Cohesive Armies

Overhauls moral dynamics to count more heavily on 4 basic elements of battle:
Strength comparison, casualties, leadership and momentum:

Strength comparison

– Number of local enemies to friendlies is more meaningful and penalizing if overwhelming
– Have friendly units guard a units flank makes it hold for longer
Thus, units perform more as part of an army rather than on their own.

Casualties

– Damage is calculated as models killed rather than HP, so a full unit of capable yet injured models will have the same base leadership. This means that single entities will not rout based on damage but rather on seeing others flee or being overwhelmed by numbers, to reduce single entity efficiency check Wounds.

– Damage inflicted also boosts the unit’s moral, so as long as it’s killing the enemy models in the same rate as it is taking casualties, it will negate the penalty. This means matchups are more meaningful.

– Immediate (4 sec) damage penalty is enhanced, while the overall damage penalty is reduced, so if a unit loses many models quickly it will rout quicker, but if it is slowly grinded or came back from rout it will have more leadership than before as it is not losing models at that moment.

Leadership

– Generals and heroes encourage more units much more but mainly locally, so units hopefully won’t leave their generals to die when fighting together, so moving them to support wavering units has much more impact.
– General’s death penalty is greatly enhanced but takes time for the word to reach in the middle of combat.
– Siege leadership bonus greatly enhanced, so units won’t rout as easily if they will be killed anyway.

Momentum – Tactical withdrawing as re-conceptualized routing

– Seeing friendlies rout demoralizes harder while seeing enemies rout encourages you the same, making chain routs more probable but dynamic with regrouping potential.

– Reduced breaking time, reduced distance and enhanced breaking limit, so routing units will rally sooner without enemy distance constrain and with more breaking sessions before shattering, so routing is shorter and more local than leaving the battlefield altogether only to come back from a mile away. Combine with AI General II: Spectator Mode Advanced for AI assignment for rallying units.

– Army destruction (mass rout) is reduced but is potentially activated sooner, as it starts when your army’s strength is down to 75% rather than 22% (with double the enemy’s power required instead of 2.5 vanilla). This means that this threshold is not a whistle style complete defeat, high moral or fully intact units might still hold given not too many friends retreated. So, battles might be longer with more last stands and potential turnovers.

– Fatigue penalties are enhanced.
– Terror aura effect is equalized with fear (25m), but with less shock time, so it has bigger but shorter effect.

Additional alterations:

– Removed attacked from rear penalty which allows to safely withdraw engaged units, which otherwise immediately receive this penalty upon turning.
– Flanking penalties are removed as ‘flanks secure’ replaces them and these artificial bonuses are embedded in the damage done since you deal more damage from the sides or rear. Combine with Deadlier Engagement Dynamics for more flanking damage.

– Height bonus is enhanced.
– Charging bonus is removed.
– Winning/losing battle is removed as it’s embedded in the damage dealt alterations.

any comment/insight/request/bug is HIGHLY appreciated and welcome since this dynamic is harder to test for in pure “lab conditions”.

Recommended to play with my collection which addresses other battle aspects of the game.