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Land Morale Regain

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Europa Universalis III 46143 EU3 - After Action Reports (AAR)
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DanubianCossak

DanubianCossak

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Nov 16, 2009
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Ive been thinking lately, whats the worst part of EU3 combat? Obviously, since this game isnt really about warfare primarily, the whole thing is a bit weak, so there are plenty of candidates all equally worthy of being singled out "as the One", but after some thinking, i have to say, in my opinion absolutely, by far, the worst mechanic is the land morale regain (or replenishment?).

I just dont understand the logic behind the morale rising ONLY at the end of each month, and if this was to be removed, i can only see so many things working out better - such as ping-pong battles to name one.

Apart from that, coupled with another feature - land maintenance slider - it offers one of the most powerful tools for player (in this rare case for AI as well, though probably not intentionally) to abuse. It works like this: get your morale as high as it can be, attack a country thats at peace (one you suspect have lowered maintenance), smaller the country greater the effect (OPM are specially an issue here), locate their primary stack(s) as their morale is bellow 100%, jump/gang them up, destroy them (usually takes no more than 1-2 ping pongs) and profit.

Right now, i can think of plenty of occasions when i abused this myself, specially when i play in/around HRE where there are so many OPMs. If you start your war carefully, you can attack alliances of small-ish countries that have combined armies even 5 times as big/powerful as yours, but nonetheless without opportunity to use them properly fail in practically any war against me without mistake.

Unless there is some practical reason behind this - for example, if morale regain worked based on days instead of months, game would be much slower - i could understand it.

If not, i ask you, dear EU3 players, what do you think about land combat (the whole thing) and what are your personal issues with it (if any)?
 
I think you have a good point here, although if it was in hours like Hoi you could say that each night forces reorganize and rest for tomorrow but it's valid what you say.

Perhaps a 1.00 / 30 = morale gain per day ?
Or give a set morale regain per day which you can buff with 0.5% bonusses ( or a bonus at the end of the month ? )
The problem that this would arise is whack-a-mole, so the warfare system has to be partly redone for this to be implemented properly.
 
Personally, I do not have any problems with the monthly morale regeneration after paradox removed the ability to regenerate morale for armies on retreat. As for land maintenance, I honestly don't find the abuse to be that powerful. If you are of decent size, it should be fairly simple for you to smash an OPM anyway. If you are not of decent size, the minor's cascading allies will probably be more challenging than any forces the minor, themselves, can muster.
 
fleetothemoon said:
Personally, I do not have any problems with the monthly morale regeneration after paradox removed the ability to regenerate morale for armies on retreat. As for land maintenance, I honestly don't find the abuse to be that powerful. If you are of decent size, it should be fairly simple for you to smash an OPM anyway. If you are not of decent size, the minor's cascading allies will probably be more challenging than any forces the minor, themselves, can muster.
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Actually i disagree. There is a difference between winning a war and winning a battle. No matter how big you are, if you send a 15k army to attack another country's 15k army (and some rich OPM or 2PMs could field one) it should never be a joke battle, if for no other reason, then because once OPM/2PM loses its army its a war over, because there is nothing to prevent you from besieging its provinces which makes it impossible for them to recruit another army (which is stupid and a very bad design choice). Im not saying armies should pop up from nowhere, but some other system (anything really) would be better than this: destroy the primary stack and carpet siege provinces = win (siege prevents successful army recruitment and this prevents country from recovering).
 
it is called surprise factor
no country is mobilized in peace if it doesn't expect a war, and they usually don't
but maybe some morale regen bonus for defender at first 2 months of war would be nice (+ fixed morale bonus for 1st month)
 
Surprise on a strategic level should be handled by event(s) lowering morale etc, surprise on tactical level is pointless as you have no control over it, everything is abstracted, the only place it would fit would be HOI style combat events (or modifiers).

Thats still a weak argument for morale regain/month.
 
It is well known that soldiers morale raise at the end of the month because that's when they get their pay. :)
 
DDRJake said:
If you are declared upon when you have low maintanance you are at risk as the AI is.
Click to expand...

With the difference that i can attack someone on a specific date on purpose to have their morale at lowest point which is a strategy. When AI does it, its an accident, not something purposely codded.

My point is that this system should not be in game in the first place, it doesnt make any sense and only produces strange and unfair situations.

