Morale

[Meglobob]

Ewierl said:

Personally, I've found that this rule provides some strange efeects in practice. If you have a really solid SC but a big disadvantage in terms of armies, you end up forced to keep your SC alone, since bringing any troops whatsoever raises the risk of "automatic whole-army rout" when your troops die off in droves.

I've often seen this rule produce strange tactical requirements if you're fighting with thugs and SCs. You end up needing to keep your chaff protected!

Basically, I think the "army casualties -> army rout" connection is problematic. Let squads rout individually, don't force that Gorgon to rout just because Maenads are getting chewed up by spells.

I would just like to agree with Ewieri 100% here. I have been winning alot of battles but my army has routed just because the chaff got slaughtered. I now place my chaff at the rear of the battlefield on guard commander/hold and attack orders. Its only there to siege castles...and suicide at some opportune moment (thus save me the upkeep), its usually the free militia/flagellants from random events.

I have found this to be a huge problem with Pangaea and maenads as well. You can't put quality units in the same army with maenads, as the maenads die so quickly your army routs at 50% casualtys. Then your quality troops are in danger as they retreat off the battlefield. Also its a huge mircomanagement pain putting the army back together again.

[Sombre]

In my Skaven mod I have skaven slaves which, using a sort of fudge of the way units work, only count 1 death in army routing for each three that die.

It works fine and they are actually useful as chaff, unlike normal milita.

[vfb]

Perhaps an easy fix for SCs and thugs would be that commanders who are not leading troops are not subject to automatic routing.

So you can bring your Wrym, commanding no units, and a commander with chaff to soak up some lances or something. The chaff gets killed on the lances, and the commander routes because he was commanding units. But the Wrym sticks around to fight (still subject to normal morale checks, but not automatically routing).

Or here's an even easier fix: just get rid of the automatic routing at 75% troop casualties, or whatever the limit is.

[Fate]

One time I have found the 75% casualties useful is that it is the only way an undead army will route.

[Ewierl]

Fate said:
One time I have found the 75% casualties useful is that it is the only way an undead army will route.

One might call this useful, but I don't think it makes sense. Let the commanders make some morale checks for whatever reasons, and if they flee the army is screwed; but if 75% of your zombies have died, why should that slow down the remaining 25% of the mindless slavering horde?

[Kristoffer O]

When 75 % of the zombies died their leader feels it's a lost cause and rout. THe zombies just stand there and dissolve as their leaders no longer care to keep them together.

The 75% rule is part balance thing, part thematic in the sense that the soldiers and the leaders of the army are supposed to percieve the battle as lost due to too much casualties. The 75% rule could possibly be a bit more dynamic, but we definitely need some ary rout rule, and as long as players know the deal (which wasn't the case in dom2) I consider it quite fair. As you know what you get you can try to compose your armies accordningly, and not include too much chaff.

In dom2 it was impossible to know why the army decided to rout. I had it explained to me several times by JK, but I could never visualize the math behind it so I always forgot. The current system is blunt, but works OK and is transparent enough for players to grasp what happens, and I have come to believe that that is quite important.