Greetings warriors of Calradia!
Morale is a key factor in warfare. An army can be
greater in number, better trained and exceptionally equipped,
but without the will to fight, none of that matters.
Conversely, high morale can see people through extreme
hardships, giving them the determination to press on and
continue the fight long after all hope is lost, only to grasp
victory from the jaws of defeat. In this week's blog, we take
a look at how morale is implemented in Bannerlord, discussing
its effects on both the campaign map and the battlefield.
On the campaign map, each party has a party morale
rating. Your party’s morale is shown in the lower-right
panel. If you mouse over this, you can see a tooltip that
shows how it will change day to day and what factors currently
affect it. Party morale changes mainly due to the result of
your actions. Successful battles and raids will increase
morale whereas excessive casualties and actions like
sacrificing some troops during retreats will reduce it. Also,
failing to pay wages or letting your troops go hungry are also
rather detrimental!
If you manage to keep your
party’s morale high on the map, you will enjoy a number
of benefits. Your party will gain a slight speed boost and
will also gain a small advantage in battle simulations. On the
other hand, if you allow morale to fall below a threshold,
some of your troops may desert your party to look for better
employment.
While party morale is quite important
on the campaign map, it is arguably more critical during
battles. Medieval battles were fought in close quarters, which
was no doubt incredibly stressful for the participants.
Typically, battles were as likely to be decided on superior
morale as fighting prowess. 
At the beginning of the battle, each soldier is
given a starting morale based on their party’s overall
morale rating. After this, whenever a troop is killed or
wounded (up to a maximum of ten), friendly troops that are
nearby receive a morale penalty. This morale penalty is
modified according to the commander’s skills and perks,
and also other factors. For example, troops standing in a
shield wall receive less penalty. Conversely, troops get a
morale boost when one of their number scores a kill nearby. In
practice, when two bodies of soldiers meet in the field and a
fight ensues, morale will tend to drop over time. If one side
is decisively winning, the other side will lose morale rather
quickly. On the other hand, if the fight is more or less
balanced, then both sides will lose morale, albeit more slowly
over time. Whichever way the combat goes, usually some
soldier's morale will eventually drop to a point where they
will panic and start to run away. This is quite dangerous,
because every time a soldier panics, this will also create a
morale penalty on nearby troops and a few troops running away
can easily create a chain reaction where an entire formation
breaks and starts to run away. 
We think that our interpretation of morale in
Bannerlord can be summed up by a single historical battle: The
Battle of Towton. During the battle, Edward IV led his troops
from the front while his Lancastrian opponent, Henry VI,
remained in nearby York. Edward inspired his numerically
inferior force to a crushing victory over the Lancastrians
after battling on for hours until reinforcements arrived,
breaking the morale of the Lancastrians in the process. This
started with a trickle of men deserting the battlefield,
followed by battalions, before eventually, the entire army
began to rout, where it is said that more troops were lost
during the ensuing panic than died during the actual fighting.
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