Morale Completely Inaccurate

    First off let me point out, I really enjoy this game. I've played for awhile now and I've started to notice a few features that seem completely illogical. The largest of these being Morale. In a specific game I am playing this issue is rampant. I have at least one or two provinces a day revolt for reasons that I do not understand at all. I have 5 units on each and a large surplus of resources on a daily basis yet on top of the revolts I am constantly finding my troops doing poorly because they have low morale.


    Looking at the negative modifiers I have for province morale I find myself perplexed.


    I am given a negative modifier for distance from my capital but how does that make any logical sense? Does anyone else in their day to day life find themselves dispirited from being far away from their capital because I surely do not. And a simple rebuilding of my capital fixes this? Where is the logic here? My province literally adjacent to my capital has a negative modifier for distance from my capital... they are RIGHT NEXT TO IT!?


    I am given a negative modifier for being in a war yet I have won every single battle and have not even had to retreat once. Why is victory so disheartening to my troops? Shouldn't they be celebrating with high morale?


    Lastly, I am given a negative modifier for "neighbors". Now I'm not quite sure what they mean by this but if I am peacefully living next to another nation why do I have a negative modifier for it? As well, I have controlled some of these provinces for over a week now yet I still have negative modifiers for "neighbors". Then on top of that, if the neighboring province is at war with me, I get a SECOND negative modifier for ENEMY NEIGHBORS? How does that make any sense whatsoever?


    Can someone please explain this to me? Morale seems to be completely and utterly illogical and I think it is a necessary and important part of the game that we have no control over whatsoever. We really don't have any options either to increase morale other than spending money as buildings only seem to increase the maximum morale. It just doesn't make sense.


    EDIT: Very much so enjoying this most recent update (7/15/2020 is the current date). Really made all my issues with morale go away now that it doesn't revolt and kill all 10 units stationed on it. Thank you!

    Edited once, last by DasUb3rn3ss: Congratulating you on a job well done ().

    It is all game mechanics and it is all based on WAR time not living peacefully, all nations must expand to win the game this means conquering and taking thru aggression...it makes perfect sense to me...


    You keep saying 'me and I' as if it is ONLY your country and every one else in the map is not also dealing with same modifiers to their morale, you compensate all these things by building infrastructure


    As for provinces revolting that is a bonus as you do not have to support these provinces for a week until they gain enough morale to support themselves much less their conquering country...


    FYI.... when your cup is 1/2 empty it is also 1/2 full, here are some + modifiers for infrastructure > lvl 5 fort is +25% morale, lvl 4 factory +10% morale, rail road +7% morale, Harbor +7% morale = total of +49% on morale


    good luck, have fun, enjoy game

    If this is a game that is meant to have all nations expand and conquer through aggression then why does morale give you negative modifiers for being at war and negative modifiers for how far away territory is from your territory? Seems like if they wanted you to go to war and wanted you to expand they wouldn't make your morale go down for doing so.


    I say me and I because I speak for myself. I am sure many other players are experiencing the same issues that I am and they make just as little sense when they do.


    I do not believe that is the case, whenever I take a new territory my resources are immediately affected whether it be an increase of a certain resource or a decrease in food from having more population. Provinces revolting is NOT a bonus as they require me to backtrack to conquer territory on its best days and on its worst it becomes a part of a nation that I'm not even at war with.


    As for increasing morale, unless you are spending money, it is impossible to build any of those buildings you have listed there in less than a day so revolts happen quite frequently regardless.

    I agree with DasUb3rn3ss as I as well find the moral in this game quite frustrating. Maybe an improvement would be to have the negative effect for being far from your capital come in play only when the land is not originally part of your country or is not attached by land or is maybe 6 provinces away from your capital? As well I do like the domino effect of neighbouring provinces effecting your own but I think it can get a bit out of hand as it creates a domino effect. Also the negative moral from being neighbours to another country is stupid. The only time that effect should be valid is when the neighbour is at war with you.

