• Is there a maximum? (e.g. when its already raised with items)
• Can every unit profit from morale? (ranged as well as melee)
• When is it calculated? (start of turn or when the attack/defense happens)
• Does negative morale from ranged units work the same way?
  
  

Where are the people posting here getting this information? I have been searching for answers as to what "morale" in EL does and have come up with contradictory information, most of it at least as old as this thread here. The wiki (https://endless-legend.fandom.com/wiki/Battles) is conspicuously lacking any entries for morale, and I cannot see any source material. Can anyone point me in the right direction please? Thanks

I can't speak for Cat-o-Nine but many of us learned the Morale mechanic in game I suspect.  It can have huge effects on your battles, so read over his messages again and mine below and then see what still doesn't make sense.

His answer about the +-15% and max of +6 or -6 Morale is correct and he covered many of the important factors answering the OP.  The other important part is that units give each other +1 Morale for being adjacent (touching), so keeping your units tightly clustered or working in groups on the battlefield can make a difference.  Don't ever let archers get surrounded by units, they get -1 Morale for every enemy.

Morale will make or break many battles, as units that have great stats on paper will do terribly in battle (unable to land a hit, unable to avoid taking hits or full crits)

You can stack 3 different Morale actions from your own spies to reach the maximum drop of -6 on the enemy, or you and another faction can do the same morale drop level and it will stack.

I found this section that really delves into the unit calculation overall and just barely touches on Morale, but it's all related so maybe see if anything helps.

https://endlesslegend.fandom.com/wiki/Attributes

TL:DR You want more Morale than your enemy if possible and you can use Spies to hurt the enemies and battlefield tactics to boost your unit Morale.

I'd recommend to watch the combat guide series (5 parts total) by Waervyn's World. Pretty useful: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W3eREwr0MmI (i.e. morale is explained starting at 06:25 min.).

hazmat22 wrote:

I can't speak for Cat-o-Nine but many of us learned the Morale mechanic in game I suspect.  It can have huge effects on your battles, so read over his messages again and mine below and then see what still doesn't make sense.

His answer about the +-15% and max of +6 or -6 Morale is correct and he covered many of the important factors answering the OP.  The other important part is that units give each other +1 Morale for being adjacent (touching), so keeping your units tightly clustered or working in groups on the battlefield can make a difference.  Don't ever let archers get surrounded by units, they get -1 Morale for every enemy.

Morale will make or break many battles, as units that have great stats on paper will do terribly in battle (unable to land a hit, unable to avoid taking hits or full crits)

You can stack 3 different Morale actions from your own spies to reach the maximum drop of -6 on the enemy, or you and another faction can do the same morale drop level and it will stack.

I found this section that really delves into the unit calculation overall and just barely touches on Morale, but it's all related so maybe see if anything helps.

https://endlesslegend.fandom.com/wiki/Attributes

TL:DR You want more Morale than your enemy if possible and you can use Spies to hurt the enemies and battlefield tactics to boost your unit Morale.

thanks much, very helpful. This information contradicts some of the information I have found by looking at (equally old) threads on steam, and I also seem to have the difficulty of not being able to test empirically to my satisfaction in-game because the information on the unit mouseover is at least sometimes inaccurate (as cat-o-nine seemed to suggest). In any case, sounds good.

Except for "spies". I assume this is some feature of a DLC I do not own (I am guessing: Shadows).

Yes, that is from the Forgotten faction available in the Shadows DLC, they can do a lot of damage to Morale while hiding in your city as infiltrators.

Glad to help, feel free to clarify or ask further questions as you play =)