Fear mechanics

[Sombre]

At the behest of someone on the irc channel, I just ran some tests.

I made a prot 40 fear 15 commander with 0 att no armour no weapons, enc0, morale 30. I sent him against indies.

1. The indies routed despite him not doing any damage, so fear causes morale checks.
2. Many of the indies had very low or even negative morale scores, so fear reduces morale.
3. Only the indies right next to him got reduced morale from the fear, so the radius formula stated in the manual is wrong.
4. Despite base prot 40 he took damage from broadsword indies on numerous occasions, generally in the region of 3 or 4 damage a time. It was something like every tenth swing or so that seemed to hit and do damage. This doesn't seem to fit with what I understood about protection.

Conclusion - The manual is very wrong about fear.

[Kristoffer O]

Why very wrong?

1. is in accordance with the manual.
2. The manual doesn't say anything about this, so I'm not sure if it is actually wrong or just omitting stuff.
3. No it is not. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (unless the affected squares stack on top of one another or some other bug)

[JimMorrison]

1. "Rout is checked by squad ... a squad will take a morale check if: ... The squad is near a monster causing Fear"

I always understood this to mean that even Fear+0 causes morale checks every round, they're just fairly easy to beat at first.


2. I did some Fear testing awhile back too. It seems to have some sort of cumulative effect, which is in fact VERY different from what the manual states - I wonder if KO has the same version of the manual, or replied to the post without looking. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

"Units in a monster's Fear area of effect must take a morale check against the monster's Fear, or rout. The basic Fear effect requires a check against 10 ...The Fear strength itself is increased for every full +5 Fear, so a Fear +10 unit would ... force a morale check against 12."

In my tests, it was shown that not only does the Fear effect not just produce its own isolated rolls, but it rapidly deteriorates the Morale of adjacent units. This effect is cumulative over at least 3 rounds of exposure, and is measurably far greater than the Morale deterioration seen without Fear active. For this reason, many people consider Fear + Awe to be invaluable, and my testing confirms that it is incredibly powerful - perhaps too powerful. -- Just a recap, the manual does not state that the Fear does anything other than force a check, but it does reduce Morale as well.


3. My own tests had implied the same, that there is something awry with the Fear radius. It DOES describe it as "additional" squares, which says to me that it works the same as AOE spells do, but does that mean that Fear+0 radiates to only the 8 squares surrounding the monster, and that each point after that only adds 1 square? If so, then at Fear+12 you would finally get a full radius of 2 around your monster, however even with a Fear +20 PoD, I was hard pressed to find units that were not adjacent, that had measurably lowered Morale scores.


4. I've noticed this sort of behavior as well, it does seem there are reasons why lower damage units can successfully damage a very high prot unit. I can't explain why, the chances of scoring a decent hit have always seemed greater than the probability implied by a comparison of damage+str vs protection values.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
This effect is cumulative over at least 3 rounds of exposure, and is measurably far greater than the Morale deterioration seen without Fear active.




In fact, Fear is the ONLY thing which causes deterioration of Morale scores. Damage to a unit affects the bonus to
the Morale check for unit "intactness", not Morale itself.

By the way, Fear +0 has AoE 5 IIRC because it's actually Fear +5. (E.g. three Fear +0 items give you Fear +10.)

-Max

[Endoperez]

Fear starts from Fear -5. That's from DomII, where Fear was different.

I'm not sure how it works, but Fear +0 having AoE 5 is certainly one quite probable option.


The protection/damage thing is also quite interesting.

[Kristoffer O]

> In my tests, it was shown that not only does the Fear effect not just produce its own isolated rolls, but it rapidly deteriorates the Morale of adjacent units. This effect is cumulative over at least 3 rounds of exposure, and is measurably far greater than the Morale deterioration seen without Fear active. For this reason, many people consider Fear + Awe to be invaluable, and my testing confirms that it is incredibly powerful - perhaps too powerful. -- Just a recap, the manual does not state that the Fear does anything other than force a check, but it does reduce Morale as well.

As I said, an omission. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

> My own tests had implied the same, that there is something awry with the Fear radius. It DOES describe it as "additional" squares, which says to me that it works the same as AOE spells do, but does that mean that Fear+0 radiates to only the 8 squares surrounding the monster, and that each point after that only adds 1 square? If so, then at Fear+12 you would finally get a full radius of 2 around your monster, however even with a Fear +20 PoD, I was hard pressed to find units that were not adjacent, that had measurably lowered Morale scores.

