The Evils of Auto-Battling

[Arlin]

Okay, pretty much a semi-rant thread and just wondering if anyone else wants to share their utter surprise at how stupid the autobattle can be. I'm playing Julii on Vanilla (cause I felt like being nostalgic) and am just slaughtering my way through Dacia, Gaul, Briton, and Germany. I'm facing Britons right now... So I have a full 3400 troop stack of Romans. Hastati, equites, velites, and dogs. I see little troop groups and I think to myself, "Hey! I can just kill these real quick and move on with almost no casualties, right?" Wrong! Vanilla has decided to show me that IT is the alpha dog and can screw me over any time it wants.

So my full Roman stack comes upon 200-300 Britons. Easy auto-battle right? I killed about 100 and they took out 700 Romans. WTF? I just shrug it off and move on. Of course I'm rich and I can handle the losses since I can just pull back for a bit and retrain. Next thing I see is this general who has only 52 guys. Around 2500 Romans against 52. Easy, no? The pila alone should wipe him out. What computer calculated battle could possible ruin that? End results... 26 of him dead (and he didn't even die) and another 600 Romans dead. HOW IN HADES does 52 heavy cavalry slaughter 600 Romans?

I'm thinking Britons are h@x0rz.

[Valerius Tiberius]

yeah, Britons have an advantage in auto-resolve, certainly because of their chariots.
chariots are very unfair in auto-resolve, so egypt has an advantage too

altough that's what i have heard about it

one hint: never auto-resolve, fight the battles yourself

[Guy]

All Roman families have an unbelievalby biased advantage in Auto-Battling. Playing as Macedon, I sent 3 full armies (around 1000 in each army) to Rome, against the SPQR (Senate) faction.

An army surrounds the City which has many units. After building my siege weapons, I auto-battled the whole thing.

Crushing Defeat

My luck, or something needs looking at?

Unfortunately, R:TW was critised because of it's lack of reality. This lead the the character/soldier differences we see on M2:TW.

[Garnier]

If campaign difficulty is on hard, the player is at a big disadvantage in auto-battling. Same goes for very hard, and to a greater extent.

Battle difficulty gives the AI bonuses in player-controlled battles,
Campaign difficulty gives the AI bonuses in auto-resolved battles.

[Arlin]

Well, I rarely ever auto-battle. But since the enemy were so few in number I didn't see the point in wasting time by going through the load screens and then the already pre-determined battle. But still... 52 facing 2500 and surviving with only half dead? Just makes me cringe. I mean...I can't quite complain cause of how many crushing victories I achieve with little losses and thousands dead at my feet...but that one Pyrrhic victory just stings.

[atraps]

soldier differences we see on M2:TW.

I totally disagree, now im not talking about auto-resolve here. On the battlefield peasants can easily kill gothic plate armoured knights...The unit stat differences is pathetic in M2TW, and even worse in Kingdoms.

So now you not only lose unreasonable amounts of men in auto-resolve, but also on the battlefield.

[Scutarii]

Auto-resolve is biased against the player, and definitely don't be autoresolving against chariot factions, you'll get screwed...

[Entropy Judge]

When you auto-resolve, do you ever kill any Generals leading the enemy army? I don't think I've ever seen it happen ... they always escape (which is another reason to play out the battle yourself - take out the General!). This does not take into account Army Routs or complete annihilation, of course.

[Arlin]

Ah, good points... No auto-battles against chariots or generals from now on. I'm surprised I haven't figured that one out by now...

[Scutarii]

Anything with hitpoints owns in auto-resolve... Thats why generals almost never die, they have lost of hitpoints.

[aznflea]

ohhhhh ok

[Prince_of_Macedon]

I think the biggest evil of auto-battling is that you don't get to fight your battles. I'd say R:TW's biggest strength is the ability to fight your battles unlike other games like Civilization where you just move your units around on a grand map.

[Entropy Judge]

Well, Civ's got a different feel to it; you can't play it the same way as something like Rome. Civ is a strategy game where *you* develop the way you want to with relatively little interference; Rome gives you a set objective and there's virtually no real finesse involved.

... That's coming out wrong, but I hope you can figure out what I mean. Part of it is that combat is not one of the main driving points of Civ; yes, it's very effective, but it's not always necessary; in 2 and III it's entirely possible to play a completely pacifistic game where combat units are never used.

And the Civ games have better diplomacy

[Prince_of_Macedon]

Well, Civ's got a different feel to it; you can't play it the same way as something like Rome. Civ is a strategy game where *you* develop the way you want to with relatively little interference; Rome gives you a set objective and there's virtually no real finesse involved.

... That's coming out wrong, but I hope you can figure out what I mean. Part of it is that combat is not one of the main driving points of Civ; yes, it's very effective, but it's not always necessary; in 2 and III it's entirely possible to play a completely pacifistic game where combat units are never used.

And the Civ games have better diplomacy

The point of my mentioning of Civilization is that there's no real-time tactics aspect in that game (meaning you might as well play that type of game if you're not gonna fight the battles in R:TW).

[Entropy Judge]

Ohhh. Gotcha; and it's a good point, because if you take out the battle aspect, Civ is probably the better game ....

[Roman_Wolf]

Never ever auto resolve a battle whatever the conditions were. You can always do better when you fight the battle yourself. + its much more fun

[Xerrop]

Never ever auto resolve a battle whatever the conditions were. You can always do better when you fight the battle yourself. + its much more fun

After fighting a dozen battles per turn - even against the smallest and weakest armys - there isn´t much fun left for me.

@Roman_Wolf: How about changing your Juve-crest ? - there is a new version in use since 2007 (?) I think.

[Roman_Wolf]

@Roman_Wolf: How about changing your Juve-crest ? - there is a new version in use since 2007 (?) I think.

I know that, but I kinda liked the previous one better.
nut meh, wouldn't hurt to change. So I'll change it now.

[Xerrop]

@Roman_Wolfe: Noticed that the two yellow stars are gone - did they had a special meaning ?

[Roman_Wolf]

@Roman_Wolfe: Noticed that the two yellow stars are gone - did they had a special meaning ?

well yeah. each gold star represents 10 Serie A titles.
so it should be 3 gold stars in a few years