Psychology is one of the most important aspects of the warhammer world, and one of the most important aspects of psychology is units breaking in combat. Therefore, I think that this should be included in the game.

My idea on how to do this, is after each round of combat, the unit who looses (and takes damage) has to pass a break test. The chances of it passing this 'break test' depends on its leadership (which should be a new XML tag). A unit can use the highest leadership on a stack as its own.

If the attacking unit fails the break test then it takes the equivalent of two rounds of damage and flees back to the square it comes from. If the defending unit fails the break test, it also takes two rounds worth of damage and flees directly away from the attacking unit. Units defending cities are half as likely to run away, and units defending capitols will never run away.

There is also a second level to break tests. If a unit, attacking or defending, fails a break test, then there is a very small chance that the entire stack will break and run in a random direction and suffer some light damage. This would cause players to make a descison. Do I use an SOD and hope that they will not run due to a heroes leadership or do I spread my forces out to minimise the damage?

That's a terrific idea Lord Olleus.

Yes it's lovely!:goodjob:

I'm probably missing something here but doesn't a loosing unit die? What would be the point of it to run?

As far as affecting the rest of the stack, I have a slightly different idea about it. What if instead of using defeat as the reason, you would use unit superiority (defeat still triggers it but only if there's unit superiority). Here's what I'm thinking...

Superior numbers, or superior weapons, or just obviously superior training, always inspire fear and doubt in the enemies mind, so maybe something could be done with that.

For example, if the attacking unit has more than 90% chance to win, symbolizing its superiority, then if the defending unit looses then all the units in that stack get some sort of penalty (obviously the game always chooses the best defending unit so that means all the other units in the stack are even worse), maybe health reduction, maybe they get a penalty on defense or better yet on attack, something like that, BUT, if the attacking unit looses (it happens :)) then all the units in the stack get a bonus, whether for one round or several.

To balance out the fact that already weaker units get a penalty there'd be hero units that inspire moral and either negate those penalties by giving their own bonuses or maybe simply "disable" the penalties in such situations.

Properly balanced this might create some interesting dynamics. For example any sort of "monster" units will be extremely difficult to defeat, unless you have a hero tagging along. It will also encourage keeping your army up to date because even if you have 20 archers they won't do you much good against a maceman (vanilla example obviously).

I'm probably missing something here but doesn't a loosing unit die? What would be the point of it to run?


I was talking about each round of combat, and not each combat it self.

As for your other ideas, wouldn't it make life even more annoying for the player? Loosing a 99% battle makes me angry enough, but if the other units become even stronger then it would make my blood boil. Besides, doesn't experience provide enought of a boost for unlucky winners?

I think what Olleus meant wasn't the final defeat. Even in vannila unit combat is in rounds(only made visible by the combatlog). Each round units afflict some damage until one of them finally dies or retreats.

Heros definitly need to push up the Leadership, yes.

In the game were also planned concepts like fear and terror. Especially Monsters will affect fear(Troll i.e.) or Terror(Dragon). But this is supposed to affect enemy units already before fighting. In the case of terror maybe even units who are two tiles away making them immobile or fleeing before the Dragon(@Olleus-how about random moves for a couple of rounds?:D )

Edit ups: I'm to slow

I was going to write all of that, but then had to stop and think if I knew what I was talking about. :blush:

Beat you by 1 minute.

I was trying to think of ways of implementing fear and terror and came up with this.

Fear
A unit has to take a leadership test when it goes into combat with a fear-causing enemy. If it charges and fails the fear test then it automaticaly flees and does nothing. If a unit is charged and fails a fear test, then the attacking unit gets +1-2 first strikes (to represent the time it takes for the defending unit to get organised).

Terror
A unit has to take a leadership test the first time it comes next to an enemy terror-causing unit. If it fails it becomes immobile for 1 turn. If it is the terror causing unit which moves next to the other unit, then it runs away in a random direction. If a unit passes it terror test then it gains the 'Immune to Terror' promotion for the rest of the game.

I was talking about each round of combat, and not each combat it self.

