Pretext: If a thread that is simliar to this one already exists I apologize for not finding it in the forums. I'd be thankful to be pointed at it

Introduction:

I create this thread in order to achieve two things:

1. I want to maximize the chance for morale mechanics to actually be implemented in the game. Therefore the first part of the thread will deal with the reasons why morale is so important and what advantages a morale system would provide in both gamefeeling and gameplay. Even if the developers already plan to have morale implemented, maybe this will widen the impact on gameplay.

2. I would like to create a platform to discuss and gather up different ideas on the mechanics concerning morale. For that I will create a first draft that is my personal favourite. I will adjust that draft depending on the discussions. If ideas come up that are also well thought out but do not match with my first draft I will include them in the main post of this thread on par with all other current ideas, provided that the explanation is detailed and well-designed. I want to reach a structural and semantical quality in this thread that allows the developers to have the summed up community wishes concerning morale in one quick look.

For anyone who reads this post. If after (or already before) the reading your wish to have a morale system implemented is as strong, then please post a critique to the ideas and if you think it deserves it, call for a sticky. This is an overview thread, it would be sad if it was lost deep in the forums.

Part 1 "Why": Explaining the importancy of morale

Realism: I know that "realism" in itself is a weak reason concerning a magic driven imaginary game in an imaginary world. What I mean here is basically the realism of perceiving the game's characters and people as characters and people instead of what basically comes down to robots and tools. Through the ages of mankind morale is one of the three major factors of actual battle-effectiveness. (The two others are equipment and and actual fighting skill) It is not known to everyone and people who tend to play video games or watch movies can easily get a wrong idea. But in any real battle, that actually happened in our own world's history, the battle is won the moment that the enemy is convinced of his own defeat. Battles are basically never fought to the last man! If the outcome seems to be sure, soldiers (with very few exceptions) try to retreat or surrender. The survival instinct and primal fear are just that strong. If you do not believe it, look up any battle in history books or on wikipedia. To give examples: In the 17th-18th century most large scale battles were decided before even a third of one faction was actually killed or incapacitaded. Even in one of the bloodiest battles in history concerning casualties - the battle of Cannae - , when Hannibal made a decisive vitory agains the Romans, there were still approximately 4,500 captives out of 60-80 thousands at the end of the battle. There are a lot of examples and I won't give any more since anyone can search for them. But I emphasize again: Any real battle that has ever been fought, was won the moment the enemy lost his will to fight and that moment can be anywhere between 0-95% casualties.

Heroism: Heroism is an important part of epic story telling. It tells us that, provided enough willpower, anything can be overcome, which is a spirit-rising thought. It is used in any story telling media beginning at the earliest of myths of humankind. But what is heroism? Heroism is not a certain level of strength of will. Heroism describes when someone is exceptionally brave in comparison to others! One cannot be perceived as being heroic when everybody else is too. So in order to actually allow characters/troops in the game to stand out and have that certain glamour about them, that is more than the sum of their equip and fighting power, they need to differ on a very specific scale: Morale. What makes the Spartians in "300" so incredibly badass is not solely their fighting skill, but especially their attitude. They do not fear the enemy, they crave for battle, they are unbreakable. Even if you do not like the film, they are the essence of classic heroism. And what makes them look so heroic are the persians, who are not! It would have been pretty dull if the persians were just as brave/battlehardy, no matter if their fighting-skill was lower. There are countless examples in film, literature and games. "Braveheart", "LotR", "Dragon Age" ... in all those heroism makes the difference in feeling. And morale makes the difference in heroism.

Usability: Implementing an attribute that expresses morale(/willpower/determination you name it) has a lot of usability in matters of game mechanic. Not only does it further reward and enable good battle tactics (flanking, ambushes, surrounding the enemies, breaking the line, killing the leader etc.), it allows to intuitively be used in spells such as "charm" (where it would work a lot better than the current level-difference approach), "dominate", "terror", "heroism", "divine crusade", or anything close to it. It can be used to give heroes and souvereigns family a leadership attribute that influences morale of the lead troops both overall and locally in battle. When creating own races it is a good racial property to be rather brave or rather cowardly. Also concepts like "loyalty" or "happiness" could modify the morale of troops. There is just so much mechanics (of which many are already there) that should influence morale and where morale solves all the problems of expressing the effects. And if morale has the proper impact on fighting-effectiveness it will open up hell of a lot of tactics and strategies that will keep the game fresh and interesting in the many playthroughs it is supposed to offer. I will show more of th usability in the actual implementation ideas.

Part 2  "How": Drafts and Ideas of actual Implementation

This section covers ideas how to use morale in the game and will go in-depth about it. It will be split in three parts. The first one covers how to express morale as a value. The second will cover the actual effects of morale and the third will try to list game mechanics that should influence morale. If you have any other ideas, post them. If they make sense at all I will include them here giving credit to the provider of the idea. Any concepts that lack a "(by Someone)" are mady up by myself. All number serve the sole purpose of being examples, they are not an actual balance proposal!

