New morale rule is Fixed

[gingerbread]

ORIGINAL: Mehring

I really hope the morale in WitE2 will in part be determined by events.

So the troops participating in the 1st blizzard offensive should be suffering from defeatism due to that a large part of their motherland is occupied?

Some parameters are and should be beyond the players control and influence. The one (mis-)labelled 'Morale' is definitely one of them.


As to the new morale rule, just how many Soviet RD with morale in the low 30s are affected?

Starting morale is 30 + Rnd(24) (= mean of 42 and even distribution) with a bonus for those in SW & Moscow set up areas. Leaving aside those in the border regions (it might be that players will have to modify their opening turn to care about not routing these) I'd say at most 20 RD (again, with morale in the low 30s) and for this, the NM should be lowered to 45 from the start??? I think not; it would be overcompensating. There is still the issue of having men to fill these units with, and that has not changed.

[Flaviusx]

A fair number of the shells arriving at the map edge from late summer on start with bad morale, actually. Very irritating.

I think the problem here is with this rapid increase in morale gains virtually all divisions in the Red Army are going to hit upper 40s by August. So it's not just about a few bad apples that survive the 1st turn.

Prior to the recent morale change, getting to or anywhere near 50 morale with the entire army was in practical terms not possible. You needed time to get there, and by the time you could get there, NM caps had already gone down. So as a result this latest bug fix does indeed raise the performance of the 1941 Red Army as compared to before.

Now, you could argue that's okay and will give the Red Army the ability to fight a forward defense that has sadly been lacking. But the truth is people are going to run early on just because of the ridiculous opening turn which makes it impossible to defend forward early on. Even with better morale. Not enough counters on the board, period.

Changing the NM cap to 45 in practical terms leaves things as they were before more or less. A good player like MT here shouldn't be too scared of 45 morale rifle divisions.

[gingerbread]

Ah yes, the free rebuilds. They begin with morale 32-50, set in refit mode with TOE% 100 so they soak up men that would be much more useful in the better units. This mechanism is just another incentive to run since loosing units will just add to the downward spiral.

I actually had a fight with the devs about the Refit/100% setting, but it has to be that way for the German rebuilds. They in turn actually got a boost (*) that perhaps should be rescinded with the new/working morals gain rule in place.




* V1.05.59 – January 31, 2012
Destroyed German units that return to play are given a
morale equal to 30+(NM/4)+random (NM/4). The formula used to be 20+… There is no
change in the formula that sets their initial experience.

[carlkay58]

gingerbread - it is strange to think that the bug was probably responsible for having to increase the German base morale for the reconstituted units.

[Joel Billings]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Ok tested 10 ID. All in refit more than 10 hexes from the front with 1.07.03

Unit - Start morale T1/ T3 morale

178 - 32/37
18 - 37/42
144 - 40/44
166 - 37/41
187 - 33/37
229 - 39/44
160 - 37/41
170 - 33/37
186 - 32/36
98 - 35/39

So mostly they went up by 4 points. Avg 2 per turn.

Now same units at T1 with same morale but patched up to 1.07.06 (new morale rule)

178 - 32/41
18 - 37/51
144 - 40/49
166 - 37/50
187 - 33/41
229 - 39/47
160 - 37/45
170 - 33/43
186 - 32/43
98 - 35/47

That's about another 3.3 pts per turn on top of the 2 pts per turn. So ~5.3 pts per turn in total.

It's just too much Joel.

I have the save files if you want them.

Were these units attached directly to Stavka? Gary and I went through the code today and found that units attached to Stavka and OKH were given a second chance to meet the conditions to get the Die(NM/10) roll if they failed on the first chance. This code was written years ago and will for sure be removed. Also, it does appear that the lower your morale, the greater the chance that the conditions are met, which explains why German units with 60 morale were getting it less often than Soviet units with a low morale. I should have checked this before going ahead with the change. If those units in your test were attached to Stavka I can see why most of the units were getting the bonus increase in morale each turn. If they weren't attached to Stavka, then it's harder to see why the Soviets went up on average 2.95 more points per turn in your test. It would help to know if the units were attached to Stavka in this test. In any case we'll be making a change to make sure this is not having the big impact it seems to be having. Thanks.

