Worth playing without the battles?

[RobC04]

Hi,

This may seem like a silly question to some. I have purchased Shogun, Medieval 1 & 2, Rome, and now Empire. The thing is, I play for a little bit and after the first 10 battles or so in a campaign I get bored. The battles just get very monotonous for me. They all seem roughly the same and take a lot of time.

I don't mind the small battles so much, but when there are some larger ones I just dread going to battle. That and I can't stand the siege battles. Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but I have trouble getting my units into proper shooting position on the walls when I am defending.

1) Is it worth playing the campaign if I just autoresolve the battles, or would I be better off playing a different strategy game that has a more feature filled strategic aspect to it?
2) Does anyone play this game and autoresolve all the battles and still have fun?
3) When I did autoresolve a battle where I was defending a region capital with walls, I lost even though looking at the forces it seems like I should have won. Do defenders of walled cities not get much of a bonus during autoresove?
4) I think I should have learned my lesson by now and realized that perhaps this series just isn't for me. Anyone have any tips that makes this series more enjoyable or is it time for me to give up?

Thanks for any suggestions or help.
Rob

[Pericles of Athens]

Hi,

This may seem like a silly question to some. I have purchased Shogun, Medieval 1 & 2, Rome, and now Empire. The thing is, I play for a little bit and after the first 10 battles or so in a campaign I get bored. The battles just get very monotonous for me. They all seem roughly the same and take a lot of time.

I don't mind the small battles so much, but when there are some larger ones I just dread going to battle. That and I can't stand the siege battles. Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but I have trouble getting my units into proper shooting position on the walls when I am defending.

1) Is it worth playing the campaign if I just autoresolve the battles, or would I be better off playing a different strategy game that has a more feature filled strategic aspect to it?
2) Does anyone play this game and autoresolve all the battles and still have fun?
3) When I did autoresolve a battle where I was defending a region capital with walls, I lost even though looking at the forces it seems like I should have one. Do defenders of walled cities not get much of a bonus during autoresove?
4) I think I should have learned my lesson by now and realized that perhaps this series just isn't for me. Anyone have any tips that makes this series more enjoyable or is it time for me to give up?

Thanks for any suggestions or help.
Rob

1. NO!!!
2.NO!!!
3. autoresolve never works just make the ai win most of the time
4. time to give up if you dont like playing battles

Rep me for the answers

JK


..... or am i

[Xerrop]

Hmm a good question.
There is not much to do on the campaign map without battles. But still enough to be not completely useless. The only game where I played a campaign with only three battles was a Lithuanian one in MTW1. Was very entertaining by spreading pagan religion all over the map, having only few neighbours at the start so I survived the early phase luckily and killed other factions with superior armies later on when I had gained some income finally. Plus avoiding civil wars in my kingdom by taking care on my generals. But in MTW on difficulty M/M autoresolving favoured my armies so I won most of the battles even with equal numbers.

Don´t know how this works in Empire:TW but the old MTW1-campaigns offered some good possibilities like Glorious Achievements, reappearing factions (I used a lot of spies to create them on enemy territories), princesses and civil wars as well as loyalty and traits for all your units making the game fun enough without battles. Not to mention less sieges cause an assassin (or were it the spies?) opened the gates of sieged castles. So I won them without any actual fight.

How about fighting only the important battles in your campaigns? This should be enough. When your empire is big enough and the tech as well as your armies well developed you can just steamroll the map to finish your victory condition with autoresolved battles. Or try to hold your empire small instead. Resulting in much fewer battles. But you have to be careful. Not letting a near power get strong enough to defeat you eventually.

oh and what difficulty have you selected? Autoresolve results are based on them afaik. But don´t know if it is effected by campaign or battle difficulty.

[Imperator_OfRome]

Your not the only one. I LOVE the battles in any TW game it's just I'm so impatient I end up autoresolving all my battles. Then half way through a campaign I don't feel like I've acheived anything so I quit, start a new campaign and tell myself to try and play all the battles, which never happens.

It's a vicsious (sp?) cycle

[Prince of Darkness]

Incredible. The point of TW is to play tactical battles, they are the most enjoyable phase, especially when you are fighting a battle that could mean the fate of your empire.
I don't understand why people are impatient to play it. But siege battles do suck, and I often press the 4X speed button throughout the whole game.

[Xerrop]

Incredible. The point of TW is to play tactical battles, they are the most enjoyable phase, especially when you are fighting a battle that could mean the fate of your empire.