As for your other ideas, wouldn't it make life even more annoying for the player? Loosing a 99% battle makes me angry enough, but if the other units become even stronger then it would make my blood boil. Besides, doesn't experience provide enought of a boost for unlucky winners?
Ah I see, I get you now.

As for the other thing, well the experience only takes effect next turn, these penalties or bonuses would be immediate. And as for blood boiling :) if all your unit are superior then the boost wouldn't help all that much, on the other hand if they get lucky and win several battles against superior opponents then they could definitely become strong enough to turn the tide, but that what makes it exiting :D

Beat you by 1 minute.

I was trying to think of ways of implementing fear and terror and came up with this.

Fear
A unit has to take a leadership test when it goes into combat with a fear-causing enemy. If it charges and fails the fear test then it automaticaly flees and does nothing. If a unit is charged and fails a fear test, then the attacking unit gets +1-2 first strikes (to represent the time it takes for the defending unit to get organised).

Terror
A unit has to take a leadership test the first time it comes next to an enemy terror-causing unit. If it fails it becomes immobile for 1 turn. If it is the terror causing unit which moves next to the other unit, then it runs away in a random direction. If a unit passes it terror test then it gains the 'Immune to Terror' promotion for the rest of the game.

Ah yes that's cool. And units which cause terror also inflict fear, right? Even on those units who are immune to terror?

yes, normal warhammer rules about terror and fear applies. A unit causing fear is immune to fear and will only have to pass a fear test from terror causing enemies. A terror causing unit is totaly immune to terror and fear. The promotion I described above should probably be renamed to 'Passed terror test' or something, to reduce confusions.

Perfect! i was thinking how this could be implemented, and is so deviously perfect! kudose to you Olleus!:)

Sound's really convincing what you came up with Olleus, but it should be harder to pass a terror test then fear, otherwise all units accompanied by units with a high leadership maybe will get the "immune to terror" promotion to fast.

I agree with you on that Duke. I am afraid (no pun intended) that terror and fear might be quitet hard to implement, but break test should be very easy.

Are you making much headway with this Olleus? or are you focussing more on the magic script? im interested to see how this will play:D

Haven't even started this yet. I want to but I am forcing myself to concentrate entirely on the magic mod, or I know that I will never finish it.

Feel free to carry on brainstorming ideas though.

ok:).

would you like me to post all of the WH tabletop rules for psychology here to give you a hand?

@ Lord Olleus

Great fear and terror ideas! Will units be affected when they attack a unit on a tile with a fear-causing enemy on it? or only if they attack that specific fear-causing unit?

I hope the former is possible. Let me give an example: the wraith. This isn't much of combat unit, BUT it's main purpose is to cause terror. That is why you should be able to put it on a tilewith other units, so it won't have to figth, but you still make use of it's terror when attacked ..

You know I don't think it's always such a good idea to try and convert concepts from a table-top dice game to a game like civ. Really, I think it'd be smarter to look at Warmaster and how these things are applied there; for example, I think that they only have one level of fear- on a larger scale fear-causing creatures aren't going to have a hige effect, only the really terrifying monsters.

i siomply forgot about warmaster, hell yea this could also be a solution for our stats problems... well or perhaps a little help for it...

Warmaster???:confused:

Epic for Warhammer Fantasy or what is it?

Epic for Warhammer Fantasy or what is it?

right, something like that, with tiny regiments models... you can look it up on gws side i think

Is Warmaster the same thing? i always just assumed thast because it has a different name it must be a different game?

Is Warmaster the same thing? i always just assumed thast because it has a different name it must be a different game?

it something like epic for warhammer fantasy. where you commant huge armies (resembled by 10mm models). it is not the same...

Oh i see, i had a squizz at the site. but are the rules the same? or at least similar?? this is the main thing.

Right, I've almost finished the main part of this.

