Morale and rout

How a squad's morale is made up, what makes the game test it, what a failed test does, and where routed troops end up.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake12 min read

A battle in Dominions 6 usually ends because one side gives up, not because one side is dead. Units run when the fight turns against them, and the rules that decide when are the subject of this page: what morale is made of, which events make the game test it, how the test is settled, and what a routed unit does afterwards.

Every figure here is one the game’s manual states. We have not re-measured them, so this page reports what Illwinter says the rules are. Where the manual is silent, the last section says so.

For the blow-by-blow side of a fight, see Combat. For the unit statistics that feed morale, see Unit attributes. For how the three kinds of physical damage differ, see Damage types.

Morale belongs to the squad

Each unit has its own morale value, but a test is never run on one unit. The value that gets tested is the average of the morale ratings of everyone in the squad. A squad is also the thing that runs: when its test fails, the whole squad routs together.

The manual notes a few rare exceptions in which a unit routs on its own. A mount that loses its rider is one; magic fear, below, is another.

What adds to or takes from morale

A unit’s morale can be shifted by a number of things. Blessed sacred units gain one point. On top of that, the manual lists these bonuses for anyone:

• one point for fighting inside a friendly dominion;
• one point for fighting in the unit’s home province, meaning the province it was recruited in;
• the leading commander’s leadership bonus, which depends further on the squad’s formation and on how many squads that commander leads;
• one point per level of the Inspirational ability on the squad’s commander, which can also be negative;
• the bonus of the best Standard carried by any unit in the squad. Only the best one counts, and it lifts the whole squad.

Leadership and the number of squads

A commander can lead up to five squads, and the effect of leadership on morale depends on the commander’s base leadership rating and on how many squads are in the command. The manual gives these cases:

• a poor leader (rating 10) puts a penalty on a single squad and an extra one on every squad beyond the first;
• at 50, leading one or two squads costs nothing, and each squad past that costs a point;
• at 100, the squads gain a point when there are three or fewer, and lose a point for each squad above three;
• at 150, up to four squads gain two points, and adding a fifth takes a point from all of them;
• at 200, all five squads gain three points.

The morale effect is based on the commander’s base rating. Experience can raise a commander’s leadership, letting it lead more troops, but the morale bonuses stay where the base rating put them.

Mixing and formation

Some squad compositions and layouts cost a point of morale:

• mixing undisciplined units with normal ones makes the whole squad undisciplined, and takes a point;
• mixing undead or demons with ordinary units takes a point;
• the sparse line and skirmish formations take a point. Undisciplined squads are forced into skirmish formation, and the Skirmisher ability cancels the penalty for the unit that has it.

The magic bonus

Separately from all of that, a unit has a magic bonus to morale, which spells, items and abilities push around. It can run from -10 to +1. Fear lowers it, and the priestly spells Sermon of Courage and Fanaticism raise it, as do some other effects. If it is negative, it recovers by one about every second round. A positive bonus lasts the whole battle unless something removes it.

The morale check

A check is two totals, the morale roll and the fear roll:

• the morale roll is the squad’s morale, plus a DRN, plus a survivor bonus;
• the fear roll is 14, plus a DRN.

If the fear roll is the greater one, the squad routs. If it is not, the squad stays in the fight. Despite the name, the fear roll is used for every kind of morale check, not only the ones fear causes.

The survivor bonus runs from nothing to five points. A squad that is intact or nearly so gets the full five, and the more of the original members are gone, the smaller it gets, until a squad that is almost wiped out gets none.

Elsewhere the manual describes a check “against” a number in the same terms: the unit’s morale plus a DRN is compared with that number plus a DRN.

What triggers a check

A squad has its morale tested when any of these is true:

• it has taken heavy losses since its last check, and its total casualties are at least 20 percent;
• it is down to four units or fewer, and at least one of them was damaged this round;
• it is near a monster that causes fear;
• a fear spell, such as Terror, has been cast on it. The spells that only frighten do not count;
• the army as a whole has lost half of its total hit points to casualties. From then on the check is made every turn for the rest of the battle.

No matter how many of these apply, a squad is checked at most once a turn.

What heavy losses means

The game counts a squad as having suffered heavy losses when it has one wound per two members. For this purpose a wound is any hit that leaves the unit with no more than four fifths of its full hit points. Take a unit with 25 hit points: it can absorb 4 points of damage without being wounded, but the fifth point crosses the line, and from then on every further hit, however small, is another wound. The manual explains the design as troops being bold at the start of a fight and less so once blood is drawn.

One special case applies to the army-wide trigger. If the army is nothing but a single creature with its retinue, the retinue is left out of the half-army total.

Fear, awe and frighten

Three effects work on morale from outside the squad.

