How much important is troop moral?

[Misery]

I find myself torn between getting a new item that raises morale of 2 stacks in my armies, and another one that gives 500-700 leadership. Do you play with positive morale troops or just don't care about it ?

[Infiltrator]

Troop morale is very important. It affects defense, attack and crit chance, all important stats.

[DGDobrev]

Positive morale is extremely important. It makes your troops improve their effectiveness.

XIII. Morale.

In a nutshell, morale shows your troops' motivation to fight for you. If their motivation is high, they'll fight even better, as if they're not themselves. If their motivation to fight is low, they'll fight poorly.

Morale can go up and down when mixing troops, learning hero skills (like the conviction skill in the Mind tree), using unit abilities, or when receiving positive or negative effects in battle. You can check the current morale by examining the unit info at all times.

Here's how morale affects the units fighting capabilities:
+3 Morale (High) - +30% to base Attack and Defense; +40% critical hit chance
+2 Morale (Good) - +20% to base Attack and Defense; +30% critical hit chance
+1 Morale (Positive) - +10% to base Attack and Defense; +20% critical hit chance
0 Morale (Neutral) - no positive or negative bonuses
-1 Morale (Low) - -20% to base Attack and Defense; -25% critical hit chance
-2 Morale (Bad) - -35% to base Attack and Defense; -50% critical hit chance
-3 Morale (Critical) - -50% to base Attack and Defense; -100% critical hit chance

This is directly from the KBAP info thread. And here's from the high scores thread:

I'm a strong supporter of high morale, even if it costs me a unit to carry around (like the royal griffins, +1 morale all humans). +30% Atk, +30% def, 140% of normal chance to crit is just uber. Top it with some items and you get something crazy. Take a look at the last screenshot. With these paladins every hit is a crit (however, there is some margin for missing, because I think everything is capped at 95%), because I even have prayer lvl 3, which adds an additional 7% crit chance. I really wanted to try it out along side the warrior's last tier skill "Retribution" (up to 20% increased crit chance when counterattacking), but it's hard to spare that much runes if you're not a warrior. In addition to that, my entire army (even the priests) had a chance to crit over 60%, which is 2 out of 3. Suffice to say, that's like having not 33k, but 50k leadership. There is only one unit that's hard to kill with this army... The ancient vampires have the uncanny knack to evade crits all the time.


EDIT: Fixed the formula by which I counted up the "leadership" you gain by critting.
For example, if you have:
=> 189 Paladins with 94% chance to crit for a total of 33700 leadership
=> this is close to 100% chance to crit (and they did crit in pretty much every round both on defense and offense)
=> a crit is worth 1.5 of the base damage, so you can practically multiply the leadership by 1.5 and get the total value of your troop
=> the result is that this troop actually weighs 50550 leadership or 284 Paladins with no bonuses

Wicked, right? The same goes for troops that crits, say 50% of the time.
For example:
=> You have 481 inquisitors with a chance to crit 50% for 33700 leadership
=> that's a 1 out 2 crits with a multiplier of 1.5
=> so the leadership of the troop is 33700*1.25 = 42125
=> that is as if you have 602 inquisitors without bonuses

Meaning morale and crit can actually "improve" your leadership indirectly. I hope this helps

[Misery]

Thanks, also is there any items/units that help raise the dragon's morale ?

I really miss the mind tree skill which allowed you to have undead/demon in your armies without losing morale in KBTL now..

[Infiltrator]

AFAIK there's only one ability that raises the dragon's morale - the Voice of the Dragon, on the bottom of the paladin tree (you have to max it as initially it only affects animals). But obviously since morale affects base def/att it grants SUBSTANTIAL amounts of def/att to dragons.

[Zechnophobe]

Voice of the dragon is amazingly good. Dragon's are already one of the better classes of units, and giving them a solid percent bonus to their quality is crazy. I don't have the stats handy, but I think green dragons have like 50 defense. +2 morale gives +20% to that, meaning they get 10 points of defense boost. So the value of those three skill points in 'voice of the dragon' is the same as having 10 higher defense, and likely 10 higher attack, as well as more critical chance as well... and that's for greens. Black dragons, which are otherwise hard to enhance, are even more potently effected.

[Saridu]

Unfortunately not only is voice of the dragon at the bottom of the mind tree but it also requires two branches as prerequisites plus maxing the skill itself - it's fantastically expensive. As a paladin I was torn between going for this skill or maxing persuasion (+1 to all humanoids), dragons and Royal Griffins don't mix (sneaky that one) so I decided to go with lizards and humanoids for now.

Now that I think about it, Griffins count as animals so they would be boosted by VOTD and nullify the dragon despiser penalty (?) (Sorry can't check right now)

[Zechnophobe]

Well, my Warrior got Voice of the Dragon, so your Paladin should be able to do it no problem! And seriously, if you are 'going dragon' I can't see why you wouldn't get it.