In real life most soldiers are not completely fearless machines. Even some of the most disciplined soldiers in history would run away.
Morale is particularly low for early tier units. Let’s say you do a scout rush and one of your scouts dies. Every scout in the vicinity will run away in terror. Same with militia, and feudal archers. Rushing would be significantly nerfed since early units are cowards. Under the sphere of influence of a town center, units have much more morale. This will favor the defenders significantly.
Every unit in the game has a morale system. How it functions, you lose control over a unit and they run back to their town center in fear if the unit morale drops too low. Losing units can cause nearby units morale to drop, and the sight of particular units can cause morale to drop. Monks units are needed to keep units morale up. When is a unit is terrified, they have bonus speed when they run back to their town center but you have no control over them.
Elephants have the ability to roar, which instantly panics a unit without a monk nearby to keep their morale up. Camels/elephants can scare horse units and cause them to run away.
Not a good idea for this type of change to aoe2
11 Likes
We have some others making some insane suggestions already in threads I shall not mention. So fair is fair.
It seems to be one of the viable solution of the elephant problem. Maybe only the scare part that will just simply debuff cav so lower their damage or armor without affacting the control of the unit (which I think losing control is not so AOE2). We already have debuff mechanism in Obuch and area attack like Flaming Camel and Petard. Just apply the debuff with Zero damage of an area to cav unit is fine but not sure when will the debuff end.
I like the concept of a morale system.
Eles breaking foot troops’ morale, gunpowder units breaking animals morale, outnumbered armies running away, units or even civs with unbreakable morale, monks taking a crucial part as a morale influencer, etc… Lot of potential.
But, I don’t know if lose the control of your units could be a good thing.
Maybe units could have 3 states. Low, Normal and High moral.
In low moral, units suffer a stats decrease. So, you can chose if keep fighting or run away.
In normal moral, nothing happens.
In High moral, units have a stats buff.
Just a raw idea that actually, I don’t like it much, because it makes the snowball effect in battles even more strong.
Other people also having bad suggestions doesn’t change the fact that this is a terrible idea. That is not how AoE games work
6 Likes
This game is not total war you cant just give a moral to units and keep everything unchanged.
If the elephants roaring demoralised enemies then sounds of gun powder weapons should do the same to elephants and cannons should be manned by crews and killing them should make the canons ours.
6 Likes
Setting aside balance, being unable to control your units is bound to be extremely frustrating and not fun.
9 Likes
In real life most workers are not completely tireless machines. Even the most hard-working laborers in history needed to sleep sometimes. Why not add a mechanic where villagers have to go home and sleep for 8 hours, plus taking lunch breaks while they’re working?
True, but maybe let’s not make the existing “insane suggestions” the gold standard to justify more such proposals.
Interesting concept…
For other games.
4 Likes
Enemy units running away would be counterintuitive for melee units anyway. If an Archer is running away from my Elephant, it’ll just be my Elephant running more!
This does not sound like a fun mechanic at all.
3 Likes
Im fine with discussing Balance, QoL Features and maybe a Gimmick mechanic Here and there, but im Not a Fan of the extreme gameplay chaning auggestions here in the Forum.
4 Likes
yep, completely with you there. No need to completely reinvent the wheel.
3 Likes
Then name should be something like “Total War: Age of Empires II” 
1 Like
Although 99% of the reply don’t like this idea. I still want to reaffirm that it can be implement like a debuff mechanism like obuch which decrease unit armor or attack but in aura like Petard explosion. Without adding any stun or lose of control. Elephant can have his ability which maybe a charge attack etc
Actually AoE4 has similar mechanic, HRE monks gave +1 armor and +15% damage boost to soldiers, and camels has an aura that reduces the damage of nearby enemy cavalry units by 20%. Also some buildings and units also have similar effects.
1 Like
A debuff aura is totally different than what OP proposed. That is something that actually could be reasonably done.
1 Like
This is a niche custom scenario idea; not a permanent change suggestion for ranked ladder games. Ranked games are already a full wall snooze-fest, now you want to nerf early aggression even more?
1 Like