BTW, in reviewing the morale gain rules, there seem to be several things that were news to me that are worth reporting:

We didn't see the check listed in the manual that says if Die(75) is greater than you NM you have a chance for a morale gain. There is a case where if you're morale is less than 50 then you have a chance it will gain a point. It's possible this Die(75) check is somewhere else in the code, but it's also possible it was taken out in one of the patches.

[Michael T]

These units were all in Armies that reported to Stavka. Eg 24th, 22nd, 20th, 19th etc.

Whatever you do, please don't do something that pushes Soviet morale up too fast in 1941. IMO the 41 summer slightly favours the Soviets already. Any thing that makes the Soviet Army stronger in 1941 will only push the balance further to the Reds in 41. I see no problem at all in an accelerated morale boost for both sides from 42 on.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: gingerbread

ORIGINAL: Mehring

I really hope the morale in WitE2 will in part be determined by events.

So the troops participating in the 1st blizzard offensive should be suffering from defeatism due to that a large part of their motherland is occupied?

"I really hope the morale in WitE2 will in part be determined by events.

So, territorial loss should be one of a number of factors affecting morale. Holding certain objectives by the end of the German campaign season might increase morale for a while. No player has absolute control over how much territory and cities they hold or lose.

If morale is nothing but training and doctrine, it is indeed a misnomer, but where, then, is morale represented in game? Do isolated units suddenly lose doctrine and training? Do units with insufficient supplies lose their drill instructors and also, then, morale? Do Finnish drill instructors go on strike when asked to work south of the 'no attack line"? Do defeated or routed units lose doctine and training? No, all these instances clearly show that WitE morale is not just doctrine and training, it is (also) morale in the commonly understood sense of the word.

[gingerbread]

IMO, that aspect is covered by the declining NM during '41 and I also think it should be beyond players power to influence.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: gingerbread

IMO, that aspect is covered by the declining NM during '41 and I also think it should be beyond players power to influence.

It's another example of game mechanism purporting to represent historical events meeting a fluid game situation which will vary from those events. The result is very ugly, IMO. Why would NM decline if Russia is doing well and holding its major political, economic and population centres? These mechanisms are the fountain of all ahistorical strategies, not least the great Russian summer '41 runaway.

Morale is a difficult thing to represent in game, granted, but avoiding the problem will not create a solution. Reverses can boost determination as well as sap the will to fight, depending on other factors. Look how Churchill made Dunkirk look, to some extent, like a victory.

The effect of an event must be variable and then there's the question of the duration of that effect. Should the loss of, say, Kiev, lose the Russians 1 NM and its recapture gain 1NM? I would argue that any city NM loss/gain should be variable and temporary. People and populations take morale hits and boosts but tend to then settle back to an underlying level, adjusting to the new situation.

Complex interactions like manpower loss, terrain loss, war weariness etc are not so much beyond 2 by 3 as what they do. They just haven't extended what they do to the issue of morale yet, and I hope they remedy that.

[Flaviusx]

The game morale mechanic is inherently unstable as is without tying it in to territory. And minor variations to it can have disproportionate effects when it shifts past certain thresholds. The biggest ones being 40, 50 and the points at which movement costs go down. It has a bad tendency of creating feedback loops. Failure breeds failure and success breeds success in a mechanical fashion that lends itself to abuse of game mechanics and has little to do with real life. It used to be a lot looser than it is now, btw. The tendency over time has been to try to lock down NM norms rather than making them less restrictive.

In the first two years of the war in particular there's just not much room for changing things up here on the Soviet side. If you tie NM to territory or events and it drops below 40, it's going to be incredibly hard to recover from that. Likewise, a too early shift upwards to 50 or more or more is going to shut the Axis down.

The way to deal with runaway strategies is via victory points, not NM.

