Idea: Intelligent Autocalc

[Red Harvest]

I don't know that anyone has proposed this (wouldn't surprise me if they had since it doesn't seem like such a novel idea), but it occurs to me that the autocalc could be made vastly better from a play stand point. How? Use actual player battle results to determine autocalc factors. Don't use "one size fits all."

When a player started a campaign on normal difficulty, the autocalc would be neutral. Battle results would be "scored" for when the player took the field. Autocalc factors would be adjusted from this score. The "battle memory" effect on autocalc might start to work after 3 or 4 battles, and might go 10 or more battles deep, being refreshed as new results come in, with old results being discarded.

The factors might be something like--casualty ratios for friend/foe, decisiveness (numbers of surviving enemies as a percent), chance of losing family member/captain, proportions of losses (elite, peasant, cav, light inf, heavy inf, missile units, or something like that.) If you were very protective of your commander, he might rarely fall in autocalc (although the hitpoint losses for him might be so low as to risk triggering coward traits, just as it should in normal battle.) On the other hand, if you had a habit of heavily engaging your commander and losing him periodically, that would carry into autocalc. If the bulk of your casualties was normally in your cav arm (or skirmishers, or infantry) then the same would be true of autocalc.

Autocalc could become a much more natural extension of the strategic game, so that autocalc would be used to avoid "tedious" battles, but without fear of frequent disproportionate results to what the player would normally achieve.

I'm not proposing to throw out randomness. The random factor would remain, but there would be additional factors.

Just thought of something else that would help the player to understand the autocalc results. In the post battle dialogue box, show what factors influenced the battle this might look something like:

Random = -10% (negative would be against player)
Battle Difficulty Level = 0% (for normal)
Attack = -30%
Weather = -20%
Terrain = +20%
Siege = Not applicable

Battle memory factors:
Decisiveness = +50% (player generally very effective at mopping up routers)
Losses by unit type:
Cavalry = +30%
Skirmshers = +10%
Infantry = -50%
Siege gear = -20%
General hitpoint losses = +25%

[Colovion]

Sounds pretty obvious, and a very good idea, to me.

[Titus Livius]

I couldn't agree more. One of the most monotonous things about the game is having to fight every battle personally for fear of beind defeated or losing and unacceptable number of men. If you want something done right, do it yourself. I mentioned in another thread that, when fighting against a Spaniard army of 800 men and hitting auto-calc, I killed 400 men for a loss of 200 of my own. When I re-loaded and fought this exact same battle personally, I routed the Spaniards and only lost around 20 men. The only time I ever use auto-calc is when up against one or two enemy units that I outnumber at least 10-1.

I've also noticed that, in auto-calc, the enemy's family members almost never fall in battle. I hate the enemy heavy cavalry and always make family members priority targets. So again, if you want something done right....

[SigniferOne]

Umm, can we modify anything at all related to auto calc? Or is this all just wishful thinking? What file do we have to modify?

[Red Harvest]

Umm, can we modify anything at all related to auto calc? Or is this all just wishful thinking? What file do we have to modify?

AFAIK, it is hardcoded. And it is not something we have any definitions for from CA to my knowledge. I'm just throwing it out as a concept. Sometimes things like this take root, sometimes not. Not many of us seem satisfied with autocalc, and we all seem to dislike what it does in the campaign game. This is what makes rebel armies so annoying...it is forcing us to waste time in an unfun lopsided battle. Same thing happens when facing other small AI stacks.

[Julius_Nepos]

I've never understood Audo-calc dynamics in RTW. Even when outnumbering the enemy 800 to 100 I may only get a 2-1 strength advantage. I've had entire armies destroyed and routed on auto-calc because the defenders were one unit of uber-Cretian Archers, and another unit of uber peasents. I think the whole thing would benefit from a reality check.