Even with daily morale regain, with maintenance lowered to the minimum, if someone declares war on me, i would be in trouble. The difference is that it would actually make more sense because my army would regain at least a portion of its morale (x% + 5% of maintenance is better than x% +0% from maintenance). This would really benefit some countries, for example those who are in mountains, as movement is slower there (iirc), so it would take more time to engage the enemy and the battle would be more fair.

Apart from this, such a morale regain system would probably give us couple of new modifiers to play with, so some military ideas/sliders etc would actually become quite important - imagine a country with full quality having a 50% morale regain bonus etc.
 
Chronicler said:
It is well known that soldiers morale raise at the end of the month because that's when they get their pay. :)
Click to expand...

And if someone invades your country, all your able men and soldiers will just sit and do nothing until 1st of following month, or even worse, in EU3 terms, they will all refuse to fight (when there is no chance to retreat and escape) leading to thousands and thousands of men being killed, just because they were not payed (in all fairness morale is never 0, but maintenance does take a large portion from it)?

Edit - an option in army screen to spend money to increase army morale right now (pay them out ahead of time if you like) at the very least would be nice.
 
A different way to look at it would be to have morale rise more slowly:

a. When attrition is higher.
b. When outside your own provinces.
c. When outside controlled province.
d. When moving.

No doubt, others could add to this list.
 
Emperor Hans said:
Perhaps a 1.00 / 30 = morale gain per day ?
Click to expand...
As a point of reference, the current morale gain is 0.3x(max morale) per month so the equivalent daily rate would be around 0.01x(max morale).
 
Personally I'd have to say I've never been a big fan of the monthly morale thing either, surely it couldn't cause a big hang on the days to have it do morale on a day by day basis?
 
Yep, monthly morale change is pretty bad but in my opinion it makes killing stacks much easier. I've learned to deal with it

In any case, what i hate the most is that you can't prioritize reinforcement, which is REALLY bad in MP if you're low on manpower.
Early on i also hate A LOT the randomness of a fight, 0-9 is too big of a range, really.
 
Lama43 said:
In any case, what i hate the most is that you can't prioritize reinforcement, which is REALLY bad in MP if you're low on manpower.
Click to expand...
You can prioritize but it's a lot of micromanagement. If you show all your armies in the outliner, it always reinforces the armies from top to bottom. So if you take the top army, do a reorg, and move all regiments to the new army the old army will be disbanded and the 2nd army will move to the top.
 
I would guess it has something to do with balancing priorities. It may be more realistic to do it an alternative way but would the amount of programming justify the difference or (perhaps more likely) since EU3 has to keep track of so many variables as it is would calculating morale changes in real time for each stack be the straw that causes the game to slow down to unplayability for the average machine.
 
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Gpeterse said:
I would guess it has something to do with balancing priorities. It may be more realistic to do it an alternative way but would the amount of programming justify the difference or (perhaps more likely) since EU3 has to keep track of so many variables as it is would calculating morale changes in real time for each stack be the straw that causes the game to slow down to unplayability for the average machine.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about you, but my PC can handle perfectly millions of troops ingame. If by average pc you mean 2003 ones, then you're pretty backward. And i have a 2009 one.
 
Lama43 said:
I'm not sure about you, but my PC can handle perfectly millions of troops ingame. If by average pc you mean 2003 ones, then you're pretty backward. And i have a 2009 one.
Click to expand...

My point was the average PC probably couldn't handle all units in game having all relevant stats calculated along the smallest time interval EU3 models, which I believe is the hour. A 'realistic' morale system would probably be based on the smallest interval of time possible. Assuming millions of troops in stacks of 10-20k and recalculations every 4-60 seconds for each stack, I doubt even my 2012 machine would not show some signs of lag, particularly if this was done for all variables that would realistically change based on the smallest time period. It simply isn't desirable to add that level of realism into a game if one considers the limitations of computers and the desire to sell the game to a wider base than just those who have the best available machines at the time.

Maybe I am wrong and an average computer could handle these calculations while keeping track of all pertinent modifiers independently impacting each unit/stack/province/country and doing everything else needed to operate with no lag but I have my doubts. I do know that when I run statistical analyses on my computer with data sets of 25,000 subjects and 3-4 variables it takes a second or two to complete and I am not even trying to recalculate that over and over again while displaying fluid graphics.
 
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