It is 12 random squares close to the fear inspiring one, not necessarily the squares surrounding him.

It might distribute lik this (X=targeted square, M=monster)

OXOOO
XXXXO
XXMXX
OOXOO
OOXOO

I think it targets a square, and if that one is already targeted it tries to target a random neigbopring square of the first attempted square

[Sombre]

Kristoffer O said:
Why very wrong?

1. is in accordance with the manual.
2. The manual doesn't say anything about this, so I'm not sure if it is actually wrong or just omitting stuff.
3. No it is not. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (unless the affected squares stack on top of one another or some other bug)



1. Yes it is. I was documenting things fear does, not points on which the manual was incorrect.
2. I think it's a major omission because it's a major featue of fear, but ok, technically I suppose it isn't wrong to omit that.
3. The test I ran seemed to indicate otherwise.

Let me put the full text from the manual up, regarding fear.

"Units in a monster's Fear are of effect must take a morale check against the monster's Fear, or rout. The basic Fear effect requires a check against 10. Unlike Awe, the bonus to Fear indicates the additional area of effect, not the fear strength. So a Fear +4 monster has normal Fear that radiates to 4 additional squares. The Fear strength itself is increased for every full +5 fear, so a fear +10 unit would radiate to ten additional squares, and force a morale check against 12. The base area of effect (Fear +0) is 6 squares."

Things that are wrong (not just omitted).

Units are routed by fear - I haven't seen individual units rout, just groups. If units refers to groups, why is the 'monster' referred to as a 'fear +10 unit'?
Fear value is aoe, not power - With fear 14 my monster should have had a fear radius of 20 (6+14) but the only units with reduced morale were directly adjacent.

I can't comment about fear value not = strength, because since the manual omits the whole thing about fear reducing morale, there's no reason it should mention that a high fear unit causes far more morale reduction than a low fear one (more than the +1,2 or 3 to the morale check requirement would suggest).


I'm not making this thread to complain, just to get some more info on how fear works. I went with the manual regarding the aoe but the tests don't appear to show it working that way.

[Zeldor]

JimMorrison:

What do you mean by strength? Isn't it AoE of Fear increased every 5 levels of Fear and every point of fear making it harder to resist?

[Kristoffer O]

> Fear value is aoe, not power - With fear 14 my monster should have had a fear radius of 20 (6+14) but the only units with reduced morale were directly adjacent.

This might be due to the fact that units regain morale every turn. Thus units not adjacent might have their morale restored to their normal value before it is comes into effect. Units closer to the fear source get their morlae lowered enough that they never have time to regain it, making it appear as if they were the only ones affected.

[Sombre]

Kristoffer O said:
It is 12 random squares close to the fear inspiring one, not necessarily the squares surrounding him.

It might distribute lik this (X=targeted square, M=monster)

OXOOO
XXXXO
XXMXX
OOXOO
OOXOO

I think it targets a square, and if that one is already targeted it tries to target a random neigbopring square of the first attempted square



Hmm. Seems possible this would cause the test results. I didn't see a single unit that wasn't directly adjacent with reduced morale, but I didn't run that many tests, I admit.

Edit: And units regain morale on their own? That I also didn't know. At least I'm learning some stuff here.

[Edi]

It's the other way around. AOE is increased for every point and resistance penalized for every 5 points. Otherwise it would be insanely powerful.

[Zeldor]

Empowering or getting D booster increases fear?

[Kristoffer O]

Yep

[Kristoffer O]

> I haven't seen individual units rout, just groups

A group is a unit, as is an individual http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Edi]

Units with no innate fear gain Fear(+0) at D5 and every subsequent D level increases the fear by 1. Units with Fear(+0) or more natively get an immediate boost from Death magic.

[thejeff]

I've never noticed units regaining morale on their own. Admittedly, I've never run tests looking for it.

Standards are the counter to fear, since they'll continually boost morale up to base + their bonus. Working much like fear, but in the other direction.

[MaxWilson]

Sombre said:
Fear value is aoe, not power - With fear 14 my monster should have had a fear radius of 20 (6+14) but the only units with reduced morale were directly adjacent.



AoE 20 will be a radius of about 2, not 20. The ones directly adjacent are closer to the center of effect and will get hit more frequently; it's possible that others were getting hit too occasionally and just recovering. (The penalty to morale wears off.) It's hard to say. I'd probably try testing with Fear +50 or something, where the results should be more dramatic and obvious.

