What factors affect auto-calculated battles?

[bobayoda]

I've just started a new campaign and have decided to auto-calculate all battles. My problem is that I don't know which factors have an effect on the balance of battles. Some of the factors might be: army composition, experience of troops, size of units, walls/towers for seiges.

These are all things I would think about if fighting the battle myself but are they worth worrying about if I'm auto-calculating the result?:hmmm:

[Evolution]

yes they are... for example

Your men can't attack a settlement if you have no seige weaponry.

[bobayoda]

Thanks. I'd already worked that one out.

[Old Geezer]

Thanks for starting this thread. Auto calculating is a big handicap against you even oftentimes when assaulting cities and fortresses. With Kingdoms it seems that autocalcing goes much more against the human player than previously. As Spain in the Americas campaign I simply could not win an autocalc battle or assault and had to fight every battle out on the map. Sure did make me improve my skills. A very large factor seems to be the command level and dread/chivalry of the generals. Venitian heavy infantry, the Italian spear units, and pavaise crossbow units will win against my Danish armies often when autocalcing, but on a field battle they get crushed pretty easily. I think that cavalry gets autocalced as frontally assaulting the spear units. I wonder if the autocalc involves totalling up all of the attack/defense stats, figures in one army charging frontally, and then generates a random number which may affect the outcome tremendously. Some times it seems that fortifications count for naught but other times they apparently are a huge factor. I have been beated often on autocalced assaults and then replayed the assault on the battle map and won fairly easily. Is this perhaps affected by the V/H battle setting that I am using? Something is really screwy because instead of losing as I would with autocalcing I win with losses one third or more of the enemy. I am not that good. Often I am so lazy I just move the whole army straight at the enemy general with some cavalry flanking on speed 6 and the enemy evaporates but on autocalc I get a close defeat or win.

[homefry]

Archers and artillary effect the auto calc. That is, the computer gives these units more punch.

1 General Bodyguard unit would beat 3-4 units of artillary and 1-2 units of archers, but the odds calculation gives me a heroic victory.

[nikolai1962]

I think the basis is number of soldiers times their melee attack.

As you mention, high command stars have a big impact--i think this is a leftover from when the command stars gave an attack bonus to each unit.

So basically units with a lot of soldiers and a decent melee attack combined with a high command general works well in auto-calc. You don't really want a balanced army unless the cav/missiles have high melee attack.

When i'm testing modding stuff out i sometimes autocalc everything and i normally use mass militia stacks to get the max number of soldiers for the cheapest cost. Mass peasant stacks can work quite well too if the general has high enough command.

Multi-hp units also seem to have a disproportionate effect in auto-calc--least they did in RTW. Haven't really noticed it in MTW2 as there are fewer multi hp units.

[Bob The Fearless]

My advice would always be ditch the auto-calc route, as you/I tend to suffer from heavier losses this way.

Maybe you don't like the battle sequence, that's fair enough. But if it's just a case of experience then this place can help you. Drop the level down to easy and start there. Any unit(s) specific advice can probabley be found on this forum.

There was a thread iirc a little while ago and quite a few people were saying that they seemed to have acceptable losses when auto-calc'ing seiges.

[bobayoda]

Thanks for all the advice. My reason for not fighting any battles in this campaign is that I normally end up concentrating all my money on building the best armies and attacking just about anyone I think I can defeat. If I'm autocalcing (?) battles then the outcome isn't as straight forward and I tend to use diplomacy a bit more.

So far it seems that I loose more battles than I win, even though I only attack when the pre-battle screen says that the odds are stacked in my favour. It's a bit frustrating sometimes but it's a good way of making the game harder for those that are complaining it's too easy!

[vonKrysiak]

Well not sure about what affects it but if you play on harder difficulty you wont be able to win much with autocalc - even with nice odds you will be losing more battles.