Fear mechanics

[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]

Originally Posted by Baalz

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?

[Man with No Name]

Originally Posted by krpeters

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.

[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.