Section 1: How to express morale

Scalable Value:

The easiest thing would probably be to express morale like you would express hitpoints or magical power. That means that any unit would have a maximum morale value which can differ from unit to unit and it is treated like an expandable value in battle. So that a commoner with a fork and without training has a max morale of maybe 40. A trained soldier maybe 100. An elitist noble chevalier 250. A dragon 1000 or more. The actual numbers do not matter, only the relation to the numbers of other troops does. So depending on how fine one would need it for implementation you could make it 4, 10, 25, 100 or even 400, 1000, 2500, 10000. The more (especially slight) effects there are supposed to be, the bigger the numbers must be in oder to express the difference between different morale impacts.

Percental Value + Resistance:

In this model every troop in game would have a max morale of 100% (granted some spells could raise that above, giving certain buffs). What would make a difference between the troops would be some kind of willpower/mentalresistance/battlehardiness, that modifies every change. Willpower (ill just call it that now) could then work as kind of armor for morale either in a percental way. So that 10 willpower would result in 30% less morale damage from any source. The other possibility is, that willpower actually decreases ANY morale impact by a fixed a mount. So that a willpower of 10 immunizes a unit to any  morale loss that would cause it to lose 10% morale or less. You could also split up the resistance in a percental and a fixed protection value, or keep one of the effects specifically reserved for spells such as "fearlesness" or "anxiety". This is probably my favourite, then again I like very complex systems.

Classification of Status:

This would be my least favourable solution because it is inflexible and is overly simplified. In this model, troops would have a fixed status, such as "freightened","normal", "encouraged", "brave", "heroic" that expresses the unit's status and certain effects would simply modify the status by one or more levels.  The levels could then have certain buff/debuff effects and could be treated as those.

Section 2: What effects should Morale have

This will be a list of ideas rather than packets of closed concepts as in section 1:

Strategic Movement Speed: It would probably be a bad idea to give troops with high morale a whole additional movement point on the campaign map. But what one could do is to give a forced march command that grants additional movement but expenses morale in form of a temporary debuff.

Modifier to Exhaustion: If there is any kind of exhaustion system to be implemented in battles morale could act as a modifier to it, expressing that troops with greater determination tend to use up their power reserves with more willpower.

Overall Battleperformance: Depending on how deep one wants to root the morale a very high or very low morale could have impact on various fighting values, such as Chance-To-Hit, Damage, Damage-bonus from a charge, Critchance or various resistances, maybe even up to temporary hitpoints. This of course works both ways so that troops with bad morale fight even worse.

Fleeing, Surrendering, Panicking: Personally this is the most important morale effect for me. If the morale drops low, maybe a unit will fight worse but as soon as it hits a certain amount a unit will simply break and panic. It will then begin to flee from the field, try to surrender, (maybe even try to change sides in case of mercenaries) or just cower down and not move. Assuming that nothing worse happens to them they'll maybe catch themselves again or some spell or ability will make them stand again.

Enabling/Disabling abilities: Certain high levels of morale could allow units to take special actions or abilities which they usually could not. The other way around very low levels of morale could disable abilities a unit usually has. If for example a cavalry unit has "Glorious Charge" or anything like that that would usually imply a good morale, a bad morale could prevent it.

Resistining Mind-Influence: With "Charm" there is already one mind-affecting spell in game and there will surely be even more. The morale a unit has could then act as a main factor in resisting such spells.

(by bluebogle) Lay down Arms: In his Post bluebogle suggested that, if confronted with an enemy of overwhelming power, troops should be able to lay down their arms and surrender peacefully even before any fight has started. One of the reasons again is realism, but as the post shows it would also enable people to skip any essentially boring fighting, which they would maybe have to take in order to have no casualties. Morale could act as a main factor when determining if an army surrenders with or even against their leaders will, when facing a nigh-unbeatable enemy.

Section 3: What should have an influence on morale

Just as the section before this will be a list of mostly independent possibilities, any combination which of could be used in the implementation. In order to have a relation on how much the different triggers affect morale, there is a disclaimer in parentheses, that ranges from "very slight and slight" to "moderate, big and very big."

Receiving Casualties (Very Big): The most intuitive impact on morale should be, when other members of your troop start dieing around you, as your own death becomes more probable with every death, no matter the source. Of course the actual impact should depend one how big the unit was in the first place. Losing 5 out of 10 is not the same as losing 5 out of 100. Also this should be one of the main influences on morale.

Inflicting Casualties (Moderate): Seeing the enemy die by your hands and realizing you do have a real impact on the battle should actually increase your morale. It is important to mention though that inflicting casualties should not nearly give as much morale as receivng casualties damages morale. Both for balance and "realism".