Edit: whoops, KO already mentioned this possibility.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Zeldor said:
JimMorrison:

What do you mean by strength? Isn't it AoE of Fear increased every 5 levels of Fear and every point of fear making it harder to resist?



This notion of resisting is complicated.

As far as I can tell, Fear reduces morale, consistently, and constantly. The implication of what I've seen, is that the effect of having morale reduced, is irresistible.

If when people are talking about resisting, they are referring to making successful morale checks, then this is a bit misleading as well. Since next turn the morale continues to deteriorate, and morale checks are automatic every turn, it starts to seem more that the unit is just "withstanding" the Fear. The actual Fear effect still occurs, morale continues to deteriorate.


And KO, this seems like more than an omission. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif The problem is that all that we're observing only corroborates what we can observe, and not what is in the manual at all. Also, it might be worthwhile to take a look and see what is actually happening - if the Fear effect reduces morale AND raises the opposing roll, then it is effectually twice as strong as implied. That is, Fear +5 reduces morale by an additional point, and raises the opposing roll by 1 as well, giving an effective balance of a 2 point shift. Also, even Fear +0 will reduce morale by more than 1 point. You can watch it go down each round, though perhaps not as swiftly as with a stronger Fear, but stronger Fear drops morale by more than 2 points etc as well. It looked like the cap might be 5 or 6, but that is a huge amount, it basically means that some less disciplined units can practically be auto-routed by a D10 PoD, even before you start adding a Horror Helm or whatever.

[Xietor]

As far as units getting lucky blows, i had it benefit me twice in the 1st big game where my MA Ctis province defense killed a Bogus thug from Lanka, and later in the game a gor tartarian of Velusion.

So sometimes you just get very very lucky with the dice and your militia kill stuff they should not kill.

[Sombre]

MaxWilson said:
AoE 20 will be a radius of about 2, not 20. The ones directly adjacent are closer to the center of effect and will get hit more frequently; it's possible that others were getting hit too occasionally and just recovering. (The penalty to morale wears off.) It's hard to say. I'd probably try testing with Fear +50 or something, where the results should be more dramatic and obvious.




Sorry I meant aoe not radius. With aoe 20 I would have expected to observe units that weren't adjacent losing morale, which I didn't. However I was unaware units recover morale. That complicates things. I've learned several things from the test and this thread which aren't in the manual and aren't obvious at all.

As for testing with fear+50 - 14 is the highest base fear I could mod. I could have added death magic to get it higher though I'm not sure what the roof is. Base prot has a roof of 40 for example.


With fear decreasing morale constantly it's easy to see why Baalz dumping 6 lesser horrors onto an SC (regardless of his high morale) worked great and caused him to flee almost immediately, possibly autokilling him. The SC can only avoid this by being mindless because the reduction to morale apparently cannot be resisted. I imagine the same trick would work with big squads of ghosts and the like.

And yeah, standard is basically fear in reverse, so enough units with standard can counteract fear. That's assuming standard actually works the way the manual describes which in my experience is not a safe assumption to make.

[MaxWilson]

I thought for some reason that Morale 30 units were unaffected by Fear. I'm AFG so I can't check, but there are multiple Morale 30 SCs available.

-Max

[Kristoffer O]

I don't think morale 30 is immune to fear. They can rout IIRC, but don't trust me on this. 30 is just a way of saying 'practically unroutable'.

I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Edi]

Kristoffer O said:
I don't think morale 30 is immune to fear. They can rout IIRC, but don't trust me on this. 30 is just a way of saying 'practically unroutable'.

I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


IIRC you have said morale 30 means a unit is considered unroutable for the purposes of spells like Panic, Fear etc and tests have borne this out. The units can still get lowered morale from fear, but considering the types of units that generally have 30 morale, a unit with fear will usually be hacked to death before the fear will have had enough effect.

[JimMorrison]

Kristoffer O said:
I don't think morale 30 is immune to fear. They can rout IIRC, but don't trust me on this. 30 is just a way of saying 'practically unroutable'.

I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I do love you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif <3


Now, I am curious, is it just that 30 is the "practically unroutable" score for "normal" units? Is 50 reserved for Mindless? Because I thought 50 was REALLY unroutable, so I had been wondering why 30 also supposedly was. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Granted, failing a morale check against 30 is like a Markata hurting a geared Cyclops, but it could happen!

[Micah]

Well, morale 30 units will retreat during army rout or when they get beat up enough, mindless units will either keep on keepin' on (golem) or dissolve from lack of leadership.