I don't know how something like that would be implimented but it does seem there needs to be more consideration given to the various factors that effect who wins a battle. The sea-battles, which must use auto-calc suffer from similar problems. I only really use the auto-calc feature when my strength ratio is better than 10:1, otherwise I'm asking to not just lose alot of men but to lose the battle, no matter what my numeric superiority is. If anything it's the concept of "relative strength of armies" that ruins the ability for auto-calc to work properly. You could have 10,000 men, but if the enemy's 300 men are "rated" as having a 2:1 strength advantage you'll lose if you don't play the battle yourself.

So I agree the entire system needs to be revamped, taking more variables into account, and not necessarilly basing the whole outcome of a battle on a perception of "quality" of the armies.

[SwordsMaster]

So you basically want to record "log" files. The thing is, to calculate results you have to store them all in one single file and then you have to produce some actual code to deal with it, although that would be probably doen in a script kinda format.

The thing is, the players victories depend greatly on the players army composition, so unless you have a record of all units available on the battlefield your results wont be that accurate anyway. I mean, if you are fighting Numidia with an all hoplite army, chances are you are going to lose even of you have the advanage of numbers. So a pretty detailed composition of the army would be needed, and including some 200 units would be quite a bit of work...

But if you can dedicate it enough time I think ot would be a nice feature.
Good Luck

[Red Harvest]

Not quite recording a log file. More a scoring of the log file and only saving characteristics that emerge from the scoring. More detail than won-loss, but far less than a battle log. The only thing that would be saved are whatever factors would be fed into the autocalc engine. Ideally, I see this as adding only a few lines to a save file. Or optionally, it could be done as a seperate small text file, with different factors and abbreviated logs for each difficulty level, that way it could span across campaigns. Otherwise, you have to repopulate the factors whenever a new campaign begins.

It is something a developer would have to do since it is hardcoced (or some folks working with the developer could do a fair bit of grunt level testing to tune it.) Most importantly, it is going to require substantial playtesting in conjunction with coding. With a little tuning it should be possible to "model" typical human battle performance...even among different humans and on different levels.

[Oaty]

While on the subject of autoresolve I think the A.I. gets punihed too. What I've noticed is A.I. against A.I. is both side get slowly dwindled down. At least it seems that way but I play with fog of war on so my observations are limited.

The attacker loses close to the same casualties as the defender

I hate those rebel battles too along with small A.I. stacks. The easy way to make this more enjoyable is the more you outnumber them the more likely they will auto disband without a fight. As far as the small A.I. stacks maybe give them a good chance to retreat to the nearest city. As that is what most small garrisons would do retreat to a stronger army or fortification and hope they don't get caught by the enemy army.

[Red Harvest]

I should also add that since the player is likely to run a high net positive in his/her autocalc scoring, these factors would NOT apply to naval combat or any thing else that can only be autoresolved.

The idea is merely to make autocalc a more natural extension of the campaign, where players can fight battles because they want to, rather than being compelled to for every battle no matter how trivial.

[The Stranger]

seems like RH is brusing (sp?) with ideas

[ShellShock]

I don't like this idea as the AI is weak enough already, so that I usually win most battles easily, whereas I'm more likely to lose auto-calced battles. With "intelligent" auto-calc, the AI would lose even more battles.

If you want to give the AI a better chance, auto-calc ALL your battles.

Also how would this work in AI vs AI battles? Presumably they would auto-calc as of now, which would probably put the attacking AI at a further disadvantage compared to when you are the attacker.

[Red Harvest]

Shellshock,

You completely have missed the reason for this. This is not to let the player win more battles. It won't do that. What it will do is make it so the player won't have to fight all of the tedious walkovers that are so annoying. Why? Because the player will be able to get approximately the same result without taking the field. The point is to remove a substantial portion of the tedium from the strategic game. With a representative autocalc the player could choose to only fight interesting battles.

In fact, if the player autocalcs the obvious wins, and plays the tougher ones out, then the ratios will be closer. As a result the autocalc adjustment will be less in their favor than if they also played out the easy wins (e.g. typcial 360 killed, 2 losses type combats that are not uncommon for fighting small stacks.)

