Originally posted by Chris 2
Agincourt had nothing to do with morale Britain won because they had the longbow but in history 99 out of 100 times a 30000 man army would kill a 5000 man army no matter about the morale. if your fighting a battle and your that numerically superior your morale will increas not decrease
I certainly must disagree with your numbers here (99 out of 100). Morale is the single most important factor in a battle. Since few battles are actually 'massacres' where one side is entirely destroyed, victory is achieved when the other side decides to retreat, flee, or surrender.
In an army of 30000 fighting an army of 5000, no one in that 30000 army is keeping an acccurate count of how many people they have left in their army in comparison to the number left in their own army. If one side at the point of encounter (the front-line fighting) is severely besting the other and causes its front line units to start panicking and running for their lives, the guys at the back who have not engaged yet aren't likely to be encouraged. Panic and routs can often snowball amongst undiscipilined, unprofessional troops.
The historical examples of smaller numbers winning are quite numerous (Alexander the Great versus the Persians, Cortez versus the Aztecs) but consider this: in the battle of Bosworth, the decisive battle which ended the War of the Roses, casualties were extremely light, 100 for the Lancastrians versus 900 for the Yorkists out of armies of 10,000 and 12,000 respectively. (The Lancastrians won)
I think EU2 correctly models that as armies become more permanent, professional, and disciplined they are less likely to have mass panic and thus morale is not as decisive a factor.
