Morale

Morale of an army represents that army ability to stand up to the enemy and not run away during the battle. The higher the better.

The morale has several components. Each race/culture has a base morale. This morale affects all contingents of troops belonging to that race or culture. To the base morale is summed the contingent type morale. For example, a militia has a very low morale and a Knight has a very high morale).

Then the above morale is modified to take into account the circumstances in which the battle takes place, namely the contingents current experience (so armies should be trained to fight well), status (so armies should be rested to fight well), terrain modifiers (so you should chose the location that suits your army better, if possible) and order modifiers. Note that all modifiers are checked contingent per contingent, so the same army may (and normally will) have a different morale value for each contingent, and the side’s morale for the battle is the weighted average of all participating contingents.

Morale is decisive to determine the winner of a field battle. During the battle each side’s morale will be lowered per phase according to the opponent’s troops, and when a side reaches morale 0 it breaks and flees from the battle field (unless the enemies morale is also negative and even lower at that phase of the battle), even if it caused more casualties to the opposing side.