Will HOI3 feature the old "morale" attribute? I sincerely hope not.
"Morale" is a concept more suitable to tactical games like Steel Panthers or Close Combat and is indivisibly tied to Suppression. Both of these concepts fall of the edge when talking grand strategy. At best, the (low) morale of the troops would be signified by the dissent combat maluses.
I never quite understood why exactly the Soviet path had more "morale", allowing for more often attacks. Based on what? The disastrous repeated counterattacks in the late Summer 1941? Or the rash campaign of Spring 1942 which ended again in failure as the Germans once again seized the initiative and pushed all the way to Stalingrad? Those were haphazard efforts and met a fitting end. That's not a quality!
In fact,once Stalin relinquished more authority to his generals (and inevitably launched a second smaller light-"purge" post-WWII, with Zhukov as the top victim) the operations of the Red Army entered a more natural rhythm,with months of meticulous preparations,then massive encirclement attempts.
"Morale" is not only a tactical concept elevated to grand-strategy attribute that wrongly overwrites the "speed of org recovery" concept that is tied to officers not morale of men, it also seems like it's been distributed on the basis of stereotypes.
Merely the comparison between Germany and the USSR elicits laughs. Germany has less "morale" than the USSR. On the one hand, a discussion of who is more motivated is not only a dead end (BOTH were highly motivated) it is also outside the scope of a grand strategy game. On the other hand, to attribute a lightning fast reorg speed (high "morale") to a country (USSR) whose officer corps quality never lived up to Germany's is plain stupid (initiative was explicitly discouraged in Soviet doctrine, for Pete's sake!).
Given what was labeled as "morale" in HOI2 was actually "reorg speed", and that has less to do with the morale and more to the quality of the lower officer ranks AND logistics (in fact,a decent case can be made that it is actually only logistics that meaningfully affect reorg speed),the introduction of the "officer" game resource is a most welcome addition and opens the door to correcting the mistake of HOI2. That means that the quality of the officers will likely be a focus and by extension,the speed at which the division reorganizes, among other factors considered (although,again,upon closer inspection, logistics might be the only big player in that).
"Morale" is a concept more suitable to tactical games like Steel Panthers or Close Combat and is indivisibly tied to Suppression. Both of these concepts fall of the edge when talking grand strategy. At best, the (low) morale of the troops would be signified by the dissent combat maluses.
I never quite understood why exactly the Soviet path had more "morale", allowing for more often attacks. Based on what? The disastrous repeated counterattacks in the late Summer 1941? Or the rash campaign of Spring 1942 which ended again in failure as the Germans once again seized the initiative and pushed all the way to Stalingrad? Those were haphazard efforts and met a fitting end. That's not a quality!
In fact,once Stalin relinquished more authority to his generals (and inevitably launched a second smaller light-"purge" post-WWII, with Zhukov as the top victim) the operations of the Red Army entered a more natural rhythm,with months of meticulous preparations,then massive encirclement attempts.
"Morale" is not only a tactical concept elevated to grand-strategy attribute that wrongly overwrites the "speed of org recovery" concept that is tied to officers not morale of men, it also seems like it's been distributed on the basis of stereotypes.
Merely the comparison between Germany and the USSR elicits laughs. Germany has less "morale" than the USSR. On the one hand, a discussion of who is more motivated is not only a dead end (BOTH were highly motivated) it is also outside the scope of a grand strategy game. On the other hand, to attribute a lightning fast reorg speed (high "morale") to a country (USSR) whose officer corps quality never lived up to Germany's is plain stupid (initiative was explicitly discouraged in Soviet doctrine, for Pete's sake!).
Given what was labeled as "morale" in HOI2 was actually "reorg speed", and that has less to do with the morale and more to the quality of the lower officer ranks AND logistics (in fact,a decent case can be made that it is actually only logistics that meaningfully affect reorg speed),the introduction of the "officer" game resource is a most welcome addition and opens the door to correcting the mistake of HOI2. That means that the quality of the officers will likely be a focus and by extension,the speed at which the division reorganizes, among other factors considered (although,again,upon closer inspection, logistics might be the only big player in that).
