Add military units a "morale" parameter (to incentive a Tall gameplay rather than a Wide one)

But isn't this very similar to unit experience/stars? Only possibly less practical or useful?

Because as the gain/loss of morale would be given only to the units within an army that participated in a war, in the case of a drop in morale, that is defeat, in most cases it implies the death of many units, if not all . Soon, it would have almost no effect. On the side of morale gain, it is often necessary to heal the units after the conflict, which excluding wars in own territory or when robbing cities, requires a few turns to retreat to allied territory and heal.

Thus, the fact that the morale bonus fades with time, would make it of little use, since except in cases of extreme advantage (where I believe there is no sense in large gains in morale), the benefited units would not enter combat again in the next turns.

Therefore, I think that the morale system, as proposed, does not add benefits, since its effects would be mainly used when an army retreated, further increasing the disadvantages of those fleeing combat, which only increases the benefit of initiating the attacks.

I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself very well but I wanted to add a mechanic to expand a little the depth of war that would depend just on won battles (make an army retreat would not count) so to enrich the combat tactics (ex: trying to engage less major battles in favor of the minor ones to build morale). I wouldn't plan to make it an important part of combat-management but a nice addition that would favor even more the planning of new war strategies than just make most battles rely on numbers/technological innovation. I was thinking about this "parameter" to expand the game prospective to new horizons; taking care of the morale of your troops (ex: raising/lowering army expenses in order to raise morale easies/waste less money) may offer the creation of new original civics/tenets/LTs and incentive a "tall" gameplay rather than a "wide" one (to be honest, who wouldnt create a thermopoli scenario where a handful of hoplites resists to a huge persian army?)

A1y0sh4 wrote:
taking care of the morale of your troops (ex: raising/lowering army expenses in order to raise morale easies/waste less money) may offer the creation of new original civics/tenets/LTs and incentive a "tall" gameplay

Ex: having a small army may allow more easily to build up your morale while having a big one may need to lower its founding (and add a CS penalty). At this point army maintenance cost should also (slightly) depend on the number of total number of troops available (but should mercenaries armies rise the costs of all armies or just of the other mercenaries armies?)

what Atens7 said. not a great idea