While i do agree, there are ways to mitigate it, but yes it is still unfair, if i remember correctly, it's not really a problem in normal victory conditions, but when you enable unifier victory in empire building setting, especially with max beacons (6) and largest possible map (UG enabled) and emperor AIs, it gets way worse if the human player is not theocrat or necro, i mean any human player need to have both beacon and light it up by turn 55 (the latest) which cost 1200 gold and 1k mana IIRC, or they will easily get -800 or even -1000 empire happiness, which means all cities' income will be decreased very significantly but that is still not the worst, the worst is there is almost always if not always stacks that desert every turn (human player will literally have almost no units if they are too late to start beaconing), what's worse than that? if any rogue decided to cast Age of Deception which they almost always do by this turn, or at least by turn 60 is a common things. But once again, there are ways to mitigate this without any cheese, but production classes have it harder than summoners (except probably rogue which can even make emperor AI's empire happiness to go to massively negative). Most people i know are frustrated by this.
Despite that, planetfall does not do better in this case. I mean, in planetfall, almost all races if not all can cheese the morale penalty, that by having 0 energy and minus energy income, the consequence of negative morale effect in all the armies or stacks can be negated, thus no unit, not even one deserted, it's just unrealistic.
I admit both games handles morale in a weird way. Which bring us to the main point, what kind of game mechanic in regards of morale that you want for AoW4?
AoW3 was a deeply flawed game when morale gets involved. Other than that, its pretty good game. I do not put on rose colored glasses. I did play beacons several times but I ultimately kept the option off because I liked exploring the whole map + entire underground as well. Beacons don't allow for that. I play on enormous map sizes. I literally make the empire in my own image. I really like that line for aow3. xD
I once had an enormous map where there was 3 rogues spamming age of deception. Only saving grace was that I met one when it cast its first age of deception and then fought a hard war killing that damnable rogue while the AI warlord didn't care about the age of deception, why would it care? Its a fucking emperor ai which means morale game isn't even a thing for it. It wasn't pretty but emperor warlord got distracted by some other ai hitting it so it forgot about me. I killed all 3 rogues, but, man, the experience was miserable and i fucking hated every turn of it.
In addition of loser PBEM players breaking AOW3 game for everyone else because they do dark arts to one goblin in the back of dungeon and gain 100 levels from it after grinding for hours. Just because a bunch of crazed freaks do that in pbem games, it doesn't mean.. that every single aow3 player do same thing yet, that's the message that triumph devs took from pbem players and broke the game. Even when it was completely unnecessary by demonstrating exactly what I did to an PBEM abuser what did i do? I started a game with one of the PBEM abusers and then played until he dropped his completely illegal army next to my throne city and then I just simply never took another turn and left the game hanging. He got mad but that's when he learned that his abuses don't work because he can't progress a turn at all lulz. Nonabusers can just easily drop the game so PBEM abusers have a choice, abuse and then have nonabusers abandon the game with them or if it was both players abusing then it is in fact, mutual abuse and no intervention is necessary.
I've been there, done it already.
https://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/first-megabattle/
Morale penalities on emperor ai only makes the AI disband a portion of their army and still have hundreds left over to fight u with. Sorry about dead pics, tinypic died. Was in golden realms when T3 Golems used to be good before they got nerfed to t2 for some strange reason. T3 Golems was the go to units for when AI spammed T4s. They're Melee, Tireless, and cannot be flanked when defending. Even manticores have hard time when they can fly because they can't flank golems easily. T3 Golems was really T4 units with T3 stats. XD But to summarize what pictures looked like, It was me fielding 200-500 Golems vs Dwarf Dreadnought's 900+ Juggernauts plus few random flame tanks and cannons that dwarf AI accidently built instead of juggernauts.
Emperor morale AI and T4 infinite spam abuses and nerfs brought on by so called "elite pvp players who think they are so good at the game" and PBEM Exploit abusers and devs listening to PBEM abusers is what in fact, ultimately drove me away from AOW3 in the end. And the shrinking map sizes to boot.
I've been enjoying my time in planetfall although I dont' have much time to game today compared to the years I when I played aow3. "elite pvp players have much less influence in planetfall" and the game is much better for it.
I like the morale in Planetfall its alot less cheesy and gimmicky. If a unit desert its because I spent time in very scary domains like abyss rifts and such. And if you want units to desert because of emptied treasury then you have to delete the siphon energy operation from Planetfall because AI have free influence and can spam that operation with no consequence whatsoever and it is very immersion breaking.
And if you desire the morale in planetfall then I must demand that AI play by same rules as Human players do otherwise there is no point in it in having morale at all. It will just become another stat I ignore.
Plus Units in Planetfall desert me for legitimate reasons such as me Oppressing the Syndicate people, spending too much time near abyss rifts.... actual real reasons o.o I love those reasons, very good reasons to desert me. Now hold still as I shoot the rebels. Syndicate units desert me because I oppress the syndicate? That's no problem. I completely understand that.
Something something slavery something.
Units deserting because they didn't get money for 1 turn? Even when they got their pay for last 200 turns? Its dumb. Units deserting because AI is spamming Energy siphon every turn?
Wow Gee, I didn't know I was playing an Spy vs Spy Simulator instead of Empire building game.
Ended up typing an essay about what i hated about aow3. Didn't know I Still felt very strongly about lame things that happened in it just because a bunch of skillless players couldn't play aow3 skillfully in pvp realm so they turn to exploits even when a vast majority of players don't exploit. What a bunch of scrubs they are.