WAD = Working As Designed, i.e. not a bug.

Regarding the definition of "dwarves" for the Ale Barrel, does it affect giants, who are considered a "dwarven unit", or just units who are literally dwarves (dwarves, miners, foremen, cannoneers, alchemists, engineers)?

I don't care whether they do or don't drink (anything). They are dwarves and I had a formation of dwarves and I bought that artefact and it didn't worked (as advertised:)). There is no WAD on the contrary, someone forgot to add to the artefact's effects the droids.

And it's not the only item with morale specs that doesn't work properly. These problems appeared with KB:AP' new units and artefacts.

How do you know that? To me, it makes perfect sense that an Ale Barrel wouldn't affect the morale of machines. And we already know that many of the descriptions are either wrong or misleading, so unless a developer can confirm it, I'm not convinced this is a bug. I think the problem is the ambiguous description rather than the effect.

Actually, the problem is you have two rules, so which one takes precedent. I eluded to how Droids have a Neutral Morale but when you swap their army slots around. (every other unit in there ends up neutral, even when they shouldn't). But I digress, one should have asked, why are they Neutral morale to begin with?

Droids and Repair Droids are of the type "Mechanical".

Select your unit, mouse over the Mechanical description.

"
Mechanical creatures have neither mind nor living flesh. Properties include: Always neutral Morale. Immune
to effects of Mind. Immune to Poison and vulnerability to magic. Cannot be healed or resurrected.
"

Always neutral Morale.

But they are dwarves! They cannot be resurrect or healed, but they CAN be repaired (which is not noted here, but stated elsewhere with the repair skills).

So, which one takes precedent? Apparently the Mechanical attribute. It makes logical sense too and is subtly documented. :)

It gets far more be-fuddled with the whole "sniper set" archer stuffs, yet it works on axe throwing goblins. :) Since most of the bow weapons only help archers with bows; a rather small subset of units. :(

My suggestion is to save often. I have dozens of saved games at every key point just to check for this sort of thing. :)

That said, there are a lot of the Human items where it says "+1 morale to all troops" but since it is of the Human race, it really meant to say "+1 morale to all HUMAN troops".

Unfortunately, the droid thing is fairly clear. Droids can never have morale bonuses. Until they all get turned into "I, Robot" style machines. :) Maybe in King's Bounty 2015: The Isaac Asimov Edition. :)

Giants are considered Dwarves, as such, the Ale Barrel affects them!

actually the problem is this is a bug and that's all there is to it. The race is "higher" as importance than their description unless stated otherwise (and it's not stated otherwise anywhere). so to me it's a bug. It makes no sense whatsoever to have some creatures belong to a certain race but to have no bonuses (like the other dwarves do in this case). They should have been neutral in the first place.

I agree that it's confusing, but if the developers intended it to work that way, then by definition it's not a bug. A bad design decision, perhaps, but not a bug.

The item descriptions in general are too vague and don't always indicate clearly enough which units are affected and which aren't.

Nope. That is not a bug. Have you played Heroes III, Mandea? Golems (from the Tower town) were similary mechanical creatures. Now, in HOMMIII if all your troops were the same race, all creatures received a +1 morale bonus, then there were skills, spells and artifacts to increase morale. But no matter what you did... Stone and Steel Golems were always on Neutral morale.

It's logical... how could you motivate a machine to raise its spirits? ;) On the upper hand - this made Golems useable in Undead armies, as they never get negative Morale either. They were also immune to the spells Sorrow and Mirth that affect Morale.

Droids in AP are the same category, it is not a bug they do not increase their morale.

Reminds me of the movie poster in Discworld II - "Attack of the 50-Foot Dwarf". :grin: The way races are defined in KB isn't always quite intuitive...

Well, if I were to think of KB as a "logical" game I wouldn't be playing at all. :D
It doesn't matter that it's logical or not. I don't understand the reason of droids being dwarves. What's in it for them in this case? just an icon ?

Well, someone had to make the Droids. :) Engineers can repair droids and they also provide bonuses to all droids in the team (I think more defense and speed).

If it was like a special race of Droids that came out of no where...

Anyways, there is usually a subclass of race within each race. e.g. Moldok's "bleeding wounds" and adrenaline boost buffs only work on Orcs... not Goblins, even if they are both the Orc race. However, they both benefit from Moldok's +1 to speed and +1 initiative.

That said, look into both the -X% leadership in droids AND -X% leadership in dwarves items for some additional firepower for the droids. Then you will be really glad they were part of the dwarven race. :)