There are 3 extra xml tags per unit:
<bLeader> can other units on the same plot use this units leadership?
<bUnbreakable> Does unit ignore all psychology tests?
<iMorale> 100 - iMorale = percentage chance of fleeing from combat. For comparison, 75 is roughly equal to leadership 7, 90 to leadership 10, and 60 to leadership 5. This is just to give a rough kind, and does not actualy mean anything. A Morale of 75 will mean that most battles will end with a unit on about 50% health running away.

Every time a unit looses a round of combat, it has to take a leadership test. The leadership value is (100 - iMorale) * TheirHitpoints / OurHitPoints. This means that a unit at half strength fighting against a unit at full strength will be twice as likely to run away. If a unit fails it leadership test, it will run 1 tile directly away from the unit which beat it. The fleeing unit takes an extra round of damage as it retreats. It gets no chance to defend itself from this.

The plot the loosing unit was on will be subjected it to a 'rout test'. Every unit on that plot will be tested with ((100 - iMorale) / 2). This means that a unit is half as likely to runaway as normal. If a unit fails a rout test it will flee one square in a random direction and its turn will end. Every time a unit fails a rout test, every unit on that plot will have to take another rout test, making it soon snowballs. In my experience, out of a stack of 7 units with morale 75, 2 or 3 will fail a rout test.

I will publish this in one or two days once I have ironed out the last few bugs.



Changes to gameplay
From a few tests I have played, it becomes almost impossible to maintain a large stack, as a single failed combat will disperse your units. It also becomes advantageous to attack on several flanks to make the enemy unit (if it flees) run to a plot where it will be on its own. Also it is usefull to maintain a front line to prevent the enemy sending cavalry around to attack your wounded units who fled.
. = empty plot
f = friendly units
e = enemy units
r = friendly units who ran away

Without a front line:
. . . . r . . . .
. . . r f e . . . .
. . . . e . . . . .

here the wounded 'r' units are vulnerable to be attacked a second time by enemy units.

. . . . r r r . . . . .
. . . f f f f f . . . . .
. . . . e e e . . . . .

Here the wounded 'r' units are safe to heal.

Looks fantastic! Will require alot of balancing and testing but for this we have the community:D
But one request. Can we keep this for the Warlordsversion? It will take hours for me again to integrate that into the xml and I really don't want to do it twice.
That means if anyone else is going to do the xml job for the vanilla no problem but adding all the tags to everyunit for two versions will surely kill me:(
Also I'd like to be sure we cleansed the bugs of the current version first before we add anything more.

Fine then. I'll finish debuging what I've done so far and then comment it out and save it for warlords, which I should probably get within a week. I'll try to debug the public version, but finding whats wrong with other people's code is incredibly hard.

Thx Olleus. I know it will be hard and I apologize in advance for all bugs caused by me. But I guess it will only get harder isolating the bugs if we add more and more before we isolated them. As soon animosity 2.1 is integrated with your spells I think we should use this as last public release for vanilla and concentrate solely on Bughunting until Warlords.

The way this sounds is brillant and will add a fantastic unique flavour to the mod. Top marks LO! Is there any AI weight to keep units together if someone has a high morale? And not waste all the high morale units on noe square?

But even if we are not using it until warlords, will the 'commented out' version be uploaded into the dll thread? I'm curious to see how code is behind this puppy.

I am making good progress on this, but want to finish updating the user interface so the average player can see what is happening. For this I will need 3 new icons, similar to (:move: and :strength:) to show different things. I need one to represent morale in general, one to show which units are leaders (can have their morale used by others) and one to show which units are unbreakable. I will only use 1 of the first 2 icons, and then the third one will be 'bonus' icon that come after the normal one. For example

M = normal morale icon
L = Leader icon
U = unbreakable icon

A standard unit
70 M

A standard, unbreakable unit
70 M U

A Leader
80 L

An unbreakable Leader
80 L U


For the icons I was thinking along the lines of a simple flag (or horn ) for M, a more complicated flag for L and something or other for U. of course, this is only off the top of my head and as long as I have some kind of Icon, I'm happy.

I think a horn is good for Moral, We Could make Leader a more complicated horn, like you said, and then Unbreakable, we could use A Flag with an 'X' in it?