• Fear. A unit caught in a monster’s fear area temporarily loses morale, and its squad faces a morale check whose target is the monster’s fear number. Failing means a rout. The number begins at 10, and a Fear bonus mostly grows the reach rather than the number: six squares at no bonus, one more square per point. Only every complete five points lifts the number by one. A Fear +10 monster therefore covers sixteen squares and tests squads against 12.
• Awe. An awe-inspiring unit makes enemies take a morale check against 10 plus its Awe rating before they can attack it. An attacker who fails cannot attack that unit for the round. Here the bonus is the strength of the check, not the reach. Sun Awe is a version that does not work underground or in the dark.
• Magic fear and frighten. Magic fear effects come in two kinds. Fear is the harsher: it can cut morale by up to 10 and forces the entire squad to take a check at the end of the round. Frighten is milder: it cuts morale by up to 5 and forces no check at all.

Units hit by magic fear can also break one at a time if they fail an easy check of their own. The unit runs while the rest of its squad keeps fighting. The manual says this happens only with magic fear. Otherwise a squad breaks and flees as one.

Army rout

Once an army has lost 75 percent of its total hit points to casualties in a battle, it routs automatically. The manual adjusts how some casualties are counted toward that total:

• mounts count for a quarter of their hit points;
• units from the province defence count for a quarter, since they are expected to run;
• slaves count for half.

The side that is still on the field when the other has fled the map is the winner. The manual’s battle summary also lists the loss of every commander as a reason for troops to break.

Troops that cannot rout, and troops that need a leader

Several kinds of unit follow their own morale rules.

• Berserkers. When a unit with the Berserker ability is wounded, it rolls a morale check against 12, and passing sends it into a frenzy. A frenzied unit keeps attacking to the death and is immune to routing. Being knocked out ends the frenzy, but a fresh wound after it wakes can start another. A numbered Berserker ability adds that number to the unit’s berserk attributes.
• Mindless units. These have a morale of 50 and do not rout so long as a suitable commander is present. With no such commander left, they dissolve on the battlefield instead of routing: they stop moving, still attack neighbours, and each turn have a one in three chance of vanishing.
• Magic beings and undead. They need a commander with the right kind of leadership, magical for the first and undead for the second. Without one they rout. A unit that is both needs the undead kind, and demons need undead leadership as well.

What routing units do

Each turn, a routed unit puts every one of its action points into running for its own end of the field and the friendly map edge. It takes a -4 penalty to its defence skill as it goes. That makes quick enemy units effective hunters of fleeing troops, provided they get to them before the edge does.

A unit that reaches the edge is safe. On the turn after the battle it turns up in a province next to the battle. A unit that retreats into an enemy province is destroyed. A routed army can scatter over several provinces, so a commander may have to go and gather it again. Any lingering damage on a routed unit, from bleeding, poison, burning, decay or similar effects, is applied once it is off the map, and it may die of it.

A squad on the winning side can rout too, because squads are tested separately. If the battle ends before such a unit leaves the map, it stays with the victorious army. If it leaves the map while the fight is still going, it scatters to neighbouring provinces.

Twilight and nightfall

The manual sets a schedule for battles that drag on, listed here by battle turn:

• 100: twilight falls. Enchantments, temporary magic effects and any berserk state end, and nobody can go berserk afterwards.
• 150: nightfall. The attackers rout. If the fight was already at night, daylight returns instead.
• 170: the defenders rout.
• 200: whatever is left on the field is killed.

Mindless units dissolve at the routing steps; they never run.

Mounted units

Supernatural fear normally targets rider and mount alike, and there are three outcomes. A broken rider departs together with his mount. A broken mount alone throws its rider, who stays to fight while the animal runs. When both break, the rider is thrown and then each flees separately. A squad or army rout, by contrast, is tested only on the rider, and when he flees on that account the mount goes along.

Retreat after a battle

Retreating units go to an adjacent province, or to a friendly fort in the same province. Each commander has a 75 percent chance of retreating smartly. A unit in its native terrain gets a second chance at 50 percent if the first fails.

What a smart commander does depends on the province. With a fort at hand, it falls back into the fort. With none, it picks a neighbouring province at random from those its own side holds. A commander that fails the smart check chooses any neighbouring province at random, hostile ones included, and a retreat into hostile ground is fatal.

Troops follow their commander if they pass a morale check. For this check the squad’s morale bonus counts double, undisciplined units take -3, and the skirmish formation’s penalty applies. Troops that lost their leader, or failed the check, retreat on their own, with only a 50 percent chance of being smart (with the same native second chance). A force that retreats from a fort it was defending in a siege hides deeper inside it instead.

Related checks

Morale is also used when a long weapon is set against a shorter one. When the defender’s longer weapon wins its repel attack, the attacker must pass a morale check: its morale plus a DRN, less the difference in weapon length, against 10 plus a DRN plus half the margin by which the defender won. Low-morale troops are easier to repel, and creatures with claws and bites, whose weapon length is zero, are easier still.

What this page does not cover

The manual does not say how many survivors earn each point of the survivor bonus between its two extremes, or how a squad’s average is rounded when it is not a whole number. It does not list the Standard and Inspirational values of individual units, which belong on the unit pages. We have not tested any of these, and nothing here claims a number for them.