autoresolve

[loony]

I want to raise an issue of autoresolve, i hope the DEI team can balance it better (for 1.1, 1.5 or whatever )
Autoresolve significanlty understates the strength of army of good units.
It forces me to play those dumb minor city siege battles, because if i autoresolve, i lose like 40% of my army.
And that is not acceptable against a garrison of levies and a bunch of average spearmen.

Now to illustrate I have this sequence of screenshots:
I, as sparta, with my first army (most exp) attack a minor settlement of pontus, reinforced by a pontic army.
Obviously, I have an advantage of better troops, better troop exp and being able to defeat the opponent in detail if they stay in town.

If the enemy sallies, I would say 30% losses would make sense thus I would have autoresolved a close victory on 50% losses.
However the power meter is seriously off the mark... so I get angry and start making screenshots

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Dear autoresolve suggest 0 survival, 0 chance to win.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I have to fight, therefore, as the forecasted result does not make any sense at all:
step 1
0 chance to survive for enemy reinforcements

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

step 2
A good move by AI, sallying to help his buddy (why not 15 mins earlier? ah?)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

step 3
The reinforcements are almost destroyed, i pin the sallying force while i deal with the elite units in reinforcements

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A logical conclusion

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I would have accepted 50% losses to allow me to save some time and get on with campaign. Instead, i am forced to play an easy battle and the AI has even less chance to stand up to my armies, thereby decreasing the overall challenge of the campaing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Nest turn I will be ready to go and attack another settlement. At 50% loses I would have spent 2-3 turns replenishing.

I think it is the worst of 2 worlds:
1. autoresolving is unfair and punishing for good armies, makes campaing a chore (always attack with 2 armies, or tailor armies to suit autoresolve)
2. playing without autoresolve makes the campaign silly easy

There should be a middle ground (as is with attack-sieges of walled settlements), where by playing manually you could decrease casualties by 10% or 15%, but would rather get on with campaign and accept those losses (roleplay that you gave a chance to a new general, bla bla).

I understand, I would have won had I been playing manually as Pontus, it would have not been easy and I would have lost a lot of men, as killing those spartan hoplites would have been a tough call.

Essentially, if playing a faction with average but numerous troops you get an autoresolve bonus, while playing with stronger troops - a malus. That does not make sense and makes greek and roman campaings boring.

[FlashHeart07]

Autoresolve is somewhat hardcoded and therefore it will not be possible to fully balance this feature of the game.
The team have tried but it seems that some parts of it is not changeable. I know that as an example, Thte submod that changes artillery for DeI will mess with the autoresolve because of stuff that is hardcoded.
You are not the only one that thinks that autoresolve is messed up.

[meerkatology]

i don't think autoresolve scales with battle difficulty.

I feel its currently balanced for legendary difficulty. i.e VH battle.
I'm playing on legendary and it seems autoresolve roughly estimates my losses pretty accurately, the only issue is it tends to distribute losses to cavalry really hard for some reason. your elite units also gets higher losses in the army.

autoresolve gives the side that is defending a settlement way too much advantage, even when the settlement has no walls or towers...

[super_newbie_pro]

+1 for me as I have to play the vast majority of battles tiny rebel against my cities because if I make an automatic resolution, I always lose whatever the choice, if I play , I always wins ... It is a waste of time and a source of frustration /

[UsulDaNeriak]

Think positive.

The autoresolve mechanic is the way the AI assesses the strength of an hostile army. If the calculation would be correct and the AI would know, how strong a players army really is, it would never attack you.

[FlashHeart07]

The difficulty for the auto resolve can be changed if my memory serves me right. You just need to change some lines in a txt file.
Hopefully there will be a time where it is possible for the team to recreate the auto resolve to fit their own ideas.

[loony]

This battle was played on Hard.

TBH, i feel autoresolve does not properly evaluate quality of a unit, therefore, quality units tend to lose disproportionately.
I bet it is balanced for vanilla values, not for DEI.

[Korvyr]

To be honest the AI doesnt take strategy into account, and I feel in DEI it doesn't take the experience into account either?

Or the quality of the troops, just the numbers.

I also feel it VERY favors the AI, I have to play almost every battle unless I heavily outnumber.

[zonks40]

I think the auto resolve is pretty spot on in those cases, if the AI was actually being controlled by a player, you would probably have been steamrolled.
The problem is the auto resolve isn't taking into account that the AI is a drooling idiot.

