So, I'll admit this is my first playthrough, and I had fun through act 1, and as of Act 2 I feel I'm in a minority who enjoy the little crusade battle minigame. But its somewhat ruined for me by how Morale works. It seems I cannot rebuild forces or take any time off, because apparently if I go a week without fighting, I'm the worst general ever or whatever the game thinks. I tried looking but couldn't find an actual answer, so is there some way to outright turn morale off, or at least heavily increase the banner timers?

Morale is not a problem once you sort out how to play the crusade. All you have to do is regularly win battles, take forts and hold the forts you take (i.e. list any sieges quickly)

I'll leave you my comments from another thread on how to play the crusade and an excellent guide vid by cRPG Bro.

CRUSADE MANAGEMENT

1. Grab every soldier you can and for Act 2 and most of Act 3 resist the temptation to spend money on anything else (with the exception of a couple of important items for Ember and Nenio). Every time you can grab some soldiers, do so, as many as possible.

2. Choose a mage general.

3. Notwithstanding 1, above all else get archers and later in Act 3 turn them into Marksmen asa soon as you can. The combo of mage general and marksman is overwhelmingly the most powerful weapon you have in the crusade. When your stack of marksmeen has been regularly 1-shotting enemy stacks fior a while split them into two stacks in the same army. Soon they will 1-shot a stack each on turn 1.

4. After spending as much as you can on soldiers, spend everything else on buildings in your forts. You want a garrison and an archery range, especially an archery range, as these all increase your weekly recruitment quota.

5. Your army morale is kept at max by winning battles, taking forts and keeping forts. Just hunt down demon armies and take them out systematically, capturing forts as you go. If you pace it right and choose you battles wisely you will have zero problems with morale. I've had three green shields and 120 morale from the start of Act 2 until the end of Act 3 where I am now.

6. If you have a mage general and your opponent doesn't you're army is much stronger than the guide numbers imply. The reverse is true if the enemy has a mage general and archers. You should treat demon armies with mage generals with extreme caution and don't take them on unless you have to. If you have to (as you do in Act 2 for example) then throw a save before the attempt and if you can't figure out how to defeat them without losing any troops yourself yet, fight something else/wait for next recruitment batch and try again.

7. I.e. don't lose soldiers and don't lose battles. Make sure you build a hospital in each of your forts as these each provide a stacking 5% increase to your field hospital size. It is this field hospital buffer that enables you to beat these mage generals without losing soldiers (since you can't stop them casting horrible spells on your stacks until you've killed all of theirs, so they always get at least one turn to blow up one of your stacks)

8. In Act 3 you want to get a second mage general. They will start as L1 noob but if you put them in charge of you main army and and go slaughter some easy-peasy little demon armies they will level up like a rocket. This is because your big stack of archers will carry them through the early levels.

9. Do experiment with various tactics against enemy mage generals. You can replay a battle as many times as you like from an autosave on turn 1. It is surprising how quite a small change in your tactics can make a huge difference and bring home an elusive victory with no permanent losses.

10. On troop unit selection only three things matter: damage output, damage output and damage output. In practice the only units that matter are footmen/conscripts (not because they are good but because you get a metric crap ton of them), archers/marksmen, champions, hedge knights and hell knights. Everything else is either trash or you can't get enough of them. "Tank" units are utterly useless and a waste of space (shield dwarfs and currasiers for example). The army game is all about kill, kill, kill.

11. For levelling up your mage generals there only three things that matter. a) a heal spell (you only need one of these), b), Master of Maneuver I,II,III etc (this is what increases the number of stacks you can have in an army), and 3. offensive spells (which start with Scorching Ray, move on to AoEs like fireball and Ice storm etc). You won't get one of these every level so pick what you like from what you can, but never, ever, miss a Master of Maneuver or an offensive spell.

12. In act 3 there are various decisions you can take, including opting for the Monument building, that increase the chances of your units getting a bonus shot for their turn in battles usually by 5% each. Take every single one of these opportunities and build all the monuments you can. The reason is simple, your archers will get more double tap turns, often on turn one, and your enemy will be slaughtered all the faster.

Play it like this on standard crusade difficulty and it will be a breeze and will earn you a load of bonuses.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJGEOn5vhrg

I am towards the end of Act 3 there are no armies left on the screen.. The only Forts left are unreachable and am losing morales. Are there any Mods or way to change in game commands?

Originally posted by steven12105858:

I am towards the end of Act 3 there are no armies left on the screen.. The only Forts left are unreachable and am losing morales. Are there any Mods or way to change in game commands?

You should get a few demon armies spawning in to attack one of your forts occasionally, at least I did when I was in the same situation as you. Hopefully those will top off your morale.

I felt a bit like you probably do about this, it felt like I was being punished for running the war too well.

I think the definitive crusade quides will end up saying "Towards the end of Act 3 stretch your battles out if your morale is 120, don't kill all the demon armies at once".

The mechanical problem is that morale is capped at 120. I would say that's OK provided Owlcat amended morale so that the tick down froze while there were no further reachable demon armies on the map to kill.

just use toybox