isn't auto resolve a little questionable

[gaaxure]

why's that when i auto resolve and win half of enemy army gets away and my army has irrational casualties and if i lose with auto resolve my army is completely destroyed? it leaves me to question on what logic this system operates and what are the factors that define the outcome of auto resolved battle? in past games if you put spearmen loaded army against army that had lots of cavalry you'd win with serious advantage equally if you fielded cavalry against archers and on and on here though there's no real difference as far as i've seen. there was this one battle where i won huge battle against 2 stacks of enemy and then went after survivors one had 4 cavalry units in it and other had 3 artillery and 5-6 line infantry i was pretty tired so i decided that i'd let AI decide that my mostly intact full army would have no problem dealing with bunch of deserters and what i got my army was crippled for good remaining cavalry units did so much damage that half of my units just weren't any good. long story short 90 men caused 360 casualties. well this was only once and was very extreme case but still i don't trust auto resolve much.

[Wetblowdryer]

I had a crazy result once.

I was plaing as Marathas, the British land invaded Satara. I had 5 peasants musketeers and 3 bargir.

The British had 7 line, 3 cavalry, 2 cannons, a general, and 3 grenediers.

I autoresolved, and won.

Good for me.

[gaaxure]

to give you a clearer view on what i mean here's a screenshot

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Patrick2me]

I'm not exactly sure how auto resolve works, but I noticed that you had very little cavalry compared to the enemy. It could be that the amount of troops that get away is determined by the amount of cav you have, because cav can catch routing troops easily.

[gaaxure]

I'm not exactly sure how auto resolve works, but I noticed that you had very little cavalry compared to the enemy. It could be that the amount of troops that get away is determined by the amount of cav you have, because cav can catch routing troops easily.

i just posted most recent battle. and with or without cavalry it it's still same result in other cases.
in this battle i lost more men than enemy more than half of whole army and didn't even destroy half of enemies. plus he had quite a lot of melee units at least half of which should die off in charge. when i fought the battle myself some of my units got serious pounding but i killed almost 900 and lost around 650 most of which were militia they were meant as canon fodder in a first place.

[Tewks44]

I can't stand how naval battles work. I have a huge fleet attack a pirate galleon, and if I auto resolve it I usually lose 3-5 ships, and I'm talking high quality ships, not brigs. I have to fight every battle like that myself if I want to keep my fleet intact.

[Okuto]

to give you a clearer view on what i mean here's a screenshot

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Good god you're playing vallina.......

but yes autoresolve is messed up.......galleons seem to kill anything and everything even though if I personally command a few 6th rates I can slaughter them

[gaaxure]

Good god you're playing vallina.......

but yes autoresolve is messed up.......galleons seem to kill anything and everything even though if I personally command a few 6th rates I can slaughter them

yeah never really got myself to download and install some mods and i started actively playing ETW few months i'm more of a sword n' shield kind of guy.
as for galleons they are pretty good actually i learned it really quick not to mess with spanish merchants when i sent 4 fifth rates to get what i thought was free meal i wasn't very good at naval combat then but even now i don't think i could sink 8 galleons with 5th rates. they pack a pretty though punch and can take a punishment i'd only prefer to have 3rd rate ship of the line and higher than galleons.

[Wetblowdryer]

Good god you're playing vallina.......

but yes autoresolve is messed up.......galleons seem to kill anything and everything even though if I personally command a few 6th rates I can slaughter them

I edited galleons so that they're not close to being as good as Fourth Rates.

[Okuto]

I edited galleons so that they're not close to being as good as Fourth Rates.

nah I rather like that auto resolve favors them as it's very helpful early game and it discourages the AI to attack your trade theaters

Also makes the AI more confident to attack your fleets

As I love to "galleon farm"

[IrishHitman]

How the hell did Prussia get to the Americas!

[gaaxure]

How the hell did Prussia get to the Americas!

sea turtles my friend, sea turtles.

[eschelar]

A couple of things I see happening here.

#1 - You have a moderately experienced general. That makes a HUGE difference in autoresolve.

#2 - You slightly outnumber them. That doesn't make a huge difference, but it does make a significant difference, especially when combined with other advantages - see #1

#3 - Your opponent has 5 melee units which are considered by the computer to be the absolute lowest tier (which is ridiculous, I quite like them) and one of them is damaged.

#4 - your infantry is PRUSSIAN infantry, which is the best infantry in the game (note that Line infantry recruited outside of the European continent is NOT Prussian Line Infantry, it just gets the regular stats, and cannot be combined with your Prussian Line units... bleh... Of course, there aren't many really beefy nations over in the Americas, so once you clear your sectors, you can just scrap those guys and not feel bad about it...)

So that battle doesn't really look all that surprising to me at all.

If that had been Europe, it might have been a lot closer.

Also, I'm not sure what difficulty you are using. If you are on normal, Autoresolve is often quite an easy way to gain quick victories if it's late in the day or you just want to wrap up a campaign. Move that up to VH/VH and you will find autoresolve a lot less likely to blow the winds in your favor.

But even on VH/VH, it's still quite possible to get good results. And the occasional OMGHS! win.

I usually come across that type of win when I am so badly outnumbered it's just not even worth the time to fight it out. Odds are about 50:1 in their favor and somehow one of your guys lets one rip and triggers a big filthy nasty landslide or something and your guys come out smiling. And holding their breath. But smiling.

[oqvist]

I am running medium/medium and auto resolve mean I will loose 2 to 3x more men then if I do the battle myself. And I am no pro TW gamer. Heck on naval battles I am a complete newbie. But yes general makes huge difference in auto resolve. In the older total war titles you could win with like a 24h general unit over like 500 infantry easy.

I have the problem in empire that I kill of my generals. Heck George Washington died in the first battle and you donīt seem to get any other general after that in the RTI campaigns lol. Late in the chapter you could hire general bodyguards. Dunno if those come with some decent general instead of those 1 star captains that I also for whatever reason always kill off with my thoughtless cavalry charges. I am just used to the previous titles where the bodyguards protects the general that generally is among the last not the first to die

[Napoleon's Scribe]

Auto Resolve sucks and it is something I hate to use unless I massively outnumber the enemy or I have no way of winning, but even in those instances I feel better if I play out the scenario.

It's just when you're exhausted though it's hard not to let someone else take the field for you, but I've always managed better results. A few times I've saved the game and played it out, and while I can't say I've always won. I've always inflicted more damage.

Made the mistake of letting the auto resolve run things in Medieval Total War II. I was conquering Europe with Spain, and was fighting my way through Italy. I had a large force, but Rome wouldn't fall. I should have taken command myself. Still though I won with over 70 territories.

My advise is use the auto resolve sparingly, and always remember you're smarter than the computer.

[eschelar]

There are plenty of situations that occur with vastly outnumbering that can make autoresolve worthwhile. Especially vs very small armies. For some reason, I often find that using autoresolve can see less than 10 men dead, but even if playing out myself, I usually get 20-30 in the same situation. This can be useful when you have very experienced troops for example and don't want to lose too many of any of them because it's a pain to replace them without losing experience.

Also, along a similar vein, Autoresolve tends to spread out the losses to all units, which again, works better for replenishing.

Another benefit to autoresolve can be in chasing away armies rather than defeating them. This has worked in my favor quite a few times with the Native factions in America and Indian nations too. Bring up a sizeable force and for some reason, they will run away before either side gets any real losses. That might mean that you need to fight them again anyway to get rid of the army...... BUT not if you are right next to their last capital...