The Autocalc seems unfair to the AI...

[Humble Warrior]

It seems like the autocalc favours you winning over the AI when the AI can actually win over you in practise. And it`ll make you win if you hit the autocalc.

A few times now I`ve decided to run the battle and sit back and blow the enemy away, then get surprised by just how tough it turns out to be and it wins the battle.

For instance fighting the Aizu Shogunate as the Satsuma Imperial. The auto calc indicates easy win.
Aizu have some matchlock kachi and YariKi cavalry, but also some new Shogitai that look interesting. He has no Generals as I assasinated them all earlier. I have a few riflemen, several cannons, cavalry, a gatling gun and two Generals.

Well we start off pounding eachother other with arty. He busts up my gatling gun. then he starts marching forward. He gets close, so I send out my cavalry to distract some of them, but they`re not that phased. I don`t have many riflemen and they engage in melee. Big mistake as my men are having serious trouble dealing with them, even with both my General`s help. Finally, my men break and one General is killed and everyone runs away. Win for the Shogunate.

I have no complaints about the units or the battle itself, in fact it was nice to lose for a change, but it`s just weird how the autocalc gave a completely different result, showing I had the troops to win by far when I did not. Also, had I chosen to autocalc it would`ve had me win. It seems autocalc is biased to the Imperial side and not to what`s really involved in the armies. The way it is now a person could just autocalc his way to win by auto against the AI.

I believe the autocalc needs fine tuning to be a little more accurate and a lot less biased to Imperials.

[Dynamo11]

I dunno I've had a lot of auto-calc losses that was massively biased towards the AI

[Tepok]

Well, the big problem is auto calc decides that your units equaly share the losses and generally, if you win, it's with so few losses it is absurd. I mean, some close victories often end up with one or two units wiped and the rest fine for me...

Autoresolve on naval battles also proves to be a bit funky as units get damaged in autoresolve, forcing the player to play every battle with your ironclad against something barely stronger than a fishing boat that you often obliterate in the first volley.

[Ceorl84]

Actually this is a pretty big problem. The autocalc is heavily weighted in favor of "modern" armies over "traditional" armies. And by heavily I mean you'll regularly get better results with the auto-calc than you ever would on the battlefield. If that Aizu army had even a few rifleman, not traditional matchlocks, and/or arty the auto-calc would be far more in line with expected casulties.

The auto-calc makes modern armies insanely powerful and is pretty easy to abuse, while making traditional armies a chore because even the most lopsided battles have to be manually fought for fear of excessive losses. The only bright side is that its much easier to score heroic victories with traditional armies and boost your daiymo's honor rating. My recent Tsu daiymo got +3 honor from heroic victories as his Katana Kachi army regularly smashed large, low quality, AI rifle armies within 30 game turns.

[Drtad]

I believe the autocalc needs fine tuning to be a little more accurate and a lot less biased to Imperials.

Not Imperials so much as rifle units. I've run some tests where Shogitai (elite Shogunate melee troops) in terms of auto-calc had about the same power as a unit of Levy Infantry.

[CallMeHarry]

Yep, had the same problem as Tosa. I had a mix of spear levy and line infantry. The enemy had 6 yari kachi, some spear levy and 3 yari ki. Yes, that is one strong army.

However, my numbers where bigger. So the auto calc showed around 70% in my favour. Playing the battle myself resulted in defeats every time. He just pinned me down and butchered my men.
Now that's all fine, obviously a clan for the more experienced player. The strange thing is, auto calculate results in a major victory for me. Losing only a couple of men while butchering the entire enemy army.

Bit inconsistent isn't it

[Humble Warrior]

This...

Actually this is a pretty big problem. The autocalc is heavily weighted in favor of "modern" armies over "traditional" armies. And by heavily I mean you'll regularly get better results with the auto-calc than you ever would on the battlefield. If that Aizu army had even a few rifleman, not traditional matchlocks, and/or arty the auto-calc would be far more in line with expected casulties.

The auto-calc makes modern armies insanely powerful and is pretty easy to abuse, while making traditional armies a chore because even the most lopsided battles have to be manually fought for fear of excessive losses. The only bright side is that its much easier to score heroic victories with traditional armies and boost your daiymo's honor rating. My recent Tsu daiymo got +3 honor from heroic victories as his Katana Kachi army regularly smashed large, low quality, AI rifle armies within 30 game turns.

