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I'm having problems getting the morale of my units back up after action. I have the bulk of my ground units resting in Rabaul after having kicked the Japs out of all other bases besides Truk in a '42-'43 Campaign Game. I have ample supplies, support that exceeds the necessary amount by 100+, and the chain of command from MacArthur on down to division level is there for all the units, yet the morale continues to drop. Currently there are about 50,000 combat and nearly 200,000 support troops on the base. Is overcrowding the issue?

A quarter of a million men crammed in one hex? I would say so, at least from a realistic perspective.

Are they assembling for the invasion of Truk? Better to spread them out across a few good anchorages, and join the invasion TFs at sea as you approach your target. Shortland, Los Negros and Kaiveng are all good alternative sites.

Either that or shoot MacArthur.

Well, we wouldn't want to shoot MacArthur. After all, who would lead the fight in Korea years later? On the other hand, maybe his replacement wouldn't have incited a Chinese counterattack and left us with a divided peninsula where North Korea is sponsoring terrorists and building nukes...

Okay, I'll try spreading them out. I was seeing a morale drop with far fewer troops based in Kavieng, so I wasn't sure what criteria the programmers used to determine this (if only I had the source code, I could dig in and find out, but somehow I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon...)

After combing the manual, I think I finally have an answer to the morale problem. There is an entry about malaria-free zones that boost recovery from fatigue, etc. The official entry lists these havens as "Truk, Noumea, Goro, Basse-Poya, Koumac, Brisbane, Rockhampton, Townsville, Charter Towers, and Cairns". Apologies to all you Jap commanders, but it looks like you'll have to pile everybody onto Truk to get them healed up and ready to Banzai! once again [:D]