Great. I will see what I can do about it.

Oh boy. Any idea where to find this foot and arm?:mischief:

drat. Does it have to be the gamefonts? I fear I can't do this with gimp. We'll need Duke for that unless we can use a normal button scaled down...

:lol: ok great just also found Eusebius' tutorial. So I guess we should have any problems with the buttons.

lol, even with that tutorial I am still unable to do anything remotely linked to art. I was thinking, do we really want an extra icon for unbreakable units, or do we just one an extra line of text in the mouse over description?

An icon would be nice imo. It's just hard to have them done nicely with these few pixels.

I just thought it could fit to only have 2 buttons. One for unbreakablilty and one for Leadership(have 2 nice ones for that). And have declared the lordfunction via a leaderpromotion instead. What do you think about that?

i'm not sure I understand what you mean. Right now you have either the picture for morale, OR the picture for leader AND on plus of either of those you have the unbreakable picture. So you always have 1 or 2 pictures, but never 3.

They way I thought of it we allways only have the leadership button(and unbreakable of course as option) and another button for a leader showing like a normal promotion in addition which declares that the unit's leadership is used as replacemend for other units in the tile.

I just don't see the advantage of showing it as a promotions. Well you can see for your self as it I have finished the beta. All I have to do is to replace it with proper graphics and tell the AI how to use it and remake the combat calculator. You can download the python and dll at the usual place, and the XML is at the bottom of this post. The xml tags are as follows:

in CvUnitInfos.xml


...
<bMechanized>0</bMechanized>
<bRenderBelowWater>1</bRenderBelowWater>
<bMoraleLeader>0</bMoraleLeader> Is the unit a leader?
<bUnbreakable>0</bUnbreakable> Is the unit unbreakable?
<iMorale>0</iMorale> What is the units morale?
<iSupportFireDamage>100</iSupportFireDamage>
<iSupportFireDamageLimit>15</iSupportFireDamageLimit>
<iSupportFireDamageMaxUnits>3</iSupportFireDamageMaxUnits>
<UnitClassUpgrades/>
...


In CvPromotionsInfo


<bImmuneToFirstStrikes>0</bImmuneToFirstStrikes>
<bNewMoraleLeader>0</bNewMoraleLeader> Will make the unit a leader
<bNewUnbreakable>0</bNewUnbreakable> will make the unit unbreakable
<iMoraleChange>0</iMoraleChange> will change the morale by (can be + or -)
<iVisibilityChange>0</iVisibilityChange>


The wierd names are because you can't have the same tags in UnitInfos and PromotionInfos. At the moment all the tags are optional, but in the next release I will make the <iMoral> tag mandatory. If a unit has no defined moral it has a moral of 10.

At the moment the only bugs I have are when a unit retreats, sometimes a few of its men get left behind. I am working on a fix for this.

I just thought abot that since at that imagesize it's hard to make a difference between Leader and ordinary leadership if the pic is not totally different. And we can make promotions for all types of heros easily(hero, wizard, wizardlord etc.) without having to mess around with the gamefonts too much. Anyway I made a first attempt, can you try if it works? I don't know where you take the coordinates exactly though can you have a look at it in dxtbmp yourself?
The fist is for unbreakable and the winged sword for leadership. If it works I will polish them up a little.

The pictures are nice but I'm wondering if there not to 'rich' compared to the simpler :move: and :strength:.

Right I got them to work, it was really easy, all I had to do was extend fontsymbols enum and then fetch the symbol using its name. At the moment in only work in the civilopedia because there are no new icons in 75_gamefont. However, I think you will agree that it looks a little odd.

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/8900/civ4screenshot0004uw2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/8042/civ4screenshot0005vp7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/4431/civ4screenshot0006lb2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

:lol: I stupidly saved my changes to the vanilla not the mod. Could you send me the vanilla font75 please?
Yep I agree looks a little odd. Just do another check if this works as well(btw what were the coordinates?).
I will do simpler symbiols then;)

Edit: backup first! this is vanilla plus moralbuttons!