    I'm curious. How is the "neighbour" calculated? I couldn't find any reason why some have +9 while others -7

    (moral was increasing in all adjacent ones and it was all about 80%)

    Did this update not happen?


    from the 19 may announcement:


    "Therefore we adjusted the province morale baseline in a way that at the start of the game all provinces are in a healthy and stable state which can only be changed by actions within the game."

    Quote from Cycle9

    Did this update not happen?


    from the 19 may announcement:


    "Therefore we adjusted the province morale baseline in a way that at the start of the game all provinces are in a healthy and stable state which can only be changed by actions within the game."

    It should have happened. If you happen to enter a new game round where that is not the case, please let me know.

    One weird bug I find with moral is when one province that was taken over then recaptured by myself seems to lose way more moral then other provinces. I find all provinces around it that I took over are increasing in moral and are doing fine, yet these seemingly random ones keep losing moral and being turned into rebels despite my best efforts to place troops on it and create propaganda offices.

    Quote from rioyter

    I'm curious. How is the "neighbour" calculated? I couldn't find any reason why some have +9 while others -7

    (moral was increasing in all adjacent ones and it was all about 80%)

    Disclaimer: I don't play S1 I accidentally wound up in this thread but I had this same question in 1914. A little data collection and it was pretty simple to reverse engineer the neighbor penalty in 1914 and I would suspect you have something similar.


    In 1914 each neighboring province adds or subtracts from the neighbor bonus based upon it's own morale. the stats look like this:


    • 100 morale +2
    • 91 morale +1
    • 71 +0
    • 61 -1
    • 51 -2
    • 41 -3
    • 31 -4
    • 21 -5

    I never really looked to see if it's -6 below 20 because those provinces are rare. You also get -5 for enemy provinces but that's under a separate heading.

    Some provinces like islands and peninsulas only have 1 or 0 neighbors but 4-6 is most common with an occasional 7 and even an 8 meaning you can have anywhere from -35/40 neighbor bonus to +14/16.

    I'm sure if the neighbor penalty is displayed you can make algebraic examples of provinces you own and solve for what the penalties must be. Start with a province with 1 neighbor and look at that neighbors morale and you get a solid data point right away. Then find a province with 2 neighbors and you can probably figure out how the two neighbors are impacting the bonus/penalty. Once you have a couple of data points you can cancel them from other equations and cut way down on the variables. It took me about 5-10 minutes to figure it out if you have enough provinces with different morale it should be pretty easy.

    The only question would be finding the exact inflection point in the range but I strongly suspect the increases happen on _1 (i.e. 31-40, 41-50 etc)

    Quote

    If what You say is true then I think a change would be needed as the moral penalty max should not be much greater for negatives then it is for positives. A 100 moral province should have a positive impact on moral equal enough to cancel out one that has a max negative effect.


    What I said is 100% accurate for 1914. Someone who plays S1 can figure out if it's the same or similar for you.

    You're mistaken about the bonuses. It's actually fairly well balanced already. It's possible to control your morale with the buildings offered (at least in 1914) fortress/factory/harbor/railroad/capital all give a morale bonus and if you're not at war with a bunch of people it's pretty easy to get your morale up to 100 (it will naturally go up to 100 in your home provinces and then they will radiate out the bonus morale). The problem with morale in 1914 is from the distance penalties becoming overwhelming in the late game for the players who are winning.

    If you take 5 new provinces near your own land they put a short term negative impact on your existing provinces but your existing provinces put a positive impact on the new ones. The new ones won't actually need a lot of positive to begin rising because they start at 25 morale so unless there are -75 points of downward pressure on the morale of the new province it will be rising. As it rises and it's neighbors rise they will exert less and less negative pressure on each other. if you have 6 provinces all touching (not exactly possible for 6 provinces to all touch the other 5 but as an example of a cluster it still works) each other at 25 morale they can exert -25 on each but once they rise to 31 morale it will only be -20 on each. In the mean time it's your job to add some buildings to the newly captured land and fortresses make an excellent first building. Fortresses have an opportunity cost in that they use up precious metal but that's what this game is about, managing scarcity.

    I have liked playing The Great War but the last updates if they remain as such give me no reason to ever play again.


