SCGCG After taking the capital no national moral drop?

[Templer]

After taking the capital - no change in the national morality?

In my current campaign, 1939 world at war, against the AI ,the Russians have taken Berlin.

My government has moved to Munich.

After the fall of Berlin, the national morale does not drop drastically? :confused:

[Hubert Cater]

Germany does not have any default NM targets and likely only because at this point in the game it is usually curtains for Germany regardless.

[Isnogud]

In one of my current games Italy and then Germany surrenders after loosing their capitals. This had no effect on the japanese morale.

Also the fall of Rome did not lower the German or Japan morale.

Overall the morale effect seems to be much lower than in the WWI games.

[Sapare]

I hate to be a hater, but overall the NM(from the one game of this I played) seems pretty much non existant in this game. Which I found really sad as it is pretty awesome feature. I hope the next game takes the NM thing in and balances it on the countries like WW1 did(where it seems just perfectly balanced, not OP but still something to keep in mind as the war carries on)

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong btw

[Hubert Cater]

Thanks for the feedback and we are now working on and testing a few ideas to have National Morale play a bit of a larger role.

The trick is to balance things just right as NM did not play as significant a role in WWII as it did in WWI but we'd like to incorporate it some more nonetheless.

[mcaryf1]

I have been testing out a scenario of mine that is based on Axis High Tide and playing as the Allies I concentrated on destroying Italian units wherever possible. I have had Italian national morale at zero for several turns (all their fleet and a lot of their armies destroyed) but nothing much has happened. I was expecting a surrender or at least an outbreak of unrest in Italian cities. I looked in the events and could not see how National Morale is actually used.

One other unrelated point from the same scenario, when I handed the game over to the AI to play it on (Fn F3) after I have started the scenario I have noticed that it has rather a pathetic trust in the efficacy of garrison units to hold key locations. Thus I had been holding off the Axis from taking Moscow (and killing loads of Italians) in a heavy fight with a highly experience and entrenched Corps unit on Moscow but when the AI took over it promptly swapped the corps for a garrison unit with predictable consequences. It is perhaps unfair to criticise the AI when it takes over part way through a game but I have previously noted this propensity to use garrisons when a stronger unit would be better in a key location. I looked at the AI Scripts but could not see anything there that would dictate what unit types are used.

Regards

Mike

[Hubert Cater]

Hi Mike,

We are experimenting right now with some significant NM changes for the next patch and I've just incorporated an Italian surrender should their NM reach zero as suggested.

For the AI scripts, what I can do is set the AI to hold a position with its current units and so this way it will not swap out with a weaker unit and this should help for the Moscow and other surrounding GARRISON scripts.

If you see anything else like this just let us know

Hubert

[mcaryf1]

Just an update - Italy has finally surrendered without any invasion of their homeland but after being at zero morale for about 8 consecutive turns.

Regards

Mike

[Hubert Cater]

I suspect this is actually the normal behaviour as they are likely flagged to surrender by the game engine check for any nation at 0% morale, but may hold out a few turns due to the number of remaining units on the map.

I'll take another look either way before the next patch.

[mcaryf1]

Hi Hubert

I have been examining the impact of unit losses on National Morale and as far as I can tell there is no setting for a scenario designer to adjust this. Thus if a scenario has more units, e.g. one with a larger scale map, then there will be a consequentially heavier loss of morale when these effectively smaller units suffer casualties.

One other factor is that in at least some of the standard scenarios it appears that Garrison units do not figure in the AI build strategy. I have modified one such AI strategy to include Garrisons and have noted that their naturally high casualty rate has an unintended (by me at least) impact on morale.

In your thinking about how to develop the use of National Morale could you please also consider making the impact of unit loss on it something that can be tuned by the designer. Actually it would be realistic to have unit losses making more of an impact on the democracies than the authoritarian states. It was after all Japan's actual strategy to try to make it too expensive in casualty terms for the USA to persue the war to its ultimate end, unfortunately for them the US had an alternative in the use of the A Bomb..