[loony]

I think the auto resolve is pretty spot on in those cases, if the AI was actually being controlled by a player, you would probably have been steamrolled.
The problem is the auto resolve isn't taking into account that the AI is a drooling idiot.

Drooling idiot is a problem, cheers to that.

I am sure I would have won had I been on Pontus side. Still, I would have lost quite a few men and three silver chevron spartan thorax hoplites kick arse. badly.
So I think I would have lost quite a few unless I was able to use the arty very well somehow. Other than that, pontus troops are just BAD.

[zonks40]

Drooling idiot is a problem, cheers to that.

I am sure I would have won had I been on Pontus side. Still, I would have lost quite a few men and three silver chevron spartan thorax hoplites kick arse. badly.
So I think I would have lost quite a few unless I was able to use the arty very well somehow. Other than that, pontus troops are just BAD.

True, and if it was a head on fight the Hoplites would hold quite well, but half your army is lightly armored, the AI force, if controlled by a human, would surround you, and not much could be done to stop it, they have 3700 more men, and once your hoplites are surrounded, they would get butchered, most of their melee defense and armor is in their shields, on the rear or right hand side even a levy troop will do damage.

[crunchyfrog]

If I'm not mistaking, the auto-resolve is also applying the siege defense bonus. The longer you siege them, the smaller it gets.

[Dresden]

Yes, we added auto resolve affects from sieges so if you attack immediately you will be at a disadvantage.

[geala]

I concur with zonks40. I think the autoresolve in this case wasn't so bad. The AI had much more troops and because you cannot easliy rout the enemy in the prolonged fighting the exhaustion of the fewer better troops would create a very problematical situation for the outnumbered side. On the whole in my feeling the autoresolve in R2TW is much better than in the earlier TW games I played.

[EtheL-VaXe]

I'd like to bring-up another discussion with why the AI decides to meet you the field when you have superior range units when it overall works towards their disadvantage.. is this also hard-coded?

Take this battle for example

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If i auto-resolve i suffer around 300 casualties using a normal stance but because i find that outrageously high considering my unit composition i fought the battle myself and to my surprise the AI decided to fight me in the field and then this happened....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That's right 5....I was laughing in astonishment myself and this was played at Normal Battle Difficulty and If they AI just decided to stay put and let me come to them i would have suffered considerably more casualties, specially considering how many missile units they have as well.

I guess Drooling Idiot is the best way to describe how the AI calculates the best course of action.

[dfeal]

At 50% loses I would have spent 2-3 turns replenishing.

And yes, of course, that is really realistic. Excuse my sarcasm but those kind of loses would have spelt the end of the campaign for most ancient armies (Rome aside) and most especially the Spartans! The Spartans would have taken years to replenish those kind of numbers not a couple of months.

I keep saying this, but replenishment and recruitment rates, especially for elite units, is way beyond unrealistic.

[FlashHeart07]

And yes, of course, that is really realistic. Excuse my sarcasm but those kind of loses would have spelt the end of the campaign for most ancient armies (Rome aside) and most especially the Spartans! The Spartans would have taken years to replenish those kind of numbers not a couple of months.

I keep saying this, but replenishment and recruitment rates, especially for elite units, is way beyond unrealistic.

But the rates for recruitment cannot be changed. The AI cannot handle anything but one turn to recruit a unit. If we increased the build time of units the AI would simple just recruit all units that only took 1 turn and never recruit the rest meaning you would have to fight levy armies all the time, everytime

[Krixux]

And yes, of course, that is really realistic. Excuse my sarcasm but those kind of loses would have spelt the end of the campaign for most ancient armies (Rome aside) and most especially the Spartans! The Spartans would have taken years to replenish those kind of numbers not a couple of months.

I keep saying this, but replenishment and recruitment rates, especially for elite units, is way beyond unrealistic.

well I was about to rattle at you but then red ( Rome aside ) and calmed down


And FlashHeart07 is right
the last thing I need, is an already dummy AI fielding endless armies of levies...

[dfeal]

well I was about to rattle at you but then red ( Rome aside ) and calmed down

Always read the post fully, my dear Krixux. Advise that I hope to even follow myself... most of the time, anyway. =o)

[RandyRhoads]

It really is annoying to lose 40% of my germanic evocati to eastern peasants. However, having to replenish the troops isn't the biggest pain(for me), its the experience loss. If the autoresolve can't be fixed then how about some sort of tweak to the experience loss with new soldiers. Is it possible to make new soldiers coming into a unit of 8 chevrons have an experience level of 3-4 rather than 0 (im assuming its a 0)?