Is the mod supposed to be played with auto battles?!

[ArkhanTheBlack]

I tried to attack an orc army close to the mystic mountains with my high elve army:

First attempt: Attack from top side
=> Both armies stuck in the terrain and can't be placed, moved or flee.

Second attempt: Attack from left side
=> Both armies stuck in the terrain and can't be placed, moved or flee.

Third attempt: Attack from bottom side
=> Orc army stuck in the terrain. I can move this time, but it's impossible to reach or even see the orc army.

Is this a rare bug, a common bug or is the mod intended to be played with auto battles? I can win battles in manual mode quite easily which are usually clear defeats in auto battles. Therefore I cannot switch the whole time from manual to auto mode just because the battle map generates invalid terrain. My whole strategic calculations get messed up this way.

[Hermes Trismegistos]

It is a problem in some mountain regions, mostly the misty mountains from what I've heard. The problem is (I believe) that the game evolves the battle-maps directly from the campaign map and since there are so many possible battlemaps it is difficult for the devs to take every possibility into consideration. I've only encountered it very seldom. I nearly always play manual battles and it works quite well nearly always.

[Kahvipannu]

I believe this is known bug, your talking about. Some mountain-terrains are rarely unplayable, but most of these areas have been fixed with every patch. You should report these areas to "bugs"-thread.

Autoresolve isn't the way this mod is supposed to be played, becouse it doesn't give realistic results. It has alltought got better with patches along the time.

By the way, "ask questions here"-thread:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=273942

E: Hermes was faster

[cedric37]

Well to answer to the question posed in the title, i must say it is, because i myself fight 90% of the battle with autocalc (call me lazy, stupid, what you want)... but you can beat 2x your numbers of armies composed of orcs with gondor infantry/fountain guards/ dwarves or other "elite" units. It seems the quality of your troops really matter and the quality of your general too. Tested and certified over 100+ hours of play.

[Point Blank]

There has been a lot of work put into autocalc improvements with this mod. Its not perfect, but its way better than usual.

[cedric37]

Dear PB,

I would like to know what parameters should be changed to improve standard autocalc; and BTW do you know how exactly AI simulates the fight ? I thought at start it was playing the battle without the graphical interface and speed x100 (or whatever). I already asked this question many times but nobody can tell the truth.

Cheers,
Cedric37.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

I'll try to report the buggy location when I'm back home from office.

Anyway, I'm not sure if the autocalc is so reliable, at least in hard setting for the battle mode. I was able to conquer an orc city defended by an army of about 4500 orcs with an army of just 800 high elves (lead by Elrond). Lower tier units on both sides. But when I used the autocalc for the buggy location where I attacked an orc army of 2500 units with my high elve army of about 1250 units (also lead by Elrond) in open field I got a clear defeat. Again low tier units on both sides.
Maybe I have to raise the battle mode difficulty to very hard, because in hard mode, there's a huge difference between auto calc and battle mode results.

[Kawee]

The number of soldiers is the biggest factor in auto-resolve, I think, that's why Orcs can be so dominating. It's probably also why SE struggle in the RR/RC submod quite often. We all know playing as the elves, you can beat an enemy 5 times your size, but that's impossible with auto-resolve. Also, the general's command star is very important I find. When playing manually, I couldn't care less.

[Point Blank]

As an example, Orcs get 0 secondary hp in autoresolve, and elves get sometimes 3, which means that elves count much more in autoresolve, but we can't use values greater than 3, otherwise we could depict it better. Its the best we can do.

[cedric37]

Thanks for the info, PB

[ArkhanTheBlack]

What about very powerfull units like trolls and ents in autoresolve? They should probably handle a 1 : 10 army ratio against basic troops with ease. Is that also reflected in autocalc?

In general I had the impression that the enemy AI has a lot of problems with handling archers. They let themselves be shot to death far too easily by pointless waiting for 'something' that will probably never happen. That gives the use of archers a bit of a feeling of cheating. Is this problem caused by the fact that I'm using hard difficulty for battle mode? Is this problem solved by using very hard difficulty? What about RC/RR, I read some comments about people who found archers in the sub mod underpowered, therefore I guess archers are not an auto win there?!

[Point Blank]

I wouldn't say they are 'underpowered' in RR/RC, I would say they are about right, which is the point If you are used to archers with 10 attack and Armor Piercing then RC archers will certainly feel very underpowered to you. Used in the right tactical circumstances they can cause many times their number in casualties however.

[Kawee]

I wouldn't say they are 'underpowered' in RR/RC, I would say they are about right, which is the point If you are used to archers with 10 attack and Armor Piercing then RC archers will certainly feel very underpowered to you. Used in the right tactical circumstances they can cause many times their number in casualties however.

Exactly. An archer unit of 10 attack and AP attribute (does such a unit exist?) would be way over-powered. Can probably clear up any army before even the first contact, and that's not what we want, is it? IS IT?