Makedon with auto-resolve

[Wolf Priest]

Hey guys, I'm new to mod because I did not want to buy this garbage game, and even now, I only play Warcraft mod and EBII.
Is it possible to play Makedonia (successfully) without wasting time on battles, and what is the best way to do it?

PS: Great mod, devs. I really love all the complexity, especially romanization of Italians.

[wermez]

Easy/easy.

[Wolf Priest]

Thanks neighbor, but I meant more of a what strategy to use. Like attack this army abandon that city, recruit that merc, that sort of thing.

[Genghis Skahn]

If you only plan on auto-resolving then I'd just stack heavy infantry and cavalry.

Antigonos Gonatas starts out with a load of stars...Capture Pella back from Epeiros, then move south to fight Pyrrhos himself(he's going to try to capture Korinthos). After that, capture the rest of southern Hellas, then conquer Epeiros/Aitolia(and eventually Krete+Rhodos). With all that accomplished, you should be financially stable and be able to build the stacks you keep winning in auto-resolve.

The Romans are powerful in auto-resolve, I should warn you. So come prepared.

[Wolf Priest]

I should have been a bit more clear.

I don't mind playing battles (would be a bit idiotic to play total war game then), I just don't want to play every single one. I had a problem in Hellas, as you probably know, they have a bunch of 1 FM armies, and autoresolve doesn't work, and slugging out with top-tier hoplites takes forever, even when you shoot them and surround them. Neither does it work against Pyrrhos, as he will just lose a few soldiers, and so will I, and my victory is, eh, Pyrrhic. I also noticed that Makedonian king(?) has really high stats, but being spitroasted by Greeks and Epirus does not help. I only picked Makedon because of promise of Tracian and Illyrian troops, and that awesome event chain of restoring the peoples faith in Makedonia. I am reinstalling Windows, so I may try Boioi next.

I am experienced TW player, so by the time I learn all the mechanics of the mod and reach Romans it will be Roma delenda est. I am not, however, experienced TWM2 player. I know roughly what to do, but I am still picking nuances. May have overestimated my DeI knowledge a little bit.

[Hellenikon]

That you have played Rome 2 or later games doesn't mean anything, it doesn't give you any experience for playing EB2.

The autoresolve being harsh on the player is intended, it's the only way to give the AI a fighting chance. You save time at the cost of some troops. There are players who autoresolve every battle and still win campaigns, it's perfectly doable. You just can't brute force it like you can in later games, due to how replenishment works.

Of course, if you want to autoresolve from the very beginning then it's a bad idea. The EB2 start is always challenging, at least for most factions, so you need to minimize losses until you have an established economy, and that means playing battles manually. By autoresolving then, you are giving yourself a harder start.

[QuintusSertorius]

One other downside of auto-resolving everything, any scripted triggers that require you to fight a particular size/number of battles doesn't work for auto-resolved ones. That's hardcoded, counters that export from the battle require the battlemap to have been engaged.

[Genghis Skahn]

I think Hellenikon is quite right.

At any rate, you should definitely fight Pyrrhus in a real battle at least. Gonatas and him are essentially arch-nemeses, it seems almost shameful to miss out on a historic battle like that by auto-resolving(besides, his command stars are too high).

I only picked Makedon because of promise of Tracian and Illyrian troops, and that awesome event chain of restoring the peoples faith in Makedonia.

The Getai are probably our most "thracian"(touchy subject) faction, who also have very good access to Thracian and Illyrian troops. They have new traits in 2.3 and some new scripted events, but nothing as sophisticated as the Makedonian Kingship script and the events which follow it.

The Boii are my favorite faction, personally. Fun if you like getting attacked from all directions--they also have lots of new traits since I added a bunch of Celtic traits in 2.3, and a colony system to represent their migratory nature.

[Wolf Priest]

At any rate, you should definitely fight Pyrrhus in a real battle at least. Gonatas and him are essentially arch-nemeses, it seems almost shameful to miss out on a historic battle like that by auto-resolving(besides, his command stars are too high).

He was too weakened by rebels (how he even found rebels in Sparta is beyond me) to really require my presence.

The Getai are probably our most "thracian"(touchy subject) faction, who also have very good access to Thracian and Illyrian troops.

If you are talking about me, I would not mind, I'm not a nazi. I did not know that Getai have access to Illyrian troop, too, sweet.

The Boii are my favorite faction, personally.

That is incentive enough to try it.

[Wolf Priest]

That you have played Rome 2 or later games doesn't mean anything, it doesn't give you any experience for playing EB2.