What coordiantes are you talking about?

This is both font files for vanilla. We really need to get 3 simple icons for this.

I meant the coordinates for the icons. Obviously I can place them but I don't know which corner is for the reference.

Thx for the fonts. I'll do the symbols simpler np, probably by tommorow.

personally, i really like those icons you made ploe.
perhaps to make it simpler, loose the square 'backgrounds' and make them white like the foot and hand, so basically just the outline of them.

the winged sword is great btw:thumbsup:

@Olleus
Ok I did something with the alphachannel. The icons now should show without squares. So I need another check if it works still. Can you do some screenies also?

Here are the screenshots. It looks a lot really good without the boxes. For the leader icon, how about having the winged sword upside down, so that it points up for leaders and down for everyone else. Also, it might be worth seeing what it looks like with white icons instead of coloured ones, if thats easy to do otherwise forget it.

http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0002do6.jpg

http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0004pi8.jpg

http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0003bo2.jpg

I think I will leave it for now. It's not easy for me working on the gamefonts without photoshop(I sometimes get weird results with dxtbmp messing up the image totally for a reason I don't know-gimp and dxtbmp don't work well together-so I already had to redo those icons alot). I think we should simply use the same icon for Leaders like Leadership. I can simply make a promotion with a strategytext to explain the units leadership is added to the unit and stack it acompanies. Making buttons is a lot easier and I would prefer the flexibility of that if you don't mind.

Edit: that doesn't mean this has to be final, I might polish them up later on.;)

Edit2: Anothr note on breaking units. Can we have a chance the unit gets destroyed (like 50%) when attempting to flee-otherwise it might be like the advantage to withdraw?

Well, when the unit flees it already takes an extra 2 rounds of damage (typicaly 30% of its health). I could change this to a 50% of being destroyed if you want.
No need for a promotion, I can just add a line in the mouse over so that you knwo which units can act as leaders just by hovering over them.

i dont think they shound have such a high chance of dying.

Ok mouseover should suffice then.
I think the high chance of dying really should be(if they don't die damage is good as is), since units that withdraw in civ are already pretty damaged but it's an advantage they didn't die still because of this you can promote them to better withdraw in vanilla PL.;) BUT breaking and fleeing in no way should be considered an advantage by players! Those units should be out of control several turns, seriously damaged and not being able to recover fast or easily die whatever you think is best to do Olleus just make sure no player ever will like to misuse lowmorale troops as skirmishers to weaken the enemy and withdraw to attack with his stronger units afterwards and gain an easy victory and not suffering losses.

Being out of control for several turns does seem a little harsh. How about they loose half of the health they had left, loose 1exp, and the unit that beats them gets as many exp as it would for killing it. Seems like it would discourage players from abusing it. You could also give the unit a permenant -5 morale for the rest of the game, but this would probably be confusing to new players.

i agree now. i also agree with everthing Olleus said except the -5 moral.

Ok, I will modify it so that it does so then. I have also finished the combat calculator after a week of fighting. It is not perfect but always returns a number between 0 and 100 and is generaly correct, taking into account morale, any leader units in the same stack and unbreakability. However, I do not know how accurate it is and need someone willing to spend a couple of hours testing it. I would do it but I would prefer to move on to the AI.

Sorry can't help you from here(still vacation). You could ask for testers on the Warhammerthread though and provide them with a link and a patch for files missing there.

I am just doing some final testing on the AI. Should be finished today or tomorow at the latest if everything goes according to plan. After that, we just have to worry about editing the stats of every single unit.

"just"??:lol:
does that mean you have almost finished programming all of the psychology then? thats amazing, how the hek do you do it all??? wait, i dont really want to know. Ignorence is bliss eh?:D

The only thing I haven't done yet is fear/terror, but I think that can wait for a while. This is going to be hard enough to balance as it is.
To be honest, the hardest part was modifying the combat calculator :lol:

well fear and terror can be done as promotions now that you have done most of the other psychology. we could make new peomotion tags that affect the moral of units around them and their own moral etc. just a thought:)

well that exists to an extent with the <iMoraleLeader> and <iMoraleChange> tags in promotions info. I am not sure that fear would work as a promotions, you scare others because you are a huge monster, have been resurected from the dead, or are a deamon, not because you have been trained. However, an <ImmuneToFear> tag would probably work.

well, what if it was a promotion units could not just learn, but they have to be build with it?
i see what you mean though. how else would you be able to incorporate fear without promotions?

well I was thinking of adding it to the SDK directly, through a tag in unitInfos.