Tides of Battle (Slight): Speaking of casualties... For a soldier on the field it is not only important what happens to it's own unit, but also how the battle seems to turn out as a whole. So if a unit that has not fought in the battle yet sees a whole flank disappear in a storm of spells while the enemy is still completly undamaged, it should have an impact of morale.

Power Relation (Very Slight up to Moderate): Fighting against an enemy army, that is considerably stronger/weaker can be factor on morale. I especially say "power relation" and not numbers, because a dragon is just one but can be just as powerful as a battalion. This would of course require to have some kind of measurement of a unit's power in order to sum it up for both armies and relate them to each other. The actual value modifications could occur, when an army is 1,5x , 2x, or even 4x times as strong the other.

Positioning in Battle (High): This would need the tactical battle system to have an orientation for units. By positioning I do not only mean things as "on high ground" or "hidden in a forest", which should have a very slight effect. I specifically mean how the positioning is related to the enemy. If your flank and back are secured by your own troops and you can face your enemy, where you want him to be - in your front - morale should stay high. Getting attacked in the flanks or back, especially when already engaged in meele can make soldiers lose orientation and makes the misjudge the overall battle, thus having a very heavy impact on morale.

Charging and being Charged (Very Slight to Moderate): If the tactical battle system includes possibilities to actually initiate a meele as attacker/defender then it should be important who actually attacks. Screaming loud and running towards the enemy together with your fellow soldiers builds up momentum and adrenaline thus giving at least a slight temporary boost to morale depending on how poweful the charge ist. On the other side, being charged by a enemy can have a strong effect on morale depending on the power of the charge. If the commoners charge at your shieldwall with their forks you will be rather unimpressed. If the heavy 2,000 pound armored chevaliers charge at your line and you got neither shields nor spears, the charge itself can be devastating on it's own, not counting the probable casualties.

Leadership (Rather Moderate): Since we already have souvereigns family, the souvereign himself and maybe heroes, leadership - as a classic trait of remarkable characters - could be implemented to increase or bolster the morale of lead troops, both globally and close to the leading unit on the battlefield. For one this would encourage player to have their offspring lead armies (which is often in fantasy setting as well as in our medieval times), for the other it would give a whole set of new specific abilities and traits, that heroes could excel in.

Empire/Kingdom Happiness (Very Slight): If there will be an overall hapiness in your empire, it could have a slight effect on all normal troops in your army. So if your empire is happy and worth defending the people will fight more vigorously for it, while - if they hate you and their lives - they might not be as interested to increase your territory even more.

Race Trait (Any): Easy thing. When creating races (or detemining the 12 main races) some folks might be rather courageous, some rather cowardly. It would be a great further possibility to customize the races.

Special Abilities and Magic (Any): This is, where the developers can run riot. There could be just as many ideas for spells: "Heroism", "Cloak of fear", "Mind Numbing", "Last stand" etc.. As there could be for special abilities influencing morale: "Shieldwall", "Berserking", "Cold Blooded Killing" and many many more. Since this would be too specific at this point I won't give ideas for more.

(by Demianski) Level of Brutality / Pillaging(Slight): War is an ugly thing and being in danger of dieing constantly and seeing his friends and comrades die breeds a lot of hate. Whenever there was a siege that ended with the attacker succesfull, this hate was often released in destructive and horrible ways. Keeping up morale without allowing his own men to take whatever they want from their enemies after all their sacrifices is almost impossible. So the idea would be: When succesfully taking a city or taking prisoners after battle, the winner can decide how much control he wants to excert over his men. If he lets them do whatever they want, a city could be severely destroyed and a lot of civilian population killed, but his soldiers will be satisfied. If he forbids any destructive act completly his troops morale will suffer at least temporary. There could be multiple level how to handle this (ranging from "do what you want for 3 days" up to "no one touches anything"). The decision possibilities would then have to be fair tradeoffs between morale and keeping your spoils of war. Also the race and especially it's alignment could determine what would be the "normal" level of pillaging.

(inspired by Cerevox): Cultural/Alignment/Elemental/etc. Difference (Moderate): Strange I didn't think of it yet. Various spells and tactics will allow you to combine troops in an army that possibly don't like each other that much. Angels and Demons in one army would hate each others just as much as paladins would assasins or maybe water elementals would hate fire elementals. (Don't forget, these are just examples. The concept is important) There are a lot of systems imaginable on how to differentiate the troops and who could like/dislike whom. The effect on morale is obvious. If you are in an army where everyone hates you, your morale suffers. If you are surrounden by people who share your ideas/race/ideals your morale is strong.

Thank you for reading!

I hope you actually like the ideas and can contribute to it. And as said before, if you would like to see a morale mechanic just as much as me, please call for a sticky, so that we actually reach the developers with our call ^.^