[Kristoffer O]

50 and 99 are special cases.

[Sombre]

I always thought 30 was just high morale but was told recently (by edi I think?) that it's special when modding and gives some sort of unbreakable (but able to retreat) tag.

Shame 99 in modding doesn't auto berserk :]

[namad]

just try starting the game with a unit with fear 15-20ish and attacking independents...


you tell me then if you think fear has any increased radius (I reckon you'll agree it's radius is still very very small)


so everyone reading the manual and thinking fear20 has a big radius is completely misled...

[MaxWilson]

Sombre,

It doesn't? I have this vague memory of modding in 99 in some of my test cases and I thought it did give berserk.

Namad,

People new to the game will generally be tempted to think that AoE X means radius X, and will be disappointed to learn that an AoE 9 Falling Frost is still pretty small. I don't think that's specific to Fear. Hmmm, I don't see this in the FAQ, I'll mention it to Edi as a possible add.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Kristoffer O said:
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.




If this is true, it probably explains why Sombre's Fear +14 commander only caused visible morale drop to adjacent units, because they're in melee with him and therefore don't recover.

-Max

[Sombre]

MaxWilson said:
Sombre,

It doesn't? I have this vague memory of modding in 99 in some of my test cases and I thought it did give berserk.




Nope. I suggest you test it rather than ust believing me though. Always better to test.

[MaxWilson]

True. It's my own fault for posting while I'm AFG (http://xkcd.com/303/).

-Max

[Foodstamp]

I think the confusion comes from berserker state giving 99 morale?

50 I think makes a unit mindless, and 30 gives pretender style morale. Been a long time since I modded, so I may be wrong on these.

[Sombre]

There doesn't seem to be agreement regarding what 'pretender style morale' actually does/means.

[Kristoffer O]

You pretend that you are unbreakable http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Sombre]

-Sombre routs in agreement-

[Agema]

So...

Morale gets checked as a unit. So if you have a division of 50 units attacking a scary beastie, let's say only 10 are "hit" by the fear AoE roll, how does that work?

Is there just one roll for the whole division of 50 caused by the effect on a few, where presumably the morale is still averaged for the whole unit, and because 10 have been "hit" they carry a negative modifier, dragging the average down?

[Edi]

That's how I think it works, Agema.

[Kristoffer O]

That's how I think as well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Baalz]

BTW, fear stacks very, very well. Sombre mentioned my dirty horror trick which will rout any SC not mindless or berserk, but you can achieve a similar effect on armies rather than SCs. Horrors don't work very well for this because they spread out, but there are a number of fear aura units - nightmares, demon knights, ghosts, banshees, etc. When they engage in melee while clumped together it's pretty sick the effect on the front line's moral, each block gets hit by multiple fear auras and the moral instantly drops into the negatives most of the time. If you spread them out right so that this affects a significant portion of the enemy forces you don't have to do much fighting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Now what I'm curious about is how the moral checks are handled.

Do multiple fear aura's trigger multiple moral checks?
Does a 100 man squad make a moral check for everybody if just one unit is within a fear aura?
Do you make multiple fear checks if you have multiple triggers - ie hit by agony while inside a fear aura while taking melee damage.

[Kristoffer O]

Only one rout check each turn IIRC

[Foodstamp]

Sombre said:
There doesn't seem to be agreement regarding what 'pretender style morale' actually does/means.



By "pretender style morale" I just mean what a pretender or prophet's morale is set to when they are designated as such. I don't think it gives any special bonuses beyond just being really hard to break.

[MaxWilson]

Kristoffer O said:
I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



It turns out that morale regain can affect those in melee after all. See the final arena battle in the attached. At one point the Van's morale goes from 12 back up to 16, just before he dies.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

I'm not sure if you need a copy of my active mods in order to run that. Just in case, here's my mods directory.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

A couple of other fear-related findings:

1.) I verified Sombre's statement. Modding morale to 99 does not make units go berserk. It does, however, make them behave strangely (cast Ironskin graphic on themselves every turn while not actually casting the spell) and then eat up all your computer memory on Vista. Conclusion: don't mod morale to 99.

2.) Morale 30 is (virtually?) immune to Fear. A small squad of Ditanu (4 + 1 Malik) fought defeated 200 Hydras where Iron Warrior'ed Umbrals would invariable route (even without taking any damage). The Ditanu's morale never dropped below 30 that I saw. Either Fear just doesn't work against Morale 30 units, or the Morale drop is an opposed roll vs. Morale.