Yes I agree. But there is a big problem with the gameplay/gamebalance. Such battles happen only in the early phase of the campaign. As soon as your empire has a certain size there is only steamrolling the map left. You train superior units and fight endless battles to conquer the remaining provinces.
From then on I only autoresolve. When the army looses the battle who cares? Train a new full stack, fight again and you have the province. And this for endless turns.
Then I notice how boring the campaign map play can be ... And the campaign map play is not better (maybe even worser) in the newer games then the old ones like Shogun or Medieval1.

[skap187]

I do like the only managing part of the game. Lazy as I am I like to see how far I can get without breaking a real sweat. With Prussia it wasn´t that hard (on medium) So far I got to Venice leaving only Rumania(or something) for Austria. The Polish were distroyed in the first 20 rounds, only intervined for a short peace when the Austrians atacked me. The small German states where no problem on autoresolve.
What did surprise me was that the UP declared war on me and didnot accept pays under normal threaties.
Their main army raced to Hanover, with mine western army waiting in Cologne...

[tonedog]

Yes I agree. But there is a big problem with the gameplay/gamebalance. Such battles happen only in the early phase of the campaign. As soon as your empire has a certain size there is only steamrolling the map left. You train superior units and fight endless battles to conquer the remaining provinces.
From then on I only autoresolve. When the army looses the battle who cares? Train a new full stack, fight again and you have the province. And this for endless turns.
Then I notice how boring the campaign map play can be ... And the campaign map play is not better (maybe even worser) in the newer games then the old ones like Shogun or Medieval1.

this sums up recent total war games perfectly for me.

another problem with playin battles is that you know you wont ever lose. i cant remember the last time i actually lost a battle to the AI.

there always comes a point in a campaign where i dread havin to invest time to fight battles cos i know im never gonna lose and it just becomes a time sink.

i defo prefer the stategy part as opposed to the battles.

[Didz]

Hi Rob, this is my two penneth, for what its worth.

1) Is it worth playing the campaign if I just autoresolve the battles, or would I be better off playing a different strategy game that has a more feature filled strategic aspect to it?

The big selling point for the TW series is the real time battles. Its really the only thing that sets the TW series apart from other strategy games. There are certainly more challenging map based strategy games than TW (like Civilisation), and there are better RTS games (like Dawn of War), but the TW series is unique because it combines the two, and so far no other game has managed to do that quite so successfully.

So, if you really don't like the real time battles then you are not really benefitting from the only thing that makes the TW series different to a map based campaign, and there are better map based strategy games you could play instead.

2) Does anyone play this game and autoresolve all the battles and still have fun?

I don't but I know some people auto-resolve certain types of battle (such as seiges) because they don't like playing them. Likewise, if you play the campaign in multi-player you have no choice but to accept an auto-resolve of every battle where you are not the aggressor, which is a bit of a pain but multi-player campaigns are much more fun than single player.

3) When I did autoresolve a battle where I was defending a region capital with walls, I lost even though looking at the forces it seems like I should have won. Do defenders of walled cities not get much of a bonus during autoresove?

Yes, that happens. The auto-resolve results are a bit unpredictable, I'm not sure it necessarily had anything to do with the battle being a seige. I think the AI must have just rolled a six and your army rolled a one, or something.

4) I think I should have learned my lesson by now and realized that perhaps this series just isn't for me. Anyone have any tips that makes this series more enjoyable or is it time for me to give up?

The only tip I can give is to download a Mod. It's really the only thing that keeps me interested in TW games now. They are not challenging enough to keep me focussed, not historically accurate enough to keep me interested and too gimmicky to keep me visually satisfied, but I find the right mods can address a lot of those issues. Certainly, with some of the earlier titles a mod can completely change the game for instance the Third Age Totalwar mod for MTW2 is a completely new game. So, its worth looking at the mod option before you give up and let the game gather dust on your shelf.

[Humble Warrior]

LOL.

I remember when I knew a guy on the CA forum who only ever autoresoved every battle in previous TWs and just played the campaign which seemed incredibly boring to me.

I find questions that ask `Is it worth it?` etc, very strange. You have the game, you play it, have you found it worth it? If not, then don`t play the battles. Simple.

Of course, if you don`t play the battles then you just have to accept if the General on an autoresolve loses the battle for you. If that`s worth it to you, then carry on.


All I can tell you is that I got into the TW games PRIMARILY for the battles. They are NOT all the same (except in ETW) as AI in STW, MTW, RTW and MTW2 do different things depending on the situation. ETW again fails because it doesn`t even use simple tactics like staying back on defence.

