Auto-resolve shouldn't be allowed on Legendary difficulty

[Auditor]

Or at least it should be allowed only in situation where odds are 3-1 or more for player or AI.
I mean auto-resolve is an ultimate cheat button and it is so logical not to allow using it on par with no saves and no orders to units while pausing the game.
That would make Legendary campaign truly epic

[OTZ]

Since it's the player's choice whether to auto or not, why bother? Make it a house rule that you follow. Personally, I hate spending the time it takes to load up a battle where 3 units are fighting.

[Auditor]

Since it's the player's choice whether to auto or not, why bother? Make it a house rule that you follow. Personally, I hate spending the time it takes to load up a battle where 3 units are fighting.

They do restrict saves and pausing during battle in Legendary (and more features like mini-map and view area), so why auto-resolving can not be restricted?

Besides, I do think that autoresolve unbalanced in many cases and gives a player big advantage, to name few:

• Siege battles as an attacker. Especially if there are many archers in a defending force. Usually auto calc will give you much better results with lesser casualties. Think of assaulting Kyoto with 2 armies. You will have only 20 units under your control at the same time, you will have to cross narrow bridge or swim to reach the first ring of walls – all of this under constant and deadly archer fire. No matter how good you are – you will suffer heavy casualties and maybe will fail. But with auto calc you have a safe win.
• Sea battles – Maybe it is me but my results in sea battles are much better with autocalc. On few occasions my single trade boat got heroic win over 3-4 enemy ships.
• 2 vs 2 battle situation where 2 of your armies face 2 enemy armies from 2 different clans. It is actually 1 vs 2 situation on battle map (as I made clear in other topic), but auto calc will ignore this fact and let you better chance.

So yes, I think Legendary should be restricted on auto calc in some way, simply because it is what it is – legendary and nothing less.

[Urobulos]

They do restrict saves and pausing during battle in Legendary (and more features like mini-map and view area), so why auto-resolving can not be restricted?

Besides, I do think that autoresolve unbalanced in many cases and gives a player big advantage, to name few:

• Siege battles as an attacker. Especially if there are many archers in a defending force. Usually auto calc will give you much better results with lesser casualties. Think of assaulting Kyoto with 2 armies. You will have only 20 units under your control at the same time, you will have to cross narrow bridge or swim to reach the first ring of walls – all of this under constant and deadly archer fire. No matter how good you are – you will suffer heavy casualties and maybe will fail. But with auto calc you have a safe win.
• Sea battles – Maybe it is me but my results in sea battles are much better with autocalc. On few occasions my single trade boat got heroic win over 3-4 enemy ships.
• 2 vs 2 battle situation where 2 of your armies face 2 enemy armies from 2 different clans. It is actually 1 vs 2 situation on battle map (as I made clear in other topic), but auto calc will ignore this fact and let you better chance.

So yes, I think Legendary should be restricted on auto calc in some way, simply because it is what it is – legendary and nothing less.

You make some good points, but CA should rebalance auto resolve rather than remove it.

1 Is true. You need to outnumber your enemy, but say if you have a full stack attacking and half a stack of archers inside, you will win, but there is no way you can achieve losses as low as auto calc gives, no matter how good you are as a player. Same for field battles. If I attack 10 units with 20 of mine I know I will murder the AI, but if the units are camped in deep forest, on a hill, with unprotected approach for their archers to shoot at you and no way to outflank them since the hill is in the corner of the map, boosted by stat and morale bonuses from playing legendary; you will suffer losses, without fail much higher than auto resolve would suggest. My main problem with this, is that if you take low enough losses you will get a heroic victory even if the odds were massively in your favour. In my Date domination campaign on Legendary 80%+ of my victories were heroic. If memory serves in previous Total War games you could only get Heroic victories if you were outnumbered and crushed the enemy. Now you seem to get it even with 3:1 and higher odds in your favour as long as your losses are low enough. Which auto resolve tends to give in certain situations. Having said that, auto resolve sieges will always damage the castle. Sometimes it is more beneficial to storm it yourself to gain the suppression bonus sooner and the ability to recruit troops immediately. If you expect an AI counter-attack it will also leave the walls intact. Many time I'd auto-resolve sieges with a retainer and ashigaru unit inside and get counter-attacked by AI while the castle is being repaired, with sections of the wall missing to leave my archers more vulnerable.

