In short, the effects of drone riots on morale are even more bugged than the effects of children’s creches which you can read lower. There are even more factors influencing the effect of morale under drone riots, and more combinations possible, then there are when testing creches. So testing this fully would require lots of time. Seeing drone riots rarely happen, and considering I can imagine more fun or useful things to do with my time, I hope you’ll forgive if I leave it to the short conclusion mentioned above: it’s seriously bugged.

9) Children's Creches

A Children’s Creche (CC) has a double effect on morale. On the one side it gives a morale bonus to units, built in a base with a CC, of a faction running a negative SE Morale. This bonus counts on every location. On the other side a Children’s Creche gives a battle bonus to units on the base square of a base with a CC. This is (supposed to be) represented in the form of (+)’s. Unfortunately the (+)’s are in some cases a bad indication of the actual battle modifiers given.

A summary of the effects of the CC are as follows:

For any unit built in a base with Children’s Creche, no matter their location:

0 SE Morale or higher: no difference.
-3 to -1 SE Morale: +1 morale level
-4 SE Morale: +2 morale levels

For units on a base square, the base having a Children’s Creche:

When the unit is defending: 0 SE Morale or higher: +12.5% (+) battle bonus
-1 & -2 SE Morale or higher: +25% (++) battle bonus
-3 SE Morale: +37.5% (+++) battle bonus
-4 SE Morale: +50% (++++) battle bonus

The total defence bonus (the sum of the morale level bonus and the (+) boni) is capped off at +50%.

When the unit is attacking:

+4 SE Morale: -37% battle penalty
+3 SE Morale: -25% battle penalty
+2 SE Morale: -12.5% battle penalty
+1 SE Morale: no difference
0 SE Morale: +12.5% battle bonus
-1 SE Morale: +25% battle bonus
-2 SE Morale: +25% battle bonus
-3 SE Morale: +37.5% battle bonus
-4 SE Morale: +50% battle bonus

If one would want to find some system in this, the following could work:

For positive SE Morale: base morale level + 12.5% (the intended CC effect according to the datalinks) – a certain # of +12.5% boni equal to the #of SE Morale (Not intended [As Far As I Know (AFAIK))

For negative SE Morale -1 and -2 both give the same bonus. So a formula could be like this: Battle modifier: base morale level + 12.5% + a # of +12.5% boni equal to the morale levels you lose because of negative SE Morale.

For attacks there is no limit at all for the battle bonus.
Don’t take the (+)’s behind your unit morale as an indication of the battle modifier it will receive. It is a good indication for when your unit is defending, but, when you have positive SE Morale, the actual battle effect is totally different.

As you can see, [developer] Firaxis [Games] seriously ****ed up this base facility. Because of it, as long as you have Creches it is often better to have a negative SE Morale than a positive or neutral SE Morale. It makes running Wealth not a problem at all. Indeed, even recommendable when you’re fighting a defensive war.

This can lead to weird situations. To give an example, you could build a unit while running +4 SE Morale in a base with a Crèche, Command Center and Bioenhancement Center. This unit is elite. When defending in a base, it has a +50% battle bonus (capped off). But when it attacks from the base square, it only has a +12.5% battle bonus, because of the -37.5% battle penalty Firaxis (I presume) as a mistake or lack of playtesting added to the CC effects.

Now imagine you switch to -4 SE Morale. The unit is still veteran. After all, the -3 morale levels of -4 SE Morale is largely compensated by the +2 morale levels from the Children’s Creche. Added to that comes four (+)’s when being in a CC base square. So when fighting it will have a defence bonus of +50% (same as eight morale levels higher) and an attack bonus of +75%, which is 67.5% higher than the unit fighting under +4 SE Morale.

As a conclusion, these are some obvious tips for factions with positive SE Morale to counter chreches:

1) Avoid attacking from inside bases. It would actually be in your advantage to move one tile out of a base, attack, and then move back into the base if possible.
2) Never let units end their turn next to an enemy base with a Children's Creche.
3) Perhaps if one can spare the resources, sending some probes along to destroy Creches in bases one plans to attack could be a good solution.

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About the author: International Politics student in Belgium.

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Originally published in full on December 15, 2005.

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.