Plus there would have to be some upper limits on the autocalc adjustment. Becoming invincible in autocalc is not the idea either. There would still be risk.

[Red Harvest]

And AI vs. AI would be completely unaffected...I thought that was obvious.

Autocalc's current problem is how capricious it seems to be. At present the AI is losing a lot more battles because many of us NEVER autocalc as a result of what we have seen. Autocalcing all battles is decidedly unfun.

And if the AI were substantially improved then the autocalc adjustments would be milder.

[Shambles]

Personaly i dont use auto calc,
Becous I like the battles, So i cant say iv ever noticed anything wrong with it,

And if the state of auto calc Right now means You either do it your self Or dont do as well, then id say Keep it like it is,
Becous even with a large army if you have no skill You could loose,
But the auto calc may just say you won,
And newbie players would be compelled to use auto calc Instead of actualy Playing the game.

[Bhruic]

I don't think he's suggesting replacing major battles with autocalc. But when you are taking your 1000+ man army vs 200, what's the point in firing up the battle map? If I play that battle, I won't take more than 10 casualties (often none). But if I autocalc it, I'll lose a lot more.

So in order to avoid losing troops for no reason, I'm forced to fire up the battle map and fight out the tediously pointless battle. Multiply that by a few dozen such combats over the course of a playing session, and it gets really annoying. If I could be sure that autocalc would handle the battle intelligently, I could just autocalc all those battles, and have more time to play the rest of the campaign - and the battles worth fighting out.

Bh

[Shambles]

I don't think he's suggesting replacing major battles with autocalc. But when you are taking your 1000+ man army vs 200, what's the point in firing up the battle map? If I play that battle, I won't take more than 10 casualties (often none). But if I autocalc it, I'll lose a lot more.

So in order to avoid losing troops for no reason, I'm forced to fire up the battle map and fight out the tediously pointless battle. Multiply that by a few dozen such combats over the course of a playing session, and it gets really annoying. If I could be sure that autocalc would handle the battle intelligently, I could just autocalc all those battles, and have more time to play the rest of the campaign - and the battles worth fighting out.

Bh

You may not use auto calc for The battles where you have 1200 units and the computer has 1000,
But newbies may, And win becous of it,
where if they had gone in them selfs they possibly cvould have lost,

Id call this a Trainer,
Something I frown upon (till my for-head hurts)

I still think The "tedious battles" would have been fought in real life,

and only yester day I was fighting a large enemy force with only 1 group of archers.
My men eventualy routed But with only minimall losses.
and i devistated most of the enemys forces,
So i beleve that its possible for the computere to do so as well.

I really beleve you shouldnt play with the auto calc.

becous honestly, If you cant be botherd Going down to the battle,
You deserve to be punished for being a bad general.

[Bhruic]

And why would they win? You don't even understand the idea being presented, but you're drawing all sorts of (incorrect) conclusions about it.

The idea is simply to have the autocalc "fight" like you do. Which means if you are a crappy general and lose battles, than autocalc will do likewise. So "newbies" who autocalc won't be doing themselves any favours.

As for how you believe people "should" play, you're entitled to your opinion. But, frankly, I don't care how you think I should play. And your idea about being "punished" for not wanting to fight tedious battles is laughable. Games should not be designed to punish people, they should be designed to be enjoyable. Which fighting numerous tedious battles really isn't.

Bh

[Shambles]

I see so if you start the game,
And the 1st battle you happen upon is tedious
Use auto calc on that tedious battle,

So what happens? If you win u will continue to win,
and if u loose u will continue to loose?

Im sorry to hear You have such an attitude about you but really,
If you dont like the game dont play it,

The "tedious battles" are a integral part of the game,
And Just becous youve won in the past dosent mean You wont do some stupid mistake and Loose the battle any way,

And if you leave your men to Go into battle unsupervised Then I do beleve that a Greater loss factor shoul be implimented,

If you want the pc to play the game 4 you Then so be it,
But This idea is Just a trainer,
and you can download them form any Cheat site you may want to visit.