2 I never noticed this. The only time it is true is when you try to catch the black ship. Also if you try to auto resolve battles while you have the black ship, you will suffer much higher losses. I had a battle in my first campaign on very hard where my black ship got sunk by a force of 8 bow kobayas and other rubbish ships, despite odds being in my favour. I reloaded just to see the difference and when I controlled the battle manually, I destroyed the entire fleet before it even had a chance to get within archer fire distance. After moving to legendary I never auto-resolve any naval battles with the black ship on my side. I had 1 v 20 naval battles which I won with minimal losses simply because of how powerful the effect of massive range advantage and cannon fire impact on morale has on the enemy. And I'm at naval battles.


3 This is true, but the main reason is that the interface, and sometimes hardware, does not allow the player to control more than 20 units. It sucks a bit because those are some of the potentially most epic battles, but unless there is a way to say assign orders to the AI while it controls your second stack supporting you in battle, I don't think auto-resolve should be removed at all. This is merely punishing the player because of design and/or hardware limitations. If I got myself into a position when I have 3 stacks of mine vs 2 or 3 stack of the AI, I wouldn't want to be forced into a 1 vs 2 or 3 scenario on the battle map, simply because there is no way for me to take advantage of those units on the battle map other than getting my units wiped first....


I guess the best solution for me would be to

A)more realistically simulate losses, if you have 3 units vs one you are unlikely to suffer any losses with proper manoeuvring but 20 vs 10 you will usually struggle to match the casualties level on battle map that auto-resolve produces on a regular basis
B)only give heroic victories when outnumbered. Right now I think the game only looks at casualty ratios
C)allow the player to benefit the player from having parity or superiority on strategic level, by either revamping the interface (won't happen probably) or allowing the AI to help you out after giving it a few broad goals. This in turn, might create issues for people running mid range rigs when you get 3 vs 3 stack battles. More importantly maps are not balanced for this at all. You will find that with maximum unit sizes some maps already feel a bit tight when you have 20 vs 40 unit battles. Increasing that to 40 vs 60 or even higher would make the game unplayable IMHO, even if your rig could technically handle these numbers of units. I guess I should add that I always play TW games at maximum unit size settings to get as close to the epic scale as possible. I'd turn the graphics to the lowest level before I'd even consider turning unit size down a notch.

[kronpas]

They do restrict saves and pausing during battle in Legendary (and more features like mini-map and view area), so why auto-resolving can not be restricted?

Besides, I do think that autoresolve unbalanced in many cases and gives a player big advantage, to name few:

• Siege battles as an attacker. Especially if there are many archers in a defending force. Usually auto calc will give you much better results with lesser casualties. Think of assaulting Kyoto with 2 armies. You will have only 20 units under your control at the same time, you will have to cross narrow bridge or swim to reach the first ring of walls – all of this under constant and deadly archer fire. No matter how good you are – you will suffer heavy casualties and maybe will fail. But with auto calc you have a safe win.
• Sea battles – Maybe it is me but my results in sea battles are much better with autocalc. On few occasions my single trade boat got heroic win over 3-4 enemy ships.
• 2 vs 2 battle situation where 2 of your armies face 2 enemy armies from 2 different clans. It is actually 1 vs 2 situation on battle map (as I made clear in other topic), but auto calc will ignore this fact and let you better chance.

So yes, I think Legendary should be restricted on auto calc in some way, simply because it is what it is – legendary and nothing less.

This. Auto Resolve does give player HUGE advantage. Its the ultimate cheat button if you are attacker in siege battles, or have number advantage by 2:1 and higher - the casualty is so low its unbelievable. The same goes for sea battles.

However, as long as CA doesnt change the way reinforcement work in S2, I will keep using auto resolve. Whats the point of bringing 3 armies to surround the enemy if I cant let loose all of my troops at once on the battlefield?

