Campaign or Battle?

Happy New Year to all. I'm a returning Total War player.

The Total War series is famous - nay notorious - for it's dual system of live action combat and the more cerebral campaign aspect. I'm restarting this game after a year or so (RomeTotal War, vanilla, playing as the Brutii) I have got so engrossed in the campaign I don't want to play out battles. I tend to autoresolve, which is risky sometimes, but I'm finding I don't wish to ruin my concentration on the whole picture.

How on earth do you get the balance? Do you prefer one more to the other? Which battles do you auto resolve? I find sieges can be a bit boring so I tend to auto resolve those in most games.

Maybe it's all a matter of skill with the game?

I love both aspects of the game, however the managing part has always been my favorite. I too used to auto-resolve most battles but that always ended up making my campaign less interesting and more repetitive. I now fight most battles that I have, including sieges, though I do still use auto-resolve in battles that are blatantly obvious defeat is impossible.

Fight your battles, use less full stacks and rely more on tactics to win battles. Victories will be more rewarding, conquering cities more satisfying. That awesome general you had that just died in battle because you didn't pull him out in time, let him be dead do not reload. Expand slowly, give your enemies time to grow.

All these things will, while having you fight a lot of battles, will make the management part much more fun and rewarding.

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How on earth do you get the balance? Do you prefer one more to the other? Which battles do you auto resolve?

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A lot depends on the difficulty level you play at. With increasingly more difficult battlefield settings, you will take much more significant losses by auto-resolving, and find you lose battles when it looked like you should win. The same applies to managing your economy. At lower settings, you can have the AI manage your cities for you, and you can concentrate on the battles. At higher settings, you will want to take control of city development because you have reduced income and the AI won't always take the most optimal path to development. Personally, I only auto-resolve sieges where it's a done deal anyway, and fights with brigands where I don't want to bother.

With enough play-time, both city management and battlefield play will become second nature.

I like your ideas and advice,Sun Tzu! Thanks a lot. I guess I'm still trying to work out the game mechanics. I used to play MTW + VI.

"With enough play-time, both city management and battlefield play will become second nature." There's the key: I haven't played RTW quite enough yet. Thanks,ReluctantSamurai!