Morale

[Otay]

What can I do to increase army morale? Always seem to start very low even with experienced leaders. Thanks.

 

[Opanashc]

Morale starts fairly low for everyone. Go to the ledger, and compare Army Quality bookmark, to compare where you stand in relation to others.
As for what to do - check out the wiki. High prestige, Power Projection, Ideas, Defender of Faith, some mission modifiers all affect it.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

What can I do to increase army morale? Always seem to start very low even with experienced leaders. Thanks.

Morale in battle uses the highest of the two as the bar width, so facing france it'll always look like you're under your max when actually you are just france is higher.
Defensive ideas, advisors, army tradition, ruler traits, and tech can improve army morals, army maintenance also obvs matter

 

[Nostalgium]

As @AvengedK1ng points out, Morale is an absolute value. So if you have a max morale of 4.25, and your enemy has one of 5.50, you will look like you start at 4/5ths of your max morale, when in fact you don't. It's not exactly intuitive, but the best way to check your morale (and modifiers effecting it) VS another country is to use the Army Quality portion of the Ledger.

 

[Mirochi]

High morale is good - I am denying that. But I would suggest that you should not completely focus on morale only. You should make a compramise between discipline (or unit pips) and morale

 

[Nostalgium]

High morale is good - I am denying that. But I would suggest that you should not completely focus on morale only. You should make a compramise between discipline (or unit pips) and morale

This more or less depends on when you are in the game. In the early game, morale is the undisputed king. In the late game, once Military Tactics have scaled up a bit, Discipline overtakes it. It's perfectly possible to focus on morale without compromise in the early game, then later - around the same time when cannons get real good, in my experience, start focusing on discipline as well, if you want the best possible armies.

It's less of a compromise and more of a transition.

 

[nobodyinparticular]

Besides getting it from NIs, religion, advisors, ruler traits etc. there's 3 modifiers you should be watching; army tradition, prestige and power projection. Generally, you will be able to increase these from winning battles (prestige and army tradition), sieges (army tradition) and wars (prestige and power projection if applicable), which makes it easier for you to win more battles, sieges and wars... but it's worth taking a bit of a look into how to better keep these modifiers high!

Let's say you've sieged down some tiny nation allied to the nation you targetted that you do not need to annex or vassalize. Default move is to take war reparations and cash and leave it at that. But you can use that surplus warscore to make them annul some treaties - alliances and rivalries. These are effectively free given the warscore, but do net you some extra prestige! So take the chance to tear up some secondary belligerent's diplomacy to increase your prestige.

If it's not already part of your EU4 routine, make a habit of embargoing all your rivals and their subjects. (Scornfully) insult at least one regularly (do check if it actually gives you power projection as you can only have one burst of power projection from insults at a time). Conquer your rivals if it's convenient, humiliate them... power projection is very valuable!

For AT, you can stack various modifiers giving +army tradition as well as -army tradition decay but nothing beats simply winning battles and sieges, over and over and over. Defensive ideas is great not just for its +15% morale but also +100% army tradition from battles. Under the right circumstances, this idea group effectively gives you +20% morale as you will also have higher army tradition.


Oh, and always keep up on mil tech. Deadly mistake not to.

 

[BlazeKnight_]

This more or less depends on when you are in the game. In the early game, morale is the undisputed king. In the late game, once Military Tactics have scaled up a bit, Discipline overtakes it. It's perfectly possible to focus on morale without compromise in the early game, then later - around the same time when cannons get real good, in my experience, start focusing on discipline as well, if you want the best possible armies.

It's less of a compromise and more of a transition.

No, this is a horrendous widespread misconception. Almost as big as the "cannons deal all the damage" misconception.
Morale doesn't "drop off." Morale of Armies is always the strongest modifier for purely winning battles. What Discipline does is let you take less casualties, which aids economy. If you actually want the best armies, you need both Morale and Discipline/combat modifiers.

 

[Kapi96]

This more or less depends on when you are in the game. In the early game, morale is the undisputed king. In the late game, once Military Tactics have scaled up a bit, Discipline overtakes it. It's perfectly possible to focus on morale without compromise in the early game, then later - around the same time when cannons get real good, in my experience, start focusing on discipline as well, if you want the best possible armies.

It's less of a compromise and more of a transition.

Largely, yes. Although late game morale will still be important in deciding who wins battles. If your opponent has a large morale advantage, while you have the discipline advantage, they'll probably win the battle (even though you inflict more casualties). If they have the manpower reserve to reinforce those losses you'll still end up losing the war.

 

[Nostalgium]

No, this is a horrendous widespread misconception. Almost as big as the "cannons deal all the damage" misconception.
Morale doesn't "drop off." Morale of Armies is always the strongest modifier for purely winning battles. What Discipline does is let you take less casualties, which aids economy. If you actually want the best armies, you need both Morale and Discipline/combat modifiers.

Never once did I say morale drops off, I said discipline catches up. The stats discipline modifies increase more over time than the morale ones do, meaning that as time goes on, each % of Disc does more for you than each % of Morale. So frontloading your Morale modifiers, and then going into your Disc ones later, once the bonuses to Disc are more significant, is a perfectly valid way of playing to the strengths of both.

Disc also increases the damage dealt BTW. It's not purely a casualty reducing stat.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Never once did I say morale drops off, I said discipline catches up. The stats discipline modifies increase more over time than the morale ones do, meaning that as time goes on, each % of Disc does more for you than each % of Morale. So frontloading your Morale modifiers, and then going into your Disc ones later, once the bonuses to Disc are more significant, is a perfectly valid way of playing to the strengths of both.

Disc also increases the damage dealt BTW. It's not purely a casualty reducing stat.

Even if you factor this, at least before 1.33 discipline never actually "caught up" to morale. Not even at tech 32. 10% added morale always won more than 5% discipline, even then, and 10% vs 5% is about where the game treats them in terms of NI/idea group value.

For SP morale is better by even more because the AI seems to factor it more when evaluating whether to take a battle, and discipline does nothing in fort assaults (while morale is still relevant).

The only time I could maybe see the disc being competitive is if you have a slow-ish speed in MP are are cycling reinforcements.

 

[BlazeKnight_]

Never once did I say morale drops off, I said discipline catches up. The stats discipline modifies increase more over time than the morale ones do, meaning that as time goes on, each % of Disc does more for you than each % of Morale. So frontloading your Morale modifiers, and then going into your Disc ones later, once the bonuses to Disc are more significant, is a perfectly valid way of playing to the strengths of both.

Disc also increases the damage dealt BTW. It's not purely a casualty reducing stat.

I never said it doesn't increase damage, I said it decreases your casualties (by making your troops deal and receive damage better).

and, ofc, as Mein pointed out lone 10% Morale always beats lone 5% Discipline. Discipline doesn't "overtake" morale, they can't really be compared because you need both for different reasons.