For implementation we could do it this way:
If a unit (A) goes to combat with a fear causing unit (B), then A will have to pass a morale test on the first turn of combat. If it passes the morale test, then the combat goes on as normal. If it fails the morale test, then its chances of wining each round of combat drops by 20%.
This isn't all that similar to Warhammer, but anything more and fear causing units will be far, far to dangerous.

Well, thats it I've finished Psychology for the moment. I will do fear later, once we have balance this at least a little. All the relevent files can be found at the same place as usual. What do you want me to do now?
Finish Magic, start the new commerce, or do ranged combat. I really don't mind so it depends what you think should be the top priority for the mod.

I'd vote for magic. We need magic that has fitting gfx-effects and sound.
Edit: like I pmd you maybe better the commerce first.

Ok I added all the tags to xml. Now before I start giving values... what about missionaries and settlers? they don't fight so what effects can those tags have and what values should I give them Olleus? Or should I simply remove the tags for them?

Just leave it as 0. You can miss the tags out if you want, but it would probably be neater to just have them there. This also has the added advantage that if you have a stack of troops with some workers/settlers/missionaries in it, they might get scared and run out of the stack.

Ok will do this;)

cool, looking good guys:)
(its a pity i cant see what you have achieved first hand olleus, god i need a new computer:) )

persoanlly, i would like to see magic finishe ASAP, but i will go with whatever you decide:)

Got an issue with the icon for unbreakable. It isn't showing in the pedia neither is there an explanation.

Also a request:
I think we need an optional tag for the unitinfos for undead and demons alike that makes if they fail breaktests they don't flee but get additional damage instead!

I can't get 2 icons to show in the same row of the civilopedia (the reason why is too complicated to be worth explaining here), and the text that is written iunderneath it is the same text as you get when you mousover a (single) unit. I am trying to come up with a way to get around that.

Good idea about undead. I will add it at the same time as fear and terror.

thats a good idea for the undead:)

yeah cool.
That takes care of the undead are immune to psychology problem. Instead this simulates the instability when pushed back rule.
Don't forget that many undead unit types have no inherent leadership, indeed are just mindless automatons, and will suffer the same instability when no hero/liche/necromancer/vampire etc is controlling them.

I've just uploaded a few changes.

1) The AI has been improved. It now uses small stacks (rarely bigger than 4-5 ) and uses its 'Leader' units to raise the Morale of lesser mortals. Only problem is it still has huge stacks defending cities.

2) Units now get +10 morale when they are attacking or defending cities. Units get another +10 morale bonus if they are defening their capital.

3) Slightly modified the way health is taken into account. Before, when a unit on half health lost a round of combat to a unit on full health, its chance of running away was doubled. Now, its morale is halved. This is makes a difference for units with morale 80+ and 60-. It does very little if a unit has morale 70.

4) Fixed a few minor bugs.

great stuff. can't wait to implement it. :)

It sounds like it will be easy to modify this to give skaven a morale bonus for every unit in a stack.
Skaven will have a low morale value as a rule, but gain morale for every additional unit in a stack.

Thats a great idea! Would be very easy to do in python as well.

BRILLIANT!! great idea AH. could do that for Gobbos also. :D

do gobbos have rank (as in rank&file) bonus like skaven then?
I can't recall.

well, its not a specific rule, but its logical isnt it. one gobbo dosnt stand a chance against a dragon. but a whole hoard of gobbos, now at leat ONE of them must get in a good shot every now and then :D

Right. I have a possible patch to the morale system which will do the following things.

