Terrain also affects unit morale, with most races disliking wasteland, and a couple other dislikes such as azracs disliking snow and ice, while frostlings dislike desert.

I don't think being stacked with same-race units improves morale any, since adding lizard archers to lizard archers doesn't make the stack more happy. Being stacked with same race units simply won't make any of them less happy (so your wyvern shouldn't be dragging down the morale of your lizard archers, while skeletons and lizards would normally drag each other's morale down).

That said, being in the power majority of a stack of units that don't like each other drag's a unit's morale down less than being in the weaker side of the 'infighting'. For example, if you stack 5 skeletons with 3 lizards, the skeletons are going to be happier than the lizards since the skeletons are the more powerful group. Power isn't just in numbers though, since two syrons will easily dominate the morale of 6 archers.

Also keep in mind that individual unit morale is different from stack morale. An individual unit can have good morale while the morale of the stack as a whole is Stable or worse. You can check each unit's morale by looking at their unit card.

Sometimes selecting part of a stack can give you an impression of the morale of the group of just selected units, but I think the non-selected units can still influence individual morale which can then drag down the stack morale of the selected group; moving a pair of units out of a stack of units they hate can improve their morale enough that they won't rebel, though they would rebel if stuck with units they hate.

TL;DR: Morale is goofy. Keep an eye on the Stack morale to know whether some (or all) of the stack are inclined to abandon you between turns. Creatures don't care about your racial relations. Creatures that don't like each other will lower each other's morale.

Are the "common path" levels in the campaign exactly same.

For example are the Highmen levels in the Keepers campaign same regardless of whether you chose Dwarves or Lizards?

For the most part, yes. For example, the Highmen levels are the same regardless of whether you started as Keeper/Cult and whether you chose Dwarves/Lizards/Orcs.

There may be some minor differences in starting cities to account for your alliances. The easiest example is the last mission, where you start with three cities, one for each race you allied. So if you go Keeper->Dwarf->Highmen, then you'll play the last mission as the Highmen with a Halfling, Dwaf, and Highmen city. If you went Cult->Lizard->Highmen, then you'd play the same mission except you'd start with a Goblin, Lizard, and Highmen city.

Yep. Granted, I didn't check exact hex locations, so if they are different they are close enough that I didn't notice.

The maps themselves are basically the same. For a given path, you play the same side and fight the same enemies. The story segments are different depending on your route, and you might have some different starting cities that reflect your racial alignment (if that), but that's pretty much it.

Just blitz each map with your OP leader and enjoy the story beats. I think I've already mentioned this, but the snark of Cult->Highmen makes that run worthwhile. :)

Watching the mood of each side change as they progress the Undead missions was also quite interesting.

Yeah, I think that's what I'll do.

I'll skip Halfling - Dwarves - Highmen, since I'm donig Halfling - Lizard - Highmen, and I'll only do one of Goblins - Orcs/Lizards - Undead.
But I'll do Highmen and Undead in both.

So basically 6 endings total.

Blitzing if I feel bored.

I mentioned this already, but the story is pretty nice. The Undead ending for Keepers was pretty cool. I mean it's not an epic saga, but kind of makes it worthwhile despite the boringish gameplay when the Hero becomes too powerful.



by the way...

Having finished two endings, I'd say: movement points up till 47 (or whatever value you can get so as not to leave unspent skill points; not a big deal but my OCB would hate it), then hit points (since later levels will have spams of ranged units that can get you down by attrition) then...

Spellcasting for the one spell: Town Portal. Extremely useful to be able to cast it in a turn or two at the final level.

Yep. My general recommendation is to use the Lizard save to visit the Highman and Undead branches for both Keepers and Cult, since you'll get a Lizard hero and he comes with innate Water Walk. Just a nice quality of life thing.

If you already have the branches saved differently, then it doesn't make enough of a difference to replay all the old missions just to get lizards, though.

The Keeper->Undead ending was okay, but I really liked watching the leader's progression down that path.

Life Stealing and using cover usually did a good enough job even against large stacks of ranged units.

I don't think I used Town Portal much. There was simply no need, since my heroes were outpacing everything else in their conquests. Even in the final map, one hero goes one way while another hero goes another. All my non-hero units were either struggling to catch up and place peacekeeper for migrating cities, or they were just holding enemy units out of my conquered lands as much as possible.

Yes, exactly.

Playing Highmen. Is there a way to remove cloud of pestilence from around undead cities?

If I leave units in it, they take damage. If I don't the undead city rebels.

No.

If the cloud is cast by an enemy, it should vanish after a few turns, or at least move away.

If it was pre-placed on the map, then it either wanders or it stays still. If it wanders, just wait and hope it moves away (there are some clouds in one of the early Elf missions that wander).

If it stays still (like several of the cities in the first high men mission), you'll just have to cope. Leave a strong unit that can tank it for a few turns, or leave healers (if they can survive a poison hit) to self heal through it, or send in poison immune units (like ballistas or catapults), or just leave it alone (either migrating or not) and hope for the best, or just raze the stupid town so the undead can't get it back and move on. And yes, the cloud will still be there after a successful migration to poison any guards or newly produced units.

Thanks. Since you say there is no other option, razing it is.

Three things can be used against poison clouds:

- Firestorm (level 4 fire magic) will destroy poison clouds.
- Fire Altars will destroy poison clouds.
- Anti-magic Shell (level 3 cosmic magic) will protect units in a city from poison clouds.

Wow, so cool. So in the map I'm currently slowly making, I can spam poison clouds on the surface with the expectation that players can remove them with magic. Kewl.

Huh. That's good to know.

Of course, I've never had the magic in those missions to make that effort worthwhile (it would have been faster to just build the siege, or even faster than that to just go win if you've leveled your leader well).