Autoresolve tip

[Oaty]

Something I noticed in autresolved naval conflicts. And may also apply to army autoresolved battles.

The second unit in your stack appears to always be the key unit. So if your second unit is the strongest unit in your stack you will more than likely win. But if it is your weakest you are less likely to win but if you do win it appears the casualties will be higher for all units.

And quite often in naval battles it appears that your second unit does most of the work all the time. As in gets the most casualties but also inflicts the most.

[Magraev]

Thanks for the tip - I'll try to see if that makes a difference.

The most annoying thing about the naval battles is when your gaul ally drags your 12-ship carthagenian superfleet into a fight with 2 roman biremes. It seems the assisting firepower I supply means nothing. I do get to share the casualty-rate of the boat though... :furious3:

Would be nice if that could be fixed.

[Titus Livius]

The thing I hate about auto-resolve is that it gives mewling little incompetent armies incredible kills against my army.

Once, in Spain, I fought a 1200-strong Spaniard army with my own Roman one of similar strength. I lost one man to the Spaniard's 1000 or so. On auto-resolve for that same battle (after I loaded it back up) I lost 200 men and only killed 500 of the enemy.

[Selway]

Yeah, I have noticed that too. The second unit always takes the brunt of the casualties. Along those same lines, the farther back you go in your army stack, the slower they gain exp chevrons. Maybe they are just bench wamers...

[Herakleitos]

Hey oaty,

good tip, I noticed this myself in naval battles but since I rarely autoresolve land battles I didn't know it applies there as well. I think that the autocalc actually uses the first unit of your army the most but since that would mean the general in most cases it treats the second unit as the first normal unit.

[Magraev]

Yes it's absolutely true - I'n not sure if that means that you should but your most expendable unit in that slot or the best one though.

[Craterus]

~:cool: i rarely autoresolve land battles but thanks for the tip about navals. ~:cheers: ~D

[Oaty]

Yes it's absolutely true - I'n not sure if that means that you should but your most expendable unit in that slot or the best one though.

Autoresolve.... means you have no control. So who do you want in control, your newby ricky recruits or your veteran headchopping warriors. Really think of that 2nd unit as your right hand man. The real man doing the work not the general.

The better your second unit is the better chances you have of winning. But it does seem an inexperienced trireme does better than most veteran biremes and inexperieced quingreme will outdo experienced triremes. Even though those Biremes have better stats includinding there experience over triremes or quingremes it also seems to take in base quality of the unit. So for autoresolve it seems you should put your best unit (with base stats) and with the most experience there.

[Colt45]

Arg, my post on .com has disappeared. Ill write it out again.

Alrighty, the theory about second unit is correct in most parts. It doesnt influence victory though. That is based on army size. Anyways, the best strategy for using autocalc is to set up best troops in 2nd slot and descending order. Do NOT put missile troops in early slots as they will take all the casualties as well as any kills they score. Missile troops take more casualties anyways.

My premarius army is 4 v, 6 h, 6 p, and 3 t.

My setup used to be velites/hastati/principes/triarii in unit cards. However, after my research, I changed it to

hastati/principes/triarii/velites.

Note: I said use best quality troops, however there are times you want to use low tier troops to soak up damage because you can replace them in small towns, whereas high tier troops have to be sent to cities.

As for experience, I think there is a bug where non combative units get lvls way too fast using autocalc. My theory revolves around the "bonus kill/soldier at end of battle if odds were decent" (CA statement). My theory is that there is another repeating trigger bug, like command stars, where the bonus is repeatedly tested and given to each soldier.

As for the combat units that take casualties, I believe the kills are not distributed until losses are taken away. Thus that 80-90 men left will get all the kills. In a real battle, you notice that most of the men who do the killing are the ones who die as well.

[imdWALRU5]

One thing I strongly suggest is that you dont do auto-resolve on the harder difficulty modes.
IT IS HORRIBLE!!!
you can loose many more men than you need to and it usualy never kills the enemy army on the campaign map, they just retreat after the battle.

Also, you dont gain that many retineus and attributes when you auto-resolve.
For example: I auto resolved a battle with a young family member tho had either none or few command stars and i won a close victory. I loaded my game a gain not satisfied with the results and manually fought the battle, I crush the enemy and gained 3 command stars from the victory!

Now I always manually play all my battles.

[Fisherking]

Never, never use it with horse archers or if you are strong in cavalry, archers or Onagers. You know you can cream the enemy if you fight the battle but if you have a force with little infantry you will loose big-time!

[Craterus]

Oh, thanks for the tip, I'll keep that in mind for my cavalry-based armies...