    Let's see the logic of this "war game".


    You take a nation which starts with 50% morale and dropping if you do nothing about it.

    If you don't, it stabilises to 40-44%. That means you are an unpopular leader and have to convince your people to go o war. Your morale trend works against you. You start as if your people say: "He is going to get us all killed".

    (Although true condition in WW1 was full enthusiasm). Right from the beginning AI reads your intentions (that you will go to war and without doing anything AI nations start trade embargoe-ing you.


    You spend your initial money and resources to build propaganda offices and infrastructure , forts and railroads (not all of them of course and not all at once). Then you wait since these buildings take time (and are extremely expensive) and if you miss the game day change, you have to wait another day. Your aim is to raise production developing a war economy.


    Then you decide to wage war. Since you are unpopular leader in your own country and took you 2-3 days to earn some support for a "respectable" production rate, you can imagine what it will take to do in conquered countries...


    When you capture an enemy province you need a enormous amount of force to maintain order. Since morale is low it will take a day to build a propaganda office. (note: The game logic makes propaganda offices an OBLIGATION). Multiply this by 12 provinces. Just for one country. The time and resources required to "win" a single war with another country are enormous.

    So you ask yourself: why would I start a war?


    In order to make strategic allocation of resources and money you have to focus on order, not war. Super complicated factors that calculate "morale" prevents you from deciding what to do with your sparse money. Be prepared for enemy province to have morale modifier (due to distance, enemies, neighbors etc) -30 to -50. That means you need a Level 2 propaganda office just to make this province "workable".


    In the meantime you wish to not be attacked because it will require you to occupy provinces you cannot afford and will do you no good at all.


    A brief example of "morale logic". A core coastal province surrounded by core provinces has morale denominator "neighbors" -9 (must be the deadly sharks' threat). The coastal province next to it, adjacent to an ally has -6 (!!). A core province next to a neutral country has -3 (!!!!!!!). A regained province occupied with 5 conscripts from rebellion next to the capital with 60% morale, rebelled again.

    Morale counts at the end of the game day, but not rebellion. This can happen any minute during the day.


    In the meantime you have been left behind in research, and war making tools (units upgrades etc). Buildings and weapons are super expensive and very time consuming. Based on such focus on "order" I can't see why they exist

    (i.e. 1 day to research a railgun and 3 days-in positive morale province- to produce 1!!!! )


    Forming a coalition helps only to know which sides of your nation are safe. Nothing else. Diplomacy is useless.

    So what's left? To occupy capitals, or just to plunder (since it is impossible to maintain order in all provinces).


    You play a war game that doesn't favour war at all (it heavily penalises it), or cooperation, or diplomacy, or war strategic planning-let alone tactics.

    It reduce you to a policeman on the one hand (thinking complicated nonsensical morale factors to maintain order while dealing with crumbs of production's resources) and at the same time it encourages you to be a pirate plundering capitals around to get your "morale" dose against other "morale junkies".


    Unless my other option is to watch the paint dry on the wall, I can see no motivation to play this game (which was my favourite) with current logic. "Strategy game" to think on illogical and self conflictual "game factors" not only is not fun, it seriously harms one's mood.


    Such a pity

    Quote from Cycle9

    Useless drivel - does NOT apply to Sone!

    I pointed out in my initial post that I don't play S1 and as such someone who does play would have to test things.

    After seeing your post, which adds nothing to the conversation I tried to read the rules but I could not find much of anything as far as rules for the game goes so I joined a game and the interface while visually attrative gives less information than 1914.

    The buildings clearly state how they impact morale and the overall neighbor bonus/penalty is still displayed, here's less granularity so it's much more difficult to collect the data needed to assess how each neighbor impacts things.

    Overall my initial feeling about S1 is it seems to demand a lot more effort to actually get into the game and resource scarcity seems likely to be even worse than 1914 given all the people complaining about morale. It's definitely one of the least intuitive game interfaces I have ever seen and the tutorial went offline after a few instructions. My guess is a huge percentage of players stop playing immediately.