[Bhruic]

Look. You don't understand the idea at all. It's been explained to you numerous times, and you still don't get it. That's fine, you don't need to understand. But since you obviously don't get it, perhaps you should stop drawing conclusions about what it means.

As for the rest of your post, it's rather idiotic. Suggesting that using an in-game feature is a "trainer" is just plain stupid. Feel free to play the game the way you want. Telling other people how they should play the game, however, is not your call.

[Shambles]

Look. You don't understand the idea at all. It's been explained to you numerous times, and you still don't get it. That's fine, you don't need to understand. But since you obviously don't get it, perhaps you should stop drawing conclusions about what it means.

As for the rest of your post, it's rather idiotic. Suggesting that using an in-game feature is a "trainer" is just plain stupid. Feel free to play the game the way you want. Telling other people how they should play the game, however, is not your call.

Actualy,
Editing a in game feature IS a trainer.

And i havent told any 1 how to play the game,

If you cant comprehend simple sentaces then i advise You disscontinue this conversation,

Or You could actualy Read what i have said,

[Bhruic]

For someone demonstrating such a lack of 'clue' as to what's being discussed, suggesting that others read properly is laughable.

No one is suggesting editing the game. The suggestion is aimed at either the expansion, or a future game. It is a suggestion designed to remove some tedium from the game, so that the player can focus on areas that they might enjoy more. So stop talking about "trainers", or "punishment", or whatever other misconceptions you're bringing to this thread, and try and focus on the pros/cons of the actual idea.

Bh

[Colovion]

Editing an in-game feature is a trainer? Look to your patch 1.2 as a trainer then, as that's ALL it does.

Shambles, you're forgetting that the enemy AI won't coalesce their units into one solid fighting unit so you constantly have to fight meaningless battles - especially once you gain enough resources for full stacks and the AI is still wandering around with quarter stacks. 1000 vs 200 is not worth going into the battlefield for becasue we know the AI is barely capable of putting up a fight on even ground, let alone at odds liek that. I know you may think that everyone has to fight all the battles, but part of the Total War genre is the option of auto-calcing when you want. Currently the auto-calc situations makes it so that you HAVE to play all of the battles or else you get punished for a lack of an intelligent auto-calc.

That said, I play all of the battles still, but towards the end-game I hate having to go into a 1000 vs 200 battles when you have masses of men and it's really pointless to have to fight them all when you know you'll win.

I advise you to take your own advise and re-read the above posts before you attempt to chastize someone who is trying to set you straight in your folly.

[Shambles]

Ok CON,
Newb will continue to use aut calc
CON
battles that could have been lost Due to a Mistakee Are now able to be won Purly becous you didnt make a mistake in the past,
CON
No Affect of lack of leader ship when There is No leadership,
CON
After a Number of wins Auto calc would make you Invulnerable to defeat,

Even if you may have made a mistake in the actual battle and could have sufferd great losses, Becous your now using Auto calc You would win as auto calc would Not be able to mimic that mistake that You could have made,

Pro.
It will keep newbies happy,
Pro,
It will make game run faster

Looks like Cons out weigh the pros. "at least in my oppinion"
Ive played my share of games where people have decided "to mkae it better"

Ive witnessed beta testers say This is great Impliment it imediatly,

And then within a few weeks No 1 plays that game any more,
And the beta testers are the 1st to leave,

By all means a inteligent auto calc would be nice,
But that Auto calc must also take in to consideration human error,
And if you can Program That thing to mimic that 100% then theres no Problem,

Like i said,

Ive decimated huge armies with 1 group of archers,
and even though they eventualy routed and lost the battle, they did some decent damage, Becous of the way AI attacked,

Now If i can do it,
Im shure the pc can do it as well.