-Max

[Tyrant]

Kristoffer O said:


It is 12 random squares close to the fear inspiring one, not necessarily the squares surrounding him.

It might distribute lik this (X=targeted square, M=monster)

OXOOO
XXXXO
XXMXX
OOXOO
OOXOO

I think it targets a square, and if that one is already targeted it tries to target a random neigbopring square of the first attempted square



I use the Prince of Death quite frequently, and have often puzzled over the odd pattern of morale reduction. How come this one guy up close is unaffected but a whole square three ranks back is terrified? This explanation squares completely with my observations.

[MaxWilson]

Yeah, it's the same as how Blessing, Legions of Steel, etc. can sometimes miss guys in the middle. I once had an H2 caster trying to bless himself miss three times in a row!

-Max

[Omnirizon]

hmmm...

if that's how blessing works...

than i wonder if the rabbis ever miss some of the salt? you may buy some kosher salt, only to realize it wasn't actually kosher due to the priest missing. oh how they would snicker at you in heaven.

maybe they're H3 priests, and just divine bless the whole... salt factory.

EDIT: hehe. actually, i don't think kosher salt is even blessed. i think it is called that for some other reason; so bad example.

[cleveland]

I always though "Kosher" meant the salt was slaughtered humanely.

Learn something every day, I guess.

[Lingchih]

Poor salt. Killed so inhumanely

[liga]

I read all the thread but in the end wasn't so clear for me how fear works now ... is JK come back from golfing and can tell us how fear is coded ?

Anyway is always great to see how the game is growing faster than the developers are able to follow ... it is a sort of magic! ... probably in the future, if needed, I'll try to write a "Manual Addenda" also for dom3.

good play
Liga

[DonCorazon]

bump - still curious to hear the definitive explanation for fear mechanics :)

[swapoer]

Still no conclusion?

[Immaculate]

How does one counter fear? Does spamming sermon of courage do anything or does only the first cast effective?

Sorry to necro an old thread- thought it would be better to keep the discussion in the appropriate place.

[thejeff]

Sermon of Courage only works once. It applies a single +2 bonus

Standards make a fairly effective counter to fear, since they raise morale every round. Only up to base+standard bonus, of course.

The best way, if you can arrange it, is to use troops immune to fear: mindless or berserkers.

[Squirrelloid]

The best counter to fear is to use it yourself

[Soyweiser]

Berserk is also a counter for fear.

[Hrum]

How does one counter fear? Does spamming sermon of courage do anything or does only the first cast effective?

Sorry to necro an old thread- thought it would be better to keep the discussion in the appropriate place.
Ideally, you use large groups of troops who have morale high enough to stand up to thugs w/ fear. Of course, that won't help you against Baalz' idea about massed troops with overlapping fear auras. It also doesn't help if you have nothing but troops with crappy morale, but against a single thug troops with high enough morale (and in great enough numbers to keep their average squad morale up) should stick it out longer. Troops hold or rout as a squad, so it's the average morale of the squad that matters.

For example, if you have sacreds like Mictlan's jaguar warriors (another example of how Jags solve many problems?) they start with a base morale of 12, but you are likely to be blessing them which would get them to 14. If they have any experience their morale will be even higher, but let's assume no experience for now. Assume you're facing a Prince of Death with significant fear - I'm not sure exactly how much it reduces each individual guy, but it seems to usually be in the realm of -5 to morale..?

Based on KO's description (and what I've seen agrees) the fear aura isn't just adjacent to the unit with fear, but but extend tendrils of fear to non-adjacent squares. But for our purposes let's say that half of the Jags end up effected by the fear because of the haphazzard way the aura extends out. So 10 of 20 Jags facing a PoD have their fear reduced (by 5? or something in that region?). From a blessed morale of 13 (-1 for being in enemy dominion, which is where Jags frequently find themselves), 10 of the Jags have been reduced to morale 8. That's a huge drop, but the average morale of the unit is still 10 (10.5 rounds down I think?).

That's actually low enough that there's a decent chance they may rout. Add some sermons of courage on them and you can bump their morale up by 2 though. Likewise, Jags do pick up experience really quickly. Jags with 1 star and Sermon of Courage in addition to the Blessing are going in to this fight with morale 17, which would average out to morale 14 in this example where half of them are reduced by 5 from the fear aura. Bringing more Jags to the fight would also increase the number that are probably outside of the fear aura, bringing up the average morale for the unit.

