"Good morale" for peltasts

[Megas Antiviros <3 Gaesatae :p]

"Good morale" for peltasts? is that not a litlle bit to high...
edit: also many other units have too high morale... ...In most of my battles the losses are between 50% and 90%, is that not too much?
edit2: Once, I played a battle that lasted for 5 hours (1 spartan royal guard with 8 xp and silver armour and weapon, 1 spartan perioici with 6xp and silver armour and weapon bonus and 1 spartan perioici with 5xp and silver armour and weapon vs 3 pontic armies of eastern infantry and a little bit of cavalry)

[Unknown Soldier]

SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guess u played with time limit off

[Megas Antiviros <3 Gaesatae :p]

No, I play with morale on...

[Unknown Soldier]

No, I play with morale on...

Then how can a battle last 5 hours?

The timer won't allow that....

[DimeBagHo]

Time Limit != Morale

In my view the morale levels in vanilla are too low, and too easy to exploit. Half the time you can win a battle just by picking off the general and charging one unit with some cavalry. Then, once an army routs, you can wipe it out entirely without losing a man. Absurdly, in RTW, even units that are 'fighting to the death' can't inflict casualties.

Ideally: enemy generals would be much harder to kill; armies would be less prone to rout in circumstances where escape is impossible, when they did rout a good number of them would escape; when trapped they would inflict serious casualties while fighting to the death (unless totally exhausted); and finally the AI would be just as good at catching routing units as a human player.

Unfortunately we can't fix the AI, so all we can do is raise morale levels.

[Elvis]

Time Limit != Morale

In my view the morale levels in vanilla are too low, and too easy to exploit. Half the time you can win a battle just by picking off the general and charging one unit with some cavalry. Then, once an army routs, you can wipe it out entirely without losing a man. Absurdly, in RTW, even units that are 'fighting to the death' can't inflict casualties.

Ideally: enemy generals would be much harder to kill; armies would be less prone to rout in circumstances where escape is impossible, when they did rout a good number of them would escape; when trapped they would inflict serious casualties while fighting to the death (unless totally exhausted); and finally the AI would be just as good at catching routing units as a human player.

Unfortunately we can't fix the AI, so all we can do is raise morale levels.

It sometimes seems like morale levels are actually shifted to benefit the player more then the AI. Except for a few gold-chevron units, i never had an enemy fight to below 1/3 of their strenght. Usually they run at 1/2 unit strenght or more. Even high morale units like Legionaries, Argyraspides and Cleruch troops. (hard or normal difficulty)

If you add cheap tricks like elphants, chariots or night raiders to the mix, its even more easy to chainrout everything on legs.

Whereas my own units tend to last forever. I've had Thorakitai fight to below 1/10 of their manpower, had a unit of phalangites fight down to 5 men (on large units), then regroup.
All of that with generals of 2-4 stars and units with a maximum of 3 chevrons.

[a-woowie.doowie]

Yeah about command stars; do they themselves contribute to morale? Or is it only the "+# morale" traits that give additional morale? I've always wondered this.

[Pinkie Pie]

units get +1 morale for every command star when within a certian distance of the general and +1 for every 2 command stars when further away

[Megas Antiviros <3 Gaesatae :p]

Then how can a battle last 5 hours?

The timer won't allow that....

morale and time limit are something different: you can turn morale on or off by editing the preferences.txt file and the time limit in the campaign menu...

the only unit with low morale is parthian steppe infantry, they run when they charge (except with light- or missile infantry) or when they are under artillery fire...

[Ferdiad]

And thats a problem how?