EDIT______

If the AI also used auto calc in this way,
Say mori had been beating uesgi all day long,
And then u come along with Twice as many men,

Auto calc would just let you win,
Even if mori had been beating people sencless all day with Less men than the opponent,

So wouldnt it be better To also impliment This auto calc for the AI,
I.e

Mori had 100 archers,
who were attacked by 200 asgari samurai, (also ai)
and mori won.
yet if you went in there with your same 200 asgari against his 100 archers,
and you had been wining previous battles,
Auto calc would say You won,

But if you implimented it for th ai as well,
Then Mori could indeed beat you.

This would be fair,
But it would also render your Idea Pointless,

[Colovion]

Ok CON,
Newb will continue to use aut calc
CON
battles that could have been lost Due to a Mistakee Are now able to be won Purly becous you didnt make a mistake in the past,
CON
No Affect of lack of leader ship when There is No leadership,
CON
After a Number of wins Auto calc would make you Invulnerable to defeat,

Even if you may have made a mistake in the actual battle and could have sufferd great losses, Becous your now using Auto calc You would win as auto calc would Not be able to mimic that mistake that You could have made,

Pro.
It will keep newbies happy,
Pro,
It will make game run faster

Looks like Cons out weigh the pros. "at least in my oppinion"
Ive played my share of games where people have decided "to mkae it better"

Ive witnessed beta testers say This is great Impliment it imediatly,

And then within a few weeks No 1 plays that game any more,
And the beta testers are the 1st to leave,

By all means a inteligent auto calc would be nice,
But that Auto calc must also take in to consideration human error,
And if you can Program That thing to mimic that 100% then theres no Problem,

Like i said,

Ive decimated huge armies with 1 group of archers,
and even though they eventualy routed and lost the battle, they did some decent damage, Becous of the way AI attacked,

Now If i can do it,
Im shure the pc can do it as well.

This time read what im saying Please.

You're basing your entire argument on:

Now If i can do it,
Im shure the pc can do it as well.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA

[Bhruic]

Ok CON,
Newb will continue to use aut calc

If a 'newbie' already uses autocalc, then changes to it won't matter. They'd have to play actual battles for it to change at all.

CON
battles that could have been lost Due to a Mistakee Are now able to be won Purly becous you didnt make a mistake in the past,

No, it just means you are more likely to win a battle. Assuming that you've always won in the past.

CON
No Affect of lack of leader ship when There is No leadership,

What "lack of leadership"? The only "leadership" in a battle comes from your general. Anything else is just the player playing a battle.

CON
After a Number of wins Auto calc would make you Invulnerable to defeat,

And where did you get that ridiculous idea from? No one said anything about winning making you invincible, or anything close to it. The idea is to make autocalc'd battles closer match the players battles. You'd have to be invincible in your played battles for it to even remotely be an issue.

Even if you may have made a mistake in the actual battle and could have sufferd great losses, Becous your now using Auto calc You would win as auto calc would Not be able to mimic that mistake that You could have made,

So your big argument against basically comes down to "well, you might make a mistake"? Great argument.

Besides which, the random factor involved would still emulate a "mistake" anyway.

Ive decimated huge armies with 1 group of archers,
and even though they eventualy routed and lost the battle, they did some decent damage, Becous of the way AI attacked,

Now If i can do it,
Im shure the pc can do it as well.

Uh, have you even played the game? There is no way the AI could be that effective. Even in 4vs1 odds battles, the AI barely has a chance of winning. To suggest that the AI, when vastly outnumbered, has even the remotest chance of winning is absurd.

If the AI also used auto calc in this way,
Say mori had been beating uesgi all day long,
And then u come along with Twice as many men,

Auto calc would just let you win,
Even if mori had been beating people sencless all day with Less men than the opponent,

So wouldnt it be better To also impliment This auto calc for the AI,
I.e

Mori had 100 archers,
who were attacked by 200 asgari samurai, (also ai)
and mori won.
yet if you went in there with your same 200 asgari against his 100 archers,
and you had been wining previous battles,
Auto calc would say You won,

But if you implimented it for th ai as well,
Then Mori could indeed beat you.

