Why can't "something" break when I post?

In any event, I do think that morale should be implimented, but that there should be a check box for it. I also think that different units should gain more resistance with battkes fought, and that troops defending the town where they were "born" and other situations like that should get big morale boosts.

I think not having a morale system detracts from the game. There are already enough fantasy/medieval games where units work like robots, react instantly to your orders etc. Why not spice up gameplay ? Even a limited approach like in Fantasy General would be interesting. If a unit is getting hit repeatedly, it becomes disordered for a while (or until you give 'rest') order, losing some combat stats temporarily. If a unit is being hit hard, it may become broken, severely lowering combat stats with no timeout. You have to rest with it to recover full combat potential. In this way, Fantasy General simulates morale while still keeping things fairly simple.

Wow, my bad.  To be fair, I only clicked "post reply" once.  Let me see about deleting 24 of these!

I also respectfully disagree with the OP.  If the OP's intent is to reduce the time spent chasing army remants over the strategic map, I'm fine with that.  It's perfectly reasonable to assume that, upon losing, some/many of the routers may outright desert.  I would have 100% of them desert in most cases, but i think you can have routing that keeps the game moving, rather than just keeping the game going.

I was just wanting it to hark back to MoM, where your army fought to the last man. Sure routing is more realistic and adds depth, but in my opinion (and in my opinion alone it appears) it subtracts from the fun factor.

  It's not the end of the world either way. And I certainly wouldnt mind troops being susceptible to fear magics, but a battalion routing because 10% of their units are down, I dunno it just seems to prolong fights needlessly.

In my book, the less and less this game is looking like the successor of MoM, the more it feels like MoO 3...

OK that was over the top. Nothing could ever disappoint me as badly as MoO3 did.

*cough* *cough* Dominions 3, Late Age Ermor *cough* *cough*

Seriously, though, I can respect Denryu's opinion that routing can be annoying.  We'll have to figure out a way to allow morale and routing without making every battle tedious.

Man, that first page is hilarious.

If I'm going to be sending a couple dozen peasants with sharp sticks up against a  thirty foot tall fire breathing dragon, why, in or out of my right mind, would I want them to fight to the death?

Crazy shit like that really ruins the realism in a game.  That dragon should be breaking those poor peasants just by existing.  That should be one of the perks of having a dragon, everyone shits a brick and runs for their life when it comes after them.  Only well trained troops should be sticking it out in such a situation, and only when they have a shot in hell of surviving.

Routing when done right doesn't make combat tedius either.  It makes it less tedius.  Fighting to the last man, that's tedius.  Oh look, I've won, now I get to spend twenty minutes killing this itty bitty army.  In the TW games, those itty bitty armies go oh shit, he flanked us and charged us in the rear, ahhh! splat.

Accurate morale is realistic,  makes units like cavalry and ranged actually work instead of being the fake balanced crap they are in most games, streamlines the game flow, and opens up a whole new spectrum of tactics and unit designs.  Instead of some retarded stat modifier, death incarnate can actually take the field of battle and strike terror into the enemy.

When I was serving with the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, they had 4 horses charge across a parade field once just for fun.  It was amazing how much the ground shook with just four horses: it gave a small glimpse into those battles where hundreds or thousands of cavalrymen charged infantry formations.  Good infantry definitely needed some stones.

As an aside, it's also part of the shock value of modern armored formations.  I generally trained and fought mounted, but did some training as light infantry as well.  We were on one patrol (training, again), had tore some good s*** up, and came across a lone tank guarding a road.  Even with the advantage of surprise, accuracy, and the fact that the tank didn't have any friendly infantry nearby, we were like "how the f*** are we going to take that out?"  We ended up skirting it and jacked up a flatbed convoy instead.  (Another nearby unit ambushed and accosted a supply truck full of watermelons.  Mmm mm good!)

I guess it'd be cool to have morale affect whether certain units will be willing to attack or charge an opponent (I think the Ancient Art of War series of wargames had a "charge morale check", or something similar).  Your peasants might just flee on seeing the dragon; your trained infantry might stick around, but decide--perhaps against orders--they'd rather go after that nice group of enemy spearmen instead (if we ignore it, maybe it will go away...)

I'd suggest actual rundown pursuit.  If they catch you, you die.  That makes light cavalry useful without having retarded shit like missile resistance to give them a fake use.  Toss in a decimation kill(perhaps not actually at ten percent) and the job is done.  A routed army is destroyed at end of combat if x percent are killed while fleeing.

The only issue with routing is cleaning up stray units. Depending on whether units remain in same plot unable to move due to low morale or scatter into all the nearby plots, this can be an issue or not, but I'd rather have routing in.

Damn lmao oh god that was great break on the post at first i was like double .... holy ef...  

Back on topic I wouldn't mind having moral and units routing but having fear spells would be cool too.

Well, in either case, I would like to see the routing system being implented (in whatever way of morale or just spells) with a way for the player to affect it.

For example, in the civ4 popular mod, Fall From Heaven 2, there's an ability named fear that might stop a unit from acting. The mechanic was made in such a fasion that, even though my units had a high chance to kill it, they were terrified and refused.

Now, in a case a dragon invades my town and my garrisoned units fear it, I want the option to force them to try to kill it- I know (or supposed to) what is better for the empire. Why does these soldiers care about my empire? Simple- they are defending their village, home and family. If the village is important for my empire, I will be willing to throw 100 soldiers to save it, I don't want to get an autoloss because my footies saw a big fat dragon and decided to run, even if it might be more realistic.

As a side note, a known way to pravent routing is being more intimidating than your opponent. For example, having your lieutenants kill every routing soldier. You lose soldiers, you lose happiness, you gain victory.

I think it's possible to represent soldiers fleeing for the purpose of realism without necessarily having full units routing left and right.  I had always assumed in MoM that as soldier units were taking hits, many of them were fleeing and not just dying.  In Elemental, your units could have a morale score in which, the lower the score goes, the more units are lost due to some of them losing their courage.