Soldiers under the influence of a Warrior Hero and Houses with maximum morale. Notice the green bar.
Morale is an attribute of Empire Earth that can allow one player to make his units significantly more powerful by exploiting House and Warrior Heroes. As a strategic element of the game, it's important to know how it works.
Each morale point a unit has decreases the damage they take from enemy units by approximately 10%. So a unit with one point of morale being attacked by a unit with 20 attack takes only 18 damage, one with two points of morale takes 16, one with three takes 14 and so on.
The morale a unit has is indicated by the green dots at its feet. The number of green dots indicates the number of morale points, from one to five.
As indicated in the manual, morale can be attained in two ways. The first is by building Houses. A single house in the area of influence of a Town Center grants all units within that same area one morale point. You can determine the area of influence of a Town Center or Capitol by selecting the building and looking for the green and blue flashing line that forms a square some distance out. All units in this area receive the morale bonus the House gives.
Likewise, placing two Houses will give two morale points. A Town Center's area of influence will give a maximum of two morale points on Tournament mode, and four morale points on Standard mode. You can build more Houses than the game mode supports, but the morale level will stay the same until you build a Capitol, no matter how many Houses you build.
A Capitol can support two more Houses than a Town Center, on Tournament mode that is up to four Houses and on standard mode up to six Houses. These in turn distribute up to four or six morale points to all units within it's area of influence. Additionally, the Capitol has a a larger area of influence than the Town Center, and thus affects more units.
If two Town Centers or Capitols have an area of influence that overlaps, Houses will only contribute to both, but the morale of two Town Centers/Capitols near each other is not cumulative. Nor is a Warrior Hero's morale cumulative on that provided by House.
Morale also affects Towers, in a way. Towers built within the area of the influence of a Town Center or Capitol have the equivalent of 5 morale points, and thus they take half the damage they would ordinarily. Towers are not affected by Houses, this bonus is in place whether you have built a House or not.
The second way to provide units with morale is by using a Warrior Hero. Heroes are built at a Town Center or Capitol from the Copper Age onwards, and come in two varieties; Strategist Heroes who can heal units around them and have the Battle Cry ability, which temporarily demoralises a group of enemies, leaving them more vulnerable to attacks; and Warrior Heroes, tougher combat units who give a morale boost to units around them. You can only have one Hero at a time, and will only be able to train another one when the current Hero dies. The Warrior hero has a range of around 6 tiles laterally and four tiles diagonally. They provide the same amount of morale in both Standard and Tournament modes, five points; enough to reduce damage to all surrounding units by 50%.