Or you can use demons. All of the 5 types of demons summoned by Ritual of the Five Gates have morale 30, which means they are immune to fear (they can still rout due to 75% HP loss for their side of a battle).

The net result seems to be that mundane troops are very susceptible to fear, but buffed elites like sacreds with higher morale tend to hold out well, and end game troops like demons ignore fear altogether.

--

BTW, a battle I just watched confirming the manual's (and KO's) description of the fear aura AOE pattern (ie. random dispersal extending to non-adjacents):

Dom v3.27:

A bunch of C'tis militia (base morale 7 +1 for friendly dominion = 8) facing...
A Rudra w/ horror helmet (fear 8).


v
vMM
RvMM
vMM
vMM


The lizzards cluster in front of the Rudra as depicted above. The "v" guys in the front, all 5 squares, are affected by the fear aura right away (morale reduced from 8 to 3). The units in the uppermost and lowermost affected "v" squares were not adjacent to the Rudra prior to their morale dropping.

The militia continue forward and surround the Rudra, with some of them briefly recovering morale from 3 back up to 6. As the Rudra is surrounded, some of the milita who recovered morale back up to 6 are reduced again and now have a morale of 1, while others previously unaffected are affected for the first time and brought down to 3 (from 8) and still others have yet to be affected at all by the aura and are still at base morale 8.

Is morale always reduced by fear in increments of 5? In this example, it seems to recover in increments of 3.

What I'm still not sure about is if the morale loss is something that can be resisted by higher morale troops (like my Jag example above, which now seems likely to be quite inaccurate given that morale can be reduced iteratively on subsequent combat turns). Would high morale troops resist the morale loss (a resist role vs their higher base morale?), or would they simply start with a higher base morale allowing them to shrug off the effect for a round or two before the inevitable rout?

[Baalz]

Its hard to tell the exact mechanics on this from testing due to the randomness, but anecdotally units within the fear aura have their morale "damaged" at a level corresponding to the fear aura with random variation, then a route check is performed. Each round morale "heals" a certain amount and if the unit is still in the fear aura (which varies as described) re-damaged. So, with any significant fear the moral is steadily dropping faster than it's healing adjacent to the unit and even very high morale units will drop down and route in a few turns with no casualties. Of course battle has to last that long...which is one obvious counter.

On top of the fear counters already mentioned here, morale 30 units are immune to fear and only (I think) route due to the total hps of their side dropping to 20%. Also, fear has a limited range and morale checks are for the entire squad, so if you've got decent to good moral and a huge squad such that most of the squad's morale is not dropping then you'll be fine (unless you're taking big casualties). Keep in mind berserking and mindless units don't bump up the morale of other units in their squad.

[Foodstamp]

Also, fear has a limited range and morale checks are for the entire squad, so if you've got decent to good moral and a huge squad such that most of the squad's morale is not dropping then you'll be fine (unless you're taking big casualties).

A great way to exploit this is to put slow movers with high morale with fast movers with low morale. For example, Elephants with Hypaspists.

[krpeters]

Bumping -- this is an important thread & should probably get stickied. Or at least referenced somewhere, maybe in the strategy guide?

And any Morale 30 effect vs fear has to be another "special" effect, because my Morale 25 Devata had his Morale swiftly reduced to negative 9 by a pack of ghosts.

I see that some fire items give magic boosing (+2 fire plate, +5 dragon helm). Will the 30 morale special effect occur if morale is manually increased to 30 or higher?

[krpeters]

So I did some testing, with hilarious results.

Devata, friendly dominion, blessed, fire plate and dragon helmet. Comes in with 30 morale, blesses, still has 30, so 30 is the max morale allowed.

He stands and buffs while 40 ghosts eat one point of monkey PD. Then he attacks. On the second round of combat he has a morale of -64 (!!!) and flees. So nothing short of being mindless or berserk will protect against a sufficiently large ghost squad. !!!!

Or being a pretender -- I confirmed that the fear effect does *not* reduce the morale of a pretender. I don't know if it is a special pretender effect or any unit with a native 30 morale rather than buffed will behave the same. But buffing to 30 morale doesn't work.

[Man with No Name]

Bumping -- this is an important thread & should probably get stickied. Or at least referenced somewhere, maybe in the strategy guide?
It is already linked in the Strategy index, and that thread is stickied. The link is located in the 2nd post, "Strategy & Tactics", 3rd link from bottom named "Fear Mechanics" links to this thread.

[krpeters]

Aha, it is indeed there, thank you, I didn't know that.