You seem to dread big battles; I LOVE big battles, the bigger the better because then more strategy and tactics are needed to win.

It seems to me you treat TW like an RTS, when really TW games are not that. They are not C&C clones you just sweep togther and throw at the enemy battle after battle- That is boring. Each battle is supposed to be a tactical game of chess...

Granted though that ETW lost all of the tactical battle interest which made previous TWs much more interesting, so ETW is actually pretty boring when it comes to ground battles. Even I end up thinking, "Oh here we go again, the enemy AI just throwing itself at me. I sit back and kill it, rinse, repeat.`

That`s why I`m thinking of going back to MTW2.

[RobC04]

Thanks for the replies guys.

To respond to some of the questions / comments above...

- I am playing on medium / medium as Austria.
- Perhaps I got involved in too many wars too fast. I attacked the Ottomans, then Poland and Prussia attacked me. Then one of the countries to the west attacked me. There were a lot of battles. Maybe I will try harder to avoid some of the wars.
- I will try and finish my current campaign. I don't think I have ever finished one in any of the TW games yet. I should try and make sure it doesn't get batter.
- Maybe I will selectively autoresolve. I hate giving up control. specially if I start losing battles I think I should have won. Like an above poster said, maybe I just got some really bad random numbers in the battle I lost but in general the auto resolve does a fair job.
- I used to play RTSs a lot (like Age of Empires), but now generally prefer turn-based. The real time ones that I do like are generally the more thoughtful slower ones, such as Europa Universalis. The TW games are slower paced, so it falls into the category of a game I usually like. I do manage my units individually and don't play like Age of Empires. Perhaps I'm not very good at TW, but I do try and use good tactics.
- I like to hear other peoples opinions, that is why I asked the 'Is it worth it question'. I do realize it is a strange question to ask. I just hate wasting time with games that never end up fun for me. I tend to be a bit compulsive in trying to finish, so I don't give up as quickly as I should when not having fun. In any case, right now my compulsion is telling me to try and get through this campaign, so I will give it another try :-)

[daniu]

Perhaps I got involved in too many wars too fast. I attacked the Ottomans, then Poland and Prussia attacked me. Then one of the countries to the west attacked me. There were a lot of battles. Maybe I will try harder to avoid some of the wars.

You definitely should.
As was said already, autoresolve makes the campaign much harder; and too many wars are hard to handle even if you do play the battles.

I did play some NTW campaigns to get into dropin battles; but since only reasonably balanced battles are allowed to play dropins, I autoresolved the others.
Since you ask our opinions, no, I hardly had any fun with those campaigns; but then again, I mainly play campaign to get into battles.

Maybe I will selectively autoresolve. I hate giving up control. specially if I start losing battles I think I should have won. Like an above poster said, maybe I just got some really bad random numbers in the battle I lost but in general the auto resolve does a fair job.

Yeah, an unfair autoresolve result is a valid reason to reload a save game IMO, which is what I did.
This usually turned the result from "ridiculous defeat" to "ridiculous win" though
You should probably really look into some mods, at least the "no forts" sounds like it's for you.

[Achilla]

Thanks for the replies guys.

To respond to some of the questions / comments above...

- I am playing on medium / medium as Austria.
- Perhaps I got involved in too many wars too fast. I attacked the Ottomans, then Poland and Prussia attacked me. Then one of the countries to the west attacked me. There were a lot of battles. Maybe I will try harder to avoid some of the wars.
- I will try and finish my current campaign. I don't think I have ever finished one in any of the TW games yet. I should try and make sure it doesn't get batter.
- Maybe I will selectively autoresolve. I hate giving up control. specially if I start losing battles I think I should have won. Like an above poster said, maybe I just got some really bad random numbers in the battle I lost but in general the auto resolve does a fair job.
- I used to play RTSs a lot (like Age of Empires), but now generally prefer turn-based. The real time ones that I do like are generally the more thoughtful slower ones, such as Europa Universalis. The TW games are slower paced, so it falls into the category of a game I usually like. I do manage my units individually and don't play like Age of Empires. Perhaps I'm not very good at TW, but I do try and use good tactics.
- I like to hear other peoples opinions, that is why I asked the 'Is it worth it question'. I do realize it is a strange question to ask. I just hate wasting time with games that never end up fun for me. I tend to be a bit compulsive in trying to finish, so I don't give up as quickly as I should when not having fun. In any case, right now my compulsion is telling me to try and get through this campaign, so I will give it another try :-)

My personal advice: pick your wars and battles carefully.