And This...

Yep, had the same problem as Tosa. I had a mix of spear levy and line infantry. The enemy had 6 yari kachi, some spear levy and 3 yari ki. Yes, that is one strong army.

However, my numbers where bigger. So the auto calc showed around 70% in my favour. Playing the battle myself resulted in defeats every time. He just pinned me down and butchered my men.
Now that's all fine, obviously a clan for the more experienced player. The strange thing is, auto calculate results in a major victory for me. Losing only a couple of men while butchering the entire enemy army.

Bit inconsistent isn't it

You guys are right and it`s what I`m seeing.

I`ve never seen quite this type of peculiar action of the Autocalc before FOTS. Something is inconsistent here and I think it is something to do with the Imperial to Shogun thing.

[Xaosan]

From what i've gathered in 4 campaigns 2 imperial and 2 shogunate is that auto calc seems to favour imperial units. Will report back when i've done a few more might even record some data on the balance and see if it backs my opinion up.

[Kev006]

The way casualties are evenly distributed across your units rather than annihilating a bunch of them is silly, it just means you regenerate your entire army in a turn or two with resupply.

Also I had a battle yesterday where I was defending a keep with 8 or so levy infantry and 3 line infantry versus an AI army composed almost entirely of Katana Kachi. The autocalc basically wiped them out with maybe 150 losses on my side. Had I fought that battle I may have lost it once they got on the walls since they could easily kill my units in melee.

[Ceorl84]

I don't think its an Imperial/Shogun difference since both clans in each faction appear to be hardcoded to either be "traditional" or "modern" and the auto-calc performance of those clans, regardless of their faction alignment, is split. The former does awful and can be easily destroyed. The latter you fight in normal battles in order to exploit the BAI.

Further, the auto-calc problems aren't limited to specific Shogun/Imperial units. Both Yari and Katana Kachi, not just the Shogetei, will get slaughtered by Line Infantry in auto-calc even though in battle the LI would be smashed.

[ton of bricks]

Definitely favours even the mediocre gunpowder units over almost any traditional unit.
Is there a way to edit the values autocalc uses so that it gives at least some credit to units like yari ki and shogitai, who are very useful even late in the game?

[DeliCiousTZM]

Im gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe just maybe your very bad at this game.

[Gaizokubanou]

Im gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe just maybe your very bad at this game.

This.

It's easy to get better result than what auto-calc gives you. If auto-calc give you win but you lose in the field, wtf are you doing lol

But yes, auto-calc does favor gun units a lot, and then there is that issue of giving winners everything and losers almost nothing in sieges.

[Aeneas Veneratio]

How the heck could you lose a battle, where you have "several cannons"? I usually get the AI army to waver or even rout before reaching my lines, when using 1-3 artilleries (mostly parrot cannons)? If you for some reason were defending against an AI army, which had cannons, in range of their cannons, expect to be pounded by their shells.

As for the autocalc, I think it favours armies, which have a significant amount of artillery.

[Humble Warrior]

Im gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe just maybe your very bad at this game.

Interesting conclusion you`ve come up with there.

Now reread everything s l o w l y and I might even consider you`re not on drugs.

[Gaizokubanou]

Interesting conclusion you`ve come up with there.

Now reread everything s l o w l y and I might even consider you`re not on drugs.

Unless you forgot to mention important details like being outnumbered 2 to 1, reading it only makes you looking even worse.

You fought against general-less army with army supported by cannons and 2 generals and you lost... was it forest battle? Siege defense where cannons couldn't do much? What difficulty?

Doesn't really mitigate the fact that you lost a battle that auto-calc gave you an overwhelming win lol

[IGdood]

If I ever autocalc and win, my spear levy are almost always automatically wiped out, no questions asked.

[Abe86]

The Gatling gun especially weights way too much in the army balance and autocalc meter.

[Ferdiad]

I hate Sieges so I always Auto Resolve them.

[IGdood]

The only siege I like in FOTS is when I'm defending. In that case, even levy infantry can give hell.