This would be fair,
But it would also render your Idea Pointless,

And once again you demonstrate your complete lack of comprehension of the idea. Let me state this just once more, on the off chance it'll sink in (in bold, maybe that'll help you notice it):
The idea is to make autocalc fight more like the player themself fights.

That's it. Since the AI never actually fights a battle vs other AI, then how could this idea be applied to the AI at all (obvious answer: it can't). You keep telling people to "read what you write". Perhaps you should try that yourself.

Bh

[Shambles]

And whats your argument?

Your to lazy to play the game?

and
Your quote

"No, it just means you are more likely to win a battle. Assuming that you've always won in the past."

Thats the best way to ruin a game,

take away the human eliment,
Human error is a Huge part off any battle,
and here you are taking it away.

"Im shure that will make the game great"
I mean
Stack the odds up against the ai why dont you?

We all know that auto calc is The only real way they get any real kills,
So why do you want to render the game This easy?

Ive already said,
its a good idea if you can factor in human error,
Which I already know you cant,
So untill you can, I dont think its a good idea.

Aso unless you can Impliment it for the ai as well,
I dont see why you want to Do this to any game,

Its really to much to concider.
i mean really To make it worth doing,
the pc would need to remember every ai moove every ai battle
under what conditions they were,
On which type of terain,
What types of units did the most damage, Which died the most,
Who utilized them most efcivley, and a whole host of other variables.
And then it has to remember your mooves as well,

And then has to calculat All the variables AND Impliment Human error factors, "for both sides"

I mean... How much ram and processor power are we talking about here?


"i actualy like the sounds of what i said And would really apretiate a auto calc that could do that (but theres no way any 1 can make 1)"

If your going to do it Do it right.
if not Why bother, It will just make game even easyer.

and if this isnt constructive Critisim then i dunno what is.

[Colovion]

And whats your argument?

Your to lazy to play the game?

Then stop playing it m8

Stop trolling. Your whole objection to the great idea of making a feature work better is ridiculous. You're assuming that becasue you can do something, that the AI should be able to. They can't. We know that. It's a fact.

It has nothing to do with being lazy, it has to do with an auto calculation being off what the actual outcome would be according to past battles.

By the way, if you never use auto-calc, why are you arguing against making the feature better? You seem so vehement against this idea that you've forgotten that you don't even use it and thereby don't have any say in how it is changed. It's like someone who never drives a car arguing that gas taxes should be increased so that people won't be so lazy and drive everywhere.

[Shambles]

Ok i will go and use auto calc Then.
Just to make you happy.

Bythe way.
I edited Above post Prety substantialy.

So please re read it,


-Edit-
I have read the previous posts
and I know what its sposed to do,
But it will never work Becous It eliminates Any variable of error from the human,

P.s

I know that You say That the AI cannot hold back a large army with 100 archers, And inflict decent damage before routing,

But they can In auto calc.
And seing as I can also do the same To there huge army with my 100 archers, "not using auto calc"
Id say Its fair,


"It's like someone who never drives a car arguing that gas taxes should be increased so that people won't be so lazy and drive everywhere. "

Once "gas" fumes stop poluting the air people who dont drive breathe your parodighm will be corect.
Untill then its not.

But i do see what you mean,
However I beleve You Toataly Fail to see what I mean,

I dont see why I should repeat my self though,
Sio if you could kindly re read the Final few paragraphs of the last post i made,
Im shure you should see what I mean.

Ive dited This post and last post Lots.
Cos realy There would be Lots of posts here otherwize.

[Bhruic]

We all know that auto calc is The only real way they get any real kills,
So why do you want to render the game This easy?

And right there you lost any credibility you might have had (which wasn't much). You claim that's the only way the AI will get any real kills. But you don't play with it. Therefore, you obviously aren't interested in having the AI get any real kills, so therefore cannot use that as an excuse for your argument.

Therefore, as Colovision stated, you are merely trolling. Any further posts from you at this point on will be ignored.

Good day.

Bh