And what you would do if auto resolve was removed and you are attacking 3 separated 3-unit-armies in the region with your full stack?

[Thefallenhun]

Shoulda coulda woulda, make it a hosue rule, or invent a time machine.

[Friedrich Barbarossa]

You alway loose auto resolve 1v1 or 1v2, its pointless to auto resolve such battle.
But the only battles you win with auto resolve is with 3:1 or higher, but these battles are too boring to be fought manually.
So I dont think your idea would help, auto-resolve is in no way a "cheat button".

[bigfootedfred]

no i disagree. Auto-resolve should always be in the game, at any difficulty.

If you play that level anyway, auto resolve really dosent favour you at any rate..

[Gaizokubanou]

no i disagree. Auto-resolve should always be in the game, at any difficulty.

If you play that level anyway, auto resolve really dosent favour you at any rate..

It actually has a huge flaw to it that you can exploit as a player really easily. The flaw is that the auto resolve considers full multistacks to be of much higher value than a single stack.

Ok this make sense, so what's the problem? Problem is when you are fighting full stack of elite samurai with 2 stacks of full ashigaru units. In actual battle the 2 stacks of cheaper units have a problem because they can only participate in the battle with 20 units at a time, so your 2 stacks can get chewed up one at a time (or first stack is virtually annihilated when second stack reinforcement comes).

[Carthago]

If ur good enough to play on legendary you should receive better results with manual fighting, so there isn't any advantage to auto-resolve.

[Xaosan]

auto resolve is needed can you be arsed fighting every 1000v 100 men battle

[August]

If you are inclined to think that auto resolve is unfair you should not use it, but let other make that call for themselves.

[Ak1980]

auto give give to much advantage to ashigaru unit, you can win simply by spamming ashigaru to outnumber enemy unit 2:1, and autoresolve every battle.

[teafanatic]

Then nobody will play legendary. When I'm hunting down enemy armies down to two units, I really don't want/need to fight the battle myself. I also don't feel like fighting a siege a lot of times if I'm defending and I'm definitely going to lose (outnumbered 4:1 or more) unless inflicting damage on their army will do something meaningful.

[Kazang]

That would give me even less desire to play on Legendary, fighting every stupidly one sided battle? No thanks.

You make a good point about auto-resolve in some cases being an advantage in siege battles, but frankly AI archers on VH and up are obscene, they literally have 2x the fire rate and accuracy.
Considering you set the difficulty yourself you can easily choose to not use auto-resolve if you feel it's cheating in some way. If you think autoresolve somehow takes away from the "achievement" of other people playing on legendary that did not use it then you are playing the game for the wrong reason.

[Zaraki]

Sometime if auto resolve while assaulting castles you'll get no deaths even if they have bowmen... Manually I don't see how this is possible

[toguruk]

Auto resolve is good on any level. I play Legendary as well, and use it quite a bit.. even when i lose

[Sir Winston Churchill]

I would agree since I've seen the autoresolve favor the player on multiple occasions. If I have a large army sieging a castle with a small garrison, instead of fighting the battle I hit autoresolve and take ZERO casualties when if I fought it I would have taken at least some.

[asdfen]

um if auto battle taken our from legendary where AI sends ungodly amount of troops which they literally create out of thin air as all of the rival clans are financed by god almighty himself it would take all or almost all enjoyment out of the game for me.

Also some clans like my fav Oda could use unupgraded yari ashigaru stacked with a good general to beat the game. Playing all melee stack is very boring. along with a lot of other reasons to auto battle. Personally I only play key/challenging battles on the map and go through most of campaign auto battle to save time. "short" game still takes hours.

To say that this feature is overpowered is crap as once in a while it can kill off one of the stack without any apparent reason and on legendary thats it you are owned. loosing a stack on legendary in most cases = game over man. Commence screaming and destroying furniture to neighbors dismay as they wont get that you've just lost what you've worked for a few hours to create..

[Kitchen.Sink]

Even if we suppose that auto-resolve could, potentially, be abused -- what does it matter? Nothing forces you to auto-resolve. As others have stated, set a house rule and enjoy.