Regards

Mike

[jon_j_rambo]

Take a trip in the WABAC 'Wayback Machine' with Mister Peabody (Dog) and Sherman (his boy): In previous versions of SC, National Morale (NM) was a beast. Expanding nations would hold back on taking capitals; rather to wait for a key boast when major combat would be occurring. So lets not get crazy here worrying about how Japanese feel about Rome/Messina getting dumped. If the Russians are dancing in Berlin, it's lights out anyways. If you really want to feel good about splitting the enemy in two, just send them a message of smack.

I'm afraid we've just woken a sleeping bear with a terrible resolve.

Another Day, Another Time,

-Legend

[Bill101]

Hi Mike

The way a scenario could be adjusted to suit larger unit numbers would be to increase the starting National Morale figures proportionately. That way there is more potential for each country to cope with the larger casualties.

With the Garrison units, it might be a good idea to lower their cost so that their loss doesn't upset anyone's National Morale too much.

Bill

[mcaryf1]

Hi Bill

Thank you for the suggestion. Is there any information on what the loss in National Morale would typically be for each type of unit?

For the Russians I have made the Garrison unit only cost 50 MPP and they are instantly rebuildable at 60% cost if destroyed with supply anything other than zero. I feel this gives some feeling of the way the Soviets seemed to keep on coming no matter how many the Axis killed. However, it has had some impact on Soviet morale so I will use your suggestion.

Another idea I am trialling, that is working really well, is to treat both Subs and DDs as if the units only represent a part of a flotilla based in the area. Thus if a sub or DD is totally destroyed it can be re-built instantly for 30% of the full purchase price. It gives some real battles in the Atlantic without the risk of catastrophic loss of all capability that is normally the case. I find this models the presence of 3 or 400 subs and a similar number of escorts without cluttering the map with too many units. However, it does give me the same National Morale issues outlined above.

Regards

Mike

[Bill101]

Hi Mike

Yes, the National Morale loss is equal to the MPP cost of the unit, so reducing their cost will reduce the impact on National Morale when they suffer casualties.

That's an interesting idea with the Subs and DDs, though 30% is quite a cheap rebuild cost as it's less than the default for ground units in good supply. You'll have to let us know how you get on with this.

Bill

[mcaryf1]

Hi Bill

Thanks for the National Morale answer. Actually that explains a lot. I have set the production costs for Armies very high as I did not want them to be used for amphibious assaults (biggest actual landing in WW2 was just about Corps sized) to offset this I have allowed quite a few to be in the build queue at the game start. However, their high cost will cause big morale hits especially as again I allow rebuilds at a cheaper rate but I guess the morale hit will be at the standard price not the rebuild price.

The logic for subs is that typically only 1/3 of a U Boat flotilla was on station at any one time. The remainder were either having R&R or travelling to and from their operational area e.g. the Mid-Atlantic. Thus the unit in the actual fight is only 1/3 of the full strength so re-building it for 1/3 cost is fine. It can also be rebuilt instantly because effectively most of the flotilla still exists so logically it is equivalent to a reinforcement rather than a replacement.

Using this methodology I can represent 200 or so U Boats by having just 6 x U Boat units.

Having got that idea for U Boats it was a logical extension to apply it to DDs as well. There were many hundreds of DDs in the USN and RN so again a single counter has to represent a large number e.g. 30 or so. There was no engagement in WW2 where 30 DD's were sunk so again I treat the unit as a flotilla of which only 1/3 were deployed and hence only 1/3 are at risk of being sunk. In contrast the other naval units can be totally destroyed although I do allow rebuilds for those with high supply on the grounds that they were sunk in or near port and raised as the USN ships were at Pearl.

This approach has worked well in my test scenarios and allows DDs to be used in their traditional fleet scouting role as they are cheap to repair/rebuild. It is a more elegant solution than the rather gamey approach some players use of having some cheap transport unit out in front of a fleet to find the enemy.

Regards

Mike