The autoresolve being harsh on the player is intended, it's the only way to give the AI a fighting chance. You save time at the cost of some troops. There are players who autoresolve every battle and still win campaigns, it's perfectly doable. You just can't brute force it like you can in later games, due to how replenishment works.

Of course, if you want to autoresolve from the very beginning then it's a bad idea. The EB2 start is always challenging, at least for most factions, so you need to minimize losses until you have an established economy, and that means playing battles manually. By autoresolving then, you are giving yourself a harder start.

That is a bit harsh, but you probably did not mean it that way. I get the idea behind autoresolve penalty, but I don't know the exact values or results.
I played a lot of Rome I and Barbarian Invasion. I had to mod the latter a lot, as many things were broken (Huns have best swordsman, Roman units costing like they are eating pure diamonds every meal, Roman Clibinari being useless, Saxons can't become Christian even if everyone else except Persia could, etc).

[Genghis Skahn]

He was too weakened by rebels (how he even found rebels in Sparta is beyond me) to really require my presence.
If you are talking about me, I would not mind, I'm not a nazi. I did not know that Getai have access to Illyrian troop, too, sweet.

1. Most likely deserters from his own faction or the KH--or maybe he fought unsuccessfully against the Aitolians beforehand? Sometimes he wanders towards there early-on.
2. Oh not at all, good sir. I meant broadly speaking, there's some debate over how Thracian the Getai should be considered AFAIK, and I've read at least one reasonably informative, but highly nationalistic book on the Getai. At any rate, there's at least one Triballi FM in their faction at game start.

[Wolf Priest]

I am from Triballi myself (unless mistakes were made). Now I can't decide who to pick first.
I'll just roll the dice.

[BHL 20]

Autoresolve can actually be an exploit in a way. If you focus on developing 1 or 2 generals from your faction by having them fight all your battles, once they reach 8+ command stars you will be able to consistently autoresolve win battles where the forces are balanced or where the enemy even has a small advantage. However, before your generals reach very high command you will have to be careful - either manually play battles or only go into battles where you have a large advantage.

[QuintusSertorius]

Playing battles where you have a large advantage will cause your generals to develop negative combat-related traits.

[BHL 20]

Oh, even when they're autoresolved? Sometimes you have to beat a small army, for example when attacking a settlement with a 2/3 unit garrison. Should the player reduce the size of their army for such a battle?

I haven't actually tried an autoresolve campaign in EB II, so I'm not sure what the best methods of increasing command points are. Nevertheless the strategy of cultivating highly skilled generals should be effective even if it's more difficult to do in this mod.

[QuintusSertorius]

Yep, even autoresolved do, though the odds usually need to be at least 2:1 in your favour before it starts hitting the negative triggers.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Playing battles where you have a large advantage will cause your generals to develop negative combat-related traits.

Quintus, I've got 2 questions on this issue:
1. a similar solution was introduced by Byg's in the SS-BGR - generals would acquire trait called Overconfidence (- morale etc). However, after fighting personally a battle (or more) this trait would disappear. Is the EBII solution similar, or are generals stuck with that bad traits?
2. why have you decided to implement this solution? Actually, my case against it (I didn't like it in the BGR) is that it forces you to play a myriad of irrelevant battles. If the AI sends stacks of 3-4 units, it makes no sense to split your armies and fight dozens of battles 4 versus 4 etc. It's tedious, the player shouldn't be expected to do this.
I've come up conceptually with two other solutions:
a) provide the player with positive incentives: the good traits develop only if a general wins battles against the odds, but with serious forces involved. In this sense, the player would prefer to detach some units before a battle to get those "bad" odds, but he wouldn't play these 4-4 battles.
b) introduce the field-costs-script with exponential values (like some costs for a small army of 1-9, higher for 11-14, high 15-17, extreme 18-20). In this case, the player would prefer (or could afford) only smaller armies in the field what would make fighting in advantage less likely than otherwise.
What do you think?
/this is not to criticize any of the solutions, I'm just trying to find out what's the best way of dealing with the problem of fighting with advantage in the M2TW engine - in the Warscape it so bad that I don't think it's possible to save it/
JoC

[Hellenikon]

Playing battles where you have a large advantage will cause your generals to develop negative combat-related traits.

LIES! See this fine example of generalship

https://youtu.be/tZ63VnQei-k?t=14

[MagusCaligula]

I've done some campaigns only using auto resolve and the truth is it makes for more realistic outcomes in general. It seems to me the most important for auto resolve in this mod is the General, troop quality and variety (infantry, cavalry and ranged). One thing I notice is that the units in the upper row usually take more damage so I usually add first the cannon fodder infantry and then the best troops like heavy infantry, heavy and medium cavalry and also long ranged troops for example.