So far the only morale+ units I can think of are drummer boys, bards, and buglars. Can anyone think of any other morale+ units
Yep. Those options you just mentioned would be fine in any pre-20th century type army, but are obsolete nowadays. What the Iraq+Afghanistan wars are showing us and what was definitely apparent after WW1 and Vietnam are the effects of post traumatic stress. So, some sort of psychiatrist "equipment" promotion? Like, a unit enters a city with a psychiatrist office building, and can "purchase" the promotion like in FFH modmods, for a gold cost. Another problem with PTSD is that it causes veterans to leave the military, rather than staying on (even if staying on means promotion, a comfy desk job, or training the next generation of soldiers). Perhaps if a unit's morale is low and stays low for a long period of time, it begins to even lose experience points to represent this? Now THAT would make morale something to worry about.
Similarly you could perhaps have commissars (like the soviet WW2 version), propaganda guys, prostitutes (how many armies in history have been without prostitutes in their supply carriage?), chaplains, maybe even drug dealers. The drummers and bards etc, at the mass media tech, would be replaced by...whatever it is when modern soldiers are entertained by musicians. USO shows?
A unit would need to visit a city with buildings such as churches of the state (commissars), press agencies (propaganda), brothels (prostitutes), cathedrals (chaplains), drug lord's mansion (drug dealers) to be able to buy these promotions.
Even though these promotions will increase morale, they should have mild negative effects as well. Prostitutes for instance would decrease a unit's strength and healrate (syphilis), commissars would gut any withdrawal chance the unit had, psychiatrists need to be paid and would increase a unit's maintenance cost, etc. They could also be linked to the crime system. Low morale units causing crime (discharged veterans with mental/physical health problems turning to crime), and some promotions like prostitutes increasing the unit's crime value. Hell, you could even get military police promotions, which decrease the crime values but also damage morale.
Finally, some units would lack morale altogether. Clockwork golems and other robot and nanite units. They wouldn't have to worry about losing morale, but on the other hand would never benefit from positive effects (perhaps high morale could give units extra strength and city attack/defense, or even decrease a city's revindex as they do good works in the community and help with natural disasters).
Hydromancerx said:
I could see the civics also playing a role in supporting more troop morale.
For a unit's starting morale:
Volunteer army, standing army = good
Conscription, MAD, banditry = bad
Other civics like fascism or intolerant, which include heavy childhood indoctrination and lots of psychological conditioning for soldiers, would have an effect. Same with good ones like liberal or secular. Instead of causing a net increase/decrease in morale or a unit's starting morale, they could affect how easy it is to modify a unit's morale. For example, under fascism units would lose morale much more slowly, but also have trouble gaining it, while under liberal it could be a fragile thing, easy to gain or to lose.