[Mehring]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
If you tie NM to territory or events and it drops below 40, it's going to be incredibly hard to recover from that. Likewise, a too early shift upwards to 50 or more or more is going to shut the Axis down.

The way to deal with runaway strategies is via victory points, not NM.

The effect of an event must be variable and then there's the question of the duration of that effect. Should the loss of, say, Kiev, lose the Russians 1 NM and its recapture gain 1NM? I would argue that any city NM loss/gain should be variable and temporary. People and populations take morale hits and boosts but tend to then settle back to an underlying level, adjusting to the new situation.

In conjunction with a realistic logistics system, German expansion eastwards is going to have limits in 1941. I can't envisage Russian NM getting to 50 in 41 unless the Germans really deserve to lose.

[Manstein63]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx


The way to deal with runaway strategies is via victory points, not NM.

I agree.
A lot of people are hung up on the 'Lvov Gambit' that most German Players use on T 1 & how it distorts the game forcing the Russian player to head for the hinterlands like the Scythians against Darius. However if the German opening turn is toned down most Russian players will say thank you very much & will have railed out most of Southwestern Front by the end of their turn. Giving punitive victory points to the Axis player would force the Russian player to make a game of it earlier on.
Manstein63

[Michael T]

Yes, I think a SD check around August that would force less of a runaway would be a good thing. Same for Axis around Feb 42. Too much running in the game. It needs to be hauled in. I already have some HR for this but I need to expand it to slow up Soviet running in summer 41. Other than that a HR that prevents evacuating any Industry from say Kharkov, Stalino and Tula before a certain date. That way if you run you suffer a big penalty rather than a SD loss.

[SigUp]

Well, I right now experience how hard fighting a 50+ morale Red Army can be. For this game I have set Soviet morale at 119 (and German logistics at 60). It is turn 7 and I am only at Vitebsk and barely over the Dnepr in the centre. I lose tanks at a record rate for a game against the AI, my total AFV stock is at about 2600 and dropping fast, I already lost 1000 tanks. One advantage exists, however, units won't rout out of pockets. [:D]

[Peltonx]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

The game morale mechanic is inherently unstable as is without tying it in to territory. And minor variations to it can have disproportionate effects when it shifts past certain thresholds. The biggest ones being 40, 50 and the points at which movement costs go down. It has a bad tendency of creating feedback loops. Failure breeds failure and success breeds success in a mechanical fashion that lends itself to abuse of game mechanics and has little to do with real life. It used to be a lot looser than it is now, btw. The tendency over time has been to try to lock down NM norms rather than making them less restrictive.

In the first two years of the war in particular there's just not much room for changing things up here on the Soviet side. If you tie NM to territory or events and it drops below 40, it's going to be incredibly hard to recover from that. Likewise, a too early shift upwards to 50 or more or more is going to shut the Axis down.

The way to deal with runaway strategies is via victory points, not NM.

This has been talked about more then once and were told its not possible.

[mmarquo]

Until this is fixed I think the Axis player should set morale at 105 - 110%.

[Joel Billings]

A new public beta should be out by tomorrow that will drastically reduce the chance of a unit getting the Die(NM/10) boost in NM. It doesn't remove it, but it makes it a very low chance, so it should not have a major impact on the game. We looked at other alternatives, but thought this was the best way to go. If we cut Soviet NM to 45 in 41, Soviet units could still race up to the 45 using the old boost and then be sent to the rear to refit to get to 50. With the new change, the Soviet morale will be a little higher in 1941, but the Germans will get a boost in the rest of the game as they'll now be able to recover to a NM higher than 50, something that wasn't really possible in the past.

[Michael T]

Thanks Joel [:)]

[morvael]

Wonder how it will work in the end. Under previous rules some units for 2 years on refit could not get from high 30s to low 40s, with NM approaching 50. If the NM/10 thing will be low chance it may be the same problem again. The chance should be higher for units having morale a lot under NM.

[Shupov]

Thanks for the very quick assessment and response. I don't wan't my Russians to have an unfair advantage!