1) Units which flee are reduced to minimum life

2) Units health does NOT affect its chances of runing from a stack.

Should I add it or not?

I still think fleeing units should simply get 1-2 additional hits no fixed damage. This assures all possibilities from being quite healthy to being totally wiped out. That's more interesting than just having minimum life. Undead and Deamons(for this an optional tag please!) should get even 1 more extrahit but not flee.

I had it like that before where units lost some health when fleeing, but it didn't really work. It made units with low morale more attractive as they almost never died.
I will add the undead/deamon tag as soon as I can figure out how to make it work.

Is there no way to increase the damage/make the chance of dying higher? Normal units need to differ from undead/deamons as well as Undead need to be different from unbreakables.
Maybe add a chance the winning unit can "pursue" a fleeing unit?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean...

-If a unit turns to flee. There could be a chance maybe the winning unit can wipe it out based on movement.
If Movement of both units are equal the chance could be 50%. If the winning units movement is higher(example it's a cavalry and the infantry unit flees) the chance could be 75% respective 25% if movement is lower.
This should make it less disireable to have low Leadership.
The "pursue" check could be initiated before the actual random movement of the fleeing unit happens. So that the actual fleeing move only takes place if the winner fails to "pursue".
-Undead could differ from that normal procedure since they never flee they can't be pursued either. So if they fail a Leadershiptest they just get extra damage.
-Unbreakables simply never fail a Leadershiptest.

Feedback to the player could be given something like this:
unit fails breaktest-print: your troops turn to flee
pursue check success- print: but are pursued and destroyed(unit is destroyed)
pursue fail - print: and get away (unit moves in random direction/away from the attacking unit)

Undead fail breaktest- print: the magic that binds your unit to the material plane has been weakened by damage(unit suffers extradamage)

okay that's just to get the idea the printsentences could maybe be more elegant...

me likes the pursuit idea.
Would this indicate, that units in a stack always succesfully flee? (as the pursuee cannot enter the occupied tile)

Any ideas for rank&file bonus?
depending on stacked units?

on rank&file bonuses, each unit in a stack could give other units in the stack a bonus to moral, to a limit of say 5 units (so it would not be benefitial to have more than 5 units in a stack) perhaps only make units of the same type give each other moral boosts...

I was thinking of those huge, essentially worthless units in WHF that have low morale and leadership, such as goblins and skaven.

It may work out with that system.
The same mechanism can be used to determine routs of inferior castes.
again: snotlings<goblins<Orks and skavenslaves<skavenclanrats<blackskaven.
The rank and file bonus would be possible because these worthless units will be cheap to produce and maintain.
If maintenance is equal to any other more powerfull units, the bonus must come from within the single units themselves. (high defensive but low offensive strenght?)

I am really against the rank bonus as I see that as just another reason to have an SoD. Anway, rank and file has got to do with the number of soldiers in a unit (ie: the health of the unit) rather than the number of units. I think that the idea of the rank bonus is already in place as units with lower health (ie->fewer ranks) are more likely to run.

I'm all for the pursuing idea. I don't think that units in a stack should always survive as I see pursing as happening within a tile rather than in between tiles, so a unit can pursue succsessfully, but return to its original tile, whether it was attacking or defending.

Hmm, I agree with your argument. unfortunately. ;)

So sub-standard units will just have to sacrifice upgrade/promotion options for lower costs. As they will essentially be equal to other (green) units, their numerical bonus compensating for their low quality.

i agree with olleus. SoD's need to be eliminated :p

OK, added the changes about pursuing units. The formula for whether or not a fleeing unit will be cut down is
Speed of fleeing unit / (Speed of fleeing unit + speed of pursuing unit)
Two units of the same speed = 50% chance of fleeing
A unit of speed 2 pursuing a unit of speed 1 = 33% chance of fleeing

A unit which escapes looses 1exp and half of whatever health it had left. Whether a unit manages or fails to pursue makes no difference in regards to whether it moves or not. It only moves tile after the battle if it attacked and there are no enemy units on the tile of the defeated enemy. Pursuing is held to take place within the tile itself, not inbetween tiles.