Personally play important battles of strategic importance, auto-resolve less-significant ones.

The answer to 'is it worth it?': No.

If you enjoy the campaign map/diplomacy part of the game, though, you'll find your strategy gamer fix in Civilisation game series, or Europe Universalis ones, along with fantastic community mods people make out there.

[RobC04]

If you enjoy the campaign map/diplomacy part of the game, though, you'll find your strategy gamer fix in Civilisation game series, or Europe Universalis ones, along with fantastic community mods people make out there.

Civ is my favorite series of all time. I am playing Empire now because I am unhappy with the current state of Civ V. I even loaded up Civ IV for a little bit. I may even fire up Hearts of Iron 2.

[Humble Warrior]

I do have a rule of never Reloading unless the game crashes on me. If I choose to autoresolve and I lose then I treat like as if I gave the battle to a General and because he was incompetent or unlucky, he blew it. There are times I`m cursing the General because he lost a battle that I know I would`ve won. REALLY important battles I play myself.

[weasel65]

I have noticed that the AI always seems to win if you auto resolve a battle, or the AI enemy inflicts losses far heavier then you would have suffered had you fought the battle. Yesterday was a prime example, my 200 Colonial Militia were attacked (brave souls) by 50 Huron warriors and although I won, I lost 50 men. In a similar battle I fought it out and only lost 9.

Speaking of many enemies; I am surprised how weak little countries comprised of two areas suddenly decide it is time to attack the big guy with 20 areas even though they were "friendly" and trade partners. This also happened yesterday and made me raise my eyebrows.

[Humble Warrior]

I have noticed that the AI always seems to win if you auto resolve a battle, or the AI enemy inflicts losses far heavier then you would have suffered had you fought the battle. Yesterday was a prime example, my 200 Colonial Militia were attacked (brave souls) by 50 Huron warriors and although I won, I lost 50 men. In a similar battle I fought it out and only lost 9..

It`s a bit of a dejavu when seeing statements like this because people said this in the early days of Shogun when that was release 10 years ago! It`s always been like this with every TW. I always felt that CA did this on purpose to encourage people to play the battles.

Speaking of many enemies; I am surprised how weak little countries comprised of two areas suddenly decide it is time to attack the big guy with 20 areas even though they were "friendly" and trade partners. This also happened yesterday and made me raise my eyebrows.

Could be that rival made them an offer they couldn`t refuse to attack you. Check if they`re allied or friendly with someone you`ve been at war with for a while.

I also like playing CIV4 for when I feel like world strategy and diplomacy, leaving the detail of war to the unseen Generals. Good game, better than Civ 5.

[r3deed]

since you bought the game you are free to do what you want with it. autoresolving playing historical battels only. it is your choice. actualy people won't make mods if they felt it was compelsary to play vanilla as it is. if you didn't feel bored it seems you are not human. I know people who play GTA only to free roam not to complete the story. people now play for achivement. seriously games are fun and there is nothing like you are commited to thing or like golden rules. you are free to kill your cavalrey by enemy spears. using cheats.

you are free to kill your general by sending him alone to fight an army. the game gives you unlimited choices. there is nothing like the best way to play. otherwise stick to the adviser tip in the game.

[weasel65]

It`s a bit of a dejavu when seeing statements like this because people said this in the early days of Shogun when that was release 10 years ago! It`s always been like this with every TW. I always felt that CA did this on purpose to encourage people to play the battles.



Could be that rival made them an offer they couldn`t refuse to attack you. Check if they`re allied or friendly with someone you`ve been at war with for a while.

I also like playing CIV4 for when I feel like world strategy and diplomacy, leaving the detail of war to the unseen Generals. Good game, better than Civ 5.

I have never played Shogun but I do know (or think) that TW and RTW the battles, if auto resolved, seem to reflect better the composition of the two forces. Yeah, how dare Louisiana attack the 13 colonies which now include all of Canada and the entire eastern sea board. I think that once I am done wiping Louisiana out I will give it back to the Cherokees!

[Pericles of Athens]

I have never played Shogun but I do know (or think) that TW and RTW the battles, if auto resolved, seem to reflect better the composition of the two forces.

no in rome total war you always won autorevolve if you were rome, like like this one time i had a full stake of Ahoplits and like 6 roman legions beat them they killed almost every one i played on battle field won big time and only lost like 10 men.