.  To be fair, I only clicked "post reply" once.  Let me see about deleting 24 of these!

Hmm, apparently I can't, however the point I apparently made abundantly clear is still, in the medieval and ancient time periods the objective wasn't to kill every last man of your opposing army.... it was to make the opposing army break and run, and to capture large numbers of them to ransom back for a profit.  A medieval warfare game (even one with magic) without a morale system is kind of like having a WWII grand strategy game without representing tanks or aircraft.

I also respectfully disagree with the OP.  If the OP's intent is to reduce the time spent chasing army remants over the strategic map, I'm fine with that.  It's perfectly reasonable to assume that, upon losing, some/many of the routers may outright desert.  I would have 100% of them desert in most cases, but i think you can have routing that keeps the game moving, rather than just keeping the game going.

I, too, must disagree. Although, morale could open up a new option for magic. Just as you can give out magic swords to your knights, perhaps an amulet of morale could be implemented that would actively prevent routing.

Regardless, morale is important to human armies. Surely, there are exceptions, but it goes both ways. Just as broken morale causes a side to suffer, so, too, does enhanced morale. Just taking it all away removes the human aspect of soldiers, and instead makes them robots.

Now, in the case of magical creatures, or golems...well, that's different. But routing is important.

I was just wanting it to hark back to MoM, where your army fought to the last man. Sure routing is more realistic and adds depth, but in my opinion (and in my opinion alone it appears) it subtracts from the fun factor.

  It's not the end of the world either way. And I certainly wouldnt mind troops being susceptible to fear magics, but a battalion routing because 10% of their units are down, I dunno it just seems to prolong fights needlessly.

In my book, the less and less this game is looking like the successor of MoM, the more it feels like MoO 3...

OK that was over the top. Nothing could ever disappoint me as badly as MoO3 did.

Denryu...  something which may bring you some hope is if someone created a race where the vast majority of units should be immune to routing the majority of others would have a strong resistance to routing.  A race of undead comes to mind, but unavailable in the base version of the game so you'll have to wait for the modding.

*cough* *cough* Dominions 3, Late Age Ermor *cough* *cough*

Seriously, though, I can respect Denryu's opinion that routing can be annoying.  We'll have to figure out a way to allow morale and routing without making every battle tedious.

I don't see routing as a problem if the units only run away in reasonable situations. If I'm winning a battle decisively and 1/3 of my army decides to go on vacation then I'll be mad but I don't think that will be the case in Elemental if routing is even included.  

Man, that first page is hilarious.

If I'm going to be sending a couple dozen peasants with sharp sticks up against a  thirty foot tall fire breathing dragon, why, in or out of my right mind, would I want them to fight to the death?

Crazy shit like that really ruins the realism in a game.  That dragon should be breaking those poor peasants just by existing.  That should be one of the perks of having a dragon, everyone shits a brick and runs for their life when it comes after them.  Only well trained troops should be sticking it out in such a situation, and only when they have a shot in hell of surviving.

Routing when done right doesn't make combat tedius either.  It makes it less tedius.  Fighting to the last man, that's tedius.  Oh look, I've won, now I get to spend twenty minutes killing this itty bitty army.  In the TW games, those itty bitty armies go oh shit, he flanked us and charged us in the rear, ahhh! splat.

Accurate morale is realistic,  makes units like cavalry and ranged actually work instead of being the fake balanced crap they are in most games, streamlines the game flow, and opens up a whole new spectrum of tactics and unit designs.  Instead of some retarded stat modifier, death incarnate can actually take the field of battle and strike terror into the enemy.

When I was serving with the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, they had 4 horses charge across a parade field once just for fun.  It was amazing how much the ground shook with just four horses: it gave a small glimpse into those battles where hundreds or thousands of cavalrymen charged infantry formations.  Good infantry definitely needed some stones.

As an aside, it's also part of the shock value of modern armored formations.  I generally trained and fought mounted, but did some training as light infantry as well.  We were on one patrol (training, again), had tore some good s*** up, and came across a lone tank guarding a road.  Even with the advantage of surprise, accuracy, and the fact that the tank didn't have any friendly infantry nearby, we were like "how the f*** are we going to take that out?"  We ended up skirting it and jacked up a flatbed convoy instead.  (Another nearby unit ambushed and accosted a supply truck full of watermelons.  Mmm mm good!)

I guess it'd be cool to have morale affect whether certain units will be willing to attack or charge an opponent (I think the Ancient Art of War series of wargames had a "charge morale check", or something similar).  Your peasants might just flee on seeing the dragon; your trained infantry might stick around, but decide--perhaps against orders--they'd rather go after that nice group of enemy spearmen instead (if we ignore it, maybe it will go away...)

There should be routing IF it is done right.  It will be extremely annoying if there is no consequence unit rout.

I'll suggest if any unit rout, there will be 25% to 75% chance that it is considered killed.  But surviving unit will show up at the closest town after certain number of turns (considering its movement).   Finally, during tactical combat, player should be given a "Rout" button for each unit during his turn.  Units defending a town cannot rout.

And then, unit may rout by themselves due to poor morale that player have no control.  It should be rare, only happens when the odds are extreme.

There should be items, hero ability etc to adjust morale, rout survival % chance etc.

I believe is a good way to implement rout.

I'd suggest actual rundown pursuit.  If they catch you, you die.  That makes light cavalry useful without having retarded shit like missile resistance to give them a fake use.  Toss in a decimation kill(perhaps not actually at ten percent) and the job is done.  A routed army is destroyed at end of combat if x percent are killed while fleeing.

I, too, like to have morale effects and routing in place. It's not that it isn't annoying occasionally, but if units always fight to the death of the last man, it's just too jarring and the game begins to feel less like battle and more like chess.

The only issue with routing is cleaning up stray units. Depending on whether units remain in same plot unable to move due to low morale or scatter into all the nearby plots, this can be an issue or not, but I'd rather have routing in.

All things considered it would be preferable to have an army remain integral (much in the way it does in TW games) instead of scattering, with the total destruction of the force if it is too heavily damaged.

Damn lmao oh god that was great break on the post at first i was like double .... holy ef...  

Back on topic I wouldn't mind having moral and units routing but having fear spells would be cool too.

I also liked in MoM how you could fight an 8 unit squad down to having only one surviving member and over time the squad would "heal" (during turns without combat) and replace the missing members of the squad. Ah well.

Well, in either case, I would like to see the routing system being implented (in whatever way of morale or just spells) with a way for the player to affect it.

For example, in the civ4 popular mod, Fall From Heaven 2, there's an ability named fear that might stop a unit from acting. The mechanic was made in such a fasion that, even though my units had a high chance to kill it, they were terrified and refused.

Now, in a case a dragon invades my town and my garrisoned units fear it, I want the option to force them to try to kill it- I know (or supposed to) what is better for the empire. Why does these soldiers care about my empire? Simple- they are defending their village, home and family. If the village is important for my empire, I will be willing to throw 100 soldiers to save it, I don't want to get an autoloss because my footies saw a big fat dragon and decided to run, even if it might be more realistic.

As a side note, a known way to pravent routing is being more intimidating than your opponent. For example, having your lieutenants kill every routing soldier. You lose soldiers, you lose happiness, you gain victory.

I am all for a morale system that includes routing.

Sammual

I think it's possible to represent soldiers fleeing for the purpose of realism without necessarily having full units routing left and right.  I had always assumed in MoM that as soldier units were taking hits, many of them were fleeing and not just dying.  In Elemental, your units could have a morale score in which, the lower the score goes, the more units are lost due to some of them losing their courage.