The new DLL and files can be found at the SVN, and the new text file is uploaded here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/66170/CIV4GameText_Psychology.xml.jpg). (just replace the old GAMETEXT_Psychology).

I will start work on the undead/fear tag next week.

Also, the fonts are really wierd.. I can't remember how long they have been like this for but something is defenitavely broken.

Ok downloaded, thx.

What fonts are messed up? I didn't have noticed any problem with fonts on my homeversion.

just when you launch the game, all the fonts are wierd sizes and stuff.

Hm don't get this problem. Don't worry I'll reupload as soon those new tags are done or do you need the fonts to work with it right now?

don't really care about the fonts. Just wierd thats all. I was wondering whether the danwofman or religious screens had somehow messed it up.

Uploaded the latest version of Morale to SVN.
Added the undead tag which works like this. Instead of running away from combat, whenever an undead unit fails a break test, it suffers an extra round of combat. Note that as undead units never flee, there is no chance of their stacks being broken up by panic. This makes undead civs very powerfull, I would recomend making their units a LOT weaker than there normal counter part.

They mostly have Leadership 50 while others have 70 and I'll give them 1 Str less than other normals think that's enough?

Oh and can you please recompile the gamecore.dll it still dates from 9.2. I'll figure out how to compile myself in the future but right now I still need that done by you guys;)

So what's the tag in xml?

They mostly have Leadership 50 while others have 70 and I'll give them 1 Str less than other normals think that's enough?

Oh and can you please recompile the gamecore.dll it still dates from 9.2. I'll figure out how to compile myself in the future but right now I still need that done by you guys;)

So what's the tag in xml?

After reading this, I grabbed the latest version to do a compile, but I think LO has already uploaded a compiled DLL. It's got a mod date of 10/02, and my last code went in on the 9/02

Uploaded the latest version of Morale to SVN.
Added the undead tag which works like this. Instead of running away from combat, whenever an undead unit fails a break test, it suffers an extra round of combat. Note that as undead units never flee, there is no chance of their stacks being broken up by panic. This makes undead civs very powerfull, I would recomend making their units a LOT weaker than there normal counter part.

In fact undead armies are forced to be in big stacks, because they need controll.
This is ok though, because they will also be extra succeptible to collateral damage and supporting fire because of their big stacks.

Because of the controll issue being the undead achilles heel,
I hope there will be anti-mage magics for mages to mind-battle each other:
Undead Armies lacking controlling liches will be undone fairly quick, balancing things out.

Challenge:
Also Hero-promotion allowing a hero to challenge other heroes in a stack before normal units are considdered for combat.
Whether the best, worst or a random defender is chosen might depend on further duelling promotions.

Should units in a stack losing a leadership-donating hero suffer more morale loss than when a "peer"unit is lost?

Rank and file revisited:
I propose only units of the same class_unit give each other a 2%*(n-1)morale boost.

so in a stack containing 6warriors and 2 archers, and one axeman
the warriors gain (6-1)*2%= 10% rank bonus,
the archers gain (2-1)*2% = 2% rank bonus,
while the axeman gains (1-1)*2% = nothing.

I feel this might be a small enough bonus to not lead to stacks of doom. Only very high concentrations of troops of one kind will lead to unbreakable troops. But this will again increase the effectiveness of siegeweapons (as oft examplified in WH tabletop games) against massed units.
Only cheap units would have use for this bonus.
We might even make it only available as a Leadertrait for 'swarming civs', with mostly weak&cheap units.

How will we do the selective morale of orks>goblins>snotlings (blackskaven>clanrats>slaves) etc?
Will we even considder this? or just have low morale for the lower classes?
Have units of same unitclass (or caste level promotion?) affect morale double if lost/routed?

Sorry for brainstorming in the wrong thread again. :cry:

@Olleus
Units flee almost all of the time. Instead of me changing all the Leadershipvalues can you just reduce the chance of it happening?
If they got a leadervalue of 70 they shouldn't appear as totally cowards.