Idea: Intelligent Autocalc

[oompalumpa]

I suggested this idea a while ago for EB (or was it RTR 6.0? I cant remember). Anyway, I think it is hardcoded so they cant do that, but it would be an awesome idea.

[Shambles]

Well Im happy with what i have said,
Some 1 some where will read these posts From a non biast standpoint,
And relize "hes got a point"

[Colovion]

haha, nice backpeddling

you're contradicting yourself, dismissing valid arguments, and insulting those who use a feature within the game. You even have some strange dismissal of my metaphor which hits you dead-on and continue to blaze a trail through your ridiculousness and well into meandering stubborness.

I can see you're not worth arguing with as you go back and change your opinions as their folly is laid bare.

Good day.

[Red Harvest]

Shambles and Shellshock you have missed the point and are off in left field. Nothing I suggested would work at all as you have stated. Sit down and think through the scenarios you suggested, they don't come out as you projected.

I'll make one thing clear: such a feature wouldn't help a novice in the least until their skills improve past what the AI can do. If they have trouble with battles because they are new, their autocalc factors would be poor. (This is an area where I would propose actually having it use the "neutral" autocalc, unless they are playing a higher difficulty setting.) And autocalcing a battle wouldn't have ANY impact on future autocalcs, only fighting battles would because only they feed the factor.

What it will help is in reducing tedium. The game is decidedly boring after a point.

Experienced players don't use autocalc for the most part because it doesn't come close to reflecting realistic results. For example: attacking a single unit of archers with 1200 men in open desert should not result in only a few archers being killed, the rest escaping, and all of your own elephants being slaughtered...my own 1st experience with autocalc.

[Shambles]

Ok,
il admit that I didnt Know auto calc was that severe.

All your eliphants dead you say?
By all means Do something about it,

and maby post that as a bug of sorts
I beleve theres a post colecting these bugs,

Im against the principal of the idea Due to the removal of any human error factor,
But then again If its as bad as you say,
It should get fixed.

[Colovion]

Ok,
il admit that I didnt Know auto calc was that severe.

All your eliphants dead you say?
By all means Do something about it,

and maby post that as a bug of sorts
I beleve theres a post colecting these bugs,

Im against the principal of the idea Due to the removal of any human error factor,
But then again If its as bad as you say,
It should get fixed.

he is doing something about it. Have you seen this thread? Oh wait, you must have - because you're posting in it.

Auto-calc is part of the Total War genre. It gives an option of fighting, or not - managing the campaign map, or not. In the future, please at least research the subject at hand before going on a tirade.

[SwordsMaster]

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.

Yep, thats what I thought, you probably cant make the game access some files other than the ones its using now unless you write actual code. And you technically arent allowed to do that. Thats why I suggested a script... But if the variables need to be stored then a script is probably not going to do the job.

[screwtype]

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."

Excellent idea. I for one am sick and tired of having to fight numerous little battles against insignificant enemy forces because the autocalc is so untrustworthy. The way your system works, after you'd fought a handful of battles yourself you could then turn these smaller battles over to the autocalc without fear of unreasonable results.

[screwtype]

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.

Yup. Makes sense to me!

[screwtype]

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

ROFL. You know, that ain't such a bad idea! You'd have much more realistic battle results, and a much tougher campaign, if you did that!

Hmmm....might have to try this some time...

[screwtype]

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

So what? If people want to autocalc all their battles, that's their decision.

I happen to know that, believe it or not, some guys who play Shogun and MTW autocalc ALL their battles, in spite of the fact that most people would agree that fighting battles personally is what the TW series is all about.

If some people want to play that way, let them. You can still play the game how you like to play, so it makes no difference to you.

[screwtype]

Ok CON,
Newb will continue to use aut calc

Why would they? Most of the fun of this game is about playing battles yourself. Why would people want to deprive themselves of the fun and challenge by autocalcing everything? Sorry, this claim just doesn't make sense.

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

The idea is to have a reliable autocalc you can use to fight those battles that are overwhelmingly in your favour. You are unlikely to ever lose such battles, mistakes or not.

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

I guess the autocalc would have to look at the sort of results you got at different odds. If for example you consistently got big wins fighting at odds of 1.5 to 1, then you will still get a big win fighting those odds in autocalc. The point is that the game's odds calculator already seems to take into account relative strength of units, not just raw numbers, so leaders or lack of them are already factored in.

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

Only when you were fighting at odds you consistently win at.

Personally, I like Red's idea, the only caveat I would make is that there would still have to be some sort of penalty applied for using autocalc, perhaps 20-80% depending on difficulty level, ie you lose 80% more men than you normally would on the hardest difficulty, as a discouragement from using autocalc too often. But in the battles with odds overwhelmingly in your favour, this would not mean many more men lost anyhow.

Also, I would argue that you don't get any trait increases for generals when using autocalc. So if you want those command stars, you still have to fight for them!

[Bhruic]

Personally, I like Red's idea, the only caveat I would make is that there would still have to be some sort of penalty applied for using autocalc, perhaps 20-80% depending on difficulty level, ie you lose 80% more men than you normally would on the hardest difficulty, as a discouragement from using autocalc too often. But in the battles with odds overwhelmingly in your favour, this would not mean many more men lost anyhow.

Also, I would argue that you don't get any trait increases for generals when using autocalc. So if you want those command stars, you still have to fight for them!

I'm not sure why, after making a post about how some people play only with auto-calc, and how that is perfectly acceptable, you would then jump on the "penalize people for playing with auto-calc" bandwagon? As you said, playing out that battles can be one of the more entertaining parts of the game. We shouldn't need any encouragement beyond that to do so. If someone doesn't enjoy that facet of the game, and wishes to avoid it, I see no reason to penalize them for doing so.

Bh

[Red Harvest]

I don't see a reason to penalize for autocalc. The penalty should come from the difficulty levels impact on combat stats and officers. If I am facing an AI opponent that is getting a boost in command stars, morale, attack, etc. those factors alone should be sufficient. That is what the difficulty level is for.