do you consider autoresolving battles cheating?

[KARTLOS]

il use it fairly often for rebels as i cant be botherd to fight them.

i also use it for seiges, particularly when large forces are involved as my computer struggles a bit and i much prefer normal battles.

but heres the thing -you will always win the seige if you have more troops than your opponent and it can thus be fairly easy to rapidly take cities, particularly if you have a full stack army as your enemies will rarely garrison their cities with a full stack.

i was just wondering what the general consensus on doing this was ?

[Midnight]

I've lost sieges when I had numerical superiority when auto-resolving.

I generally use it when I massively outnumber the enemy and I want to get on to something more exciting.

[Fookison]

I've lost sieges when I had numerical superiority when auto-resolving.

I generally use it when I massively outnumber the enemy and I want to get on to something more exciting.

I concur. Sometimes my army is so superior and it is not such fun to chase the enemy around the board, so I just auto-resolve and get onto the challenges of War.....

[Kanamori]

In the early battles, it's a lot better to play them out. Later on, I start to auto-resolve everything unless I would lose, in which case I would be forced to play the battle. It'd take way too long to finish a campaign, otherwise.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

In the early battles, it's a lot better to play them out. Later on, I start to auto-resolve everything unless I would lose, in which case I would be forced to play the battle. It'd take way too long to finish a campaign, otherwise.

same here... i used to autoresolve captains' and play out family members' battles but towards the end you have loads of F. members and it gets very tedious when you are basically fighting the same battles again and again... i don't consider it cheating at all

[katank]

It's part of the game after all. The fact that you can routinely get less casualties in sieges with autocalc makes it a slight exploit at times.

[Scipio Africano]

The fact that you can routinely get less casualties in sieges with autocalc makes it a slight exploit at times.

You can't assault a Huge City against an enemy with archers and only lose 78 men.They lost 300 of 700, last time I checked all my siege battles ended in me having to kill every single enemy soldier.

Then again I dont have the patience to fight them all, but it makes me cringe just slightly when I see the results. Bare in mind this is on medium. I only do it for small stack clear ups and some sieges.

[Kralizec]

Do you know how campaign difficulty affects autocalc results?

In RTW the campaign difficulty had a great effect on this, so large that I often saw myself forced to personally command battles even if I significantly outnumber the enemy (and wich are therefore pretty dull). Otherwise it would often lead to defeat or phyrric victories. I hope this issue has been adressed.

[hoetje]

Sometimes,it really is scandalous.I won a siege doing auto-resolve while I got 500 men.They got 300 men,the outcome was I had ZERO casualties.Yes,zero,that's unbelievable right?

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

Yeah, I use autocalc on sieges when the garrison army consists of one unit of town militia. Sorry...don't want to go through the frustration of running my janissaries into cannon towers to chase down one unit of peasants wielding home-made spears when I can just press a button and win with zero casualties. It saves time and cuts frustration, which is what a game is all about, right?

[SirGrotius]

I use it when fighting rebels near tall mountains -- I've already had two instances where the rebels were on a top tile which I could not reach.

[Kanamori]

Do you know how campaign difficulty affects autocalc results?

Yeah, it's so annoying when it loses battles that should definitely be my win. "Oh alright, I'll play this battle you fairies."

The disparities can be so funny, going from me losing 500 men and the battle w/ auto-resolve, to the enemy losing 1k men and having 6 men left when it makes me play it out.

[Basileus]

When im bored i might auto calc but it usually annoys me cause i get a lot of casualties so i load it back up and do it my self. Its crap if youre defending a siege though you always lose if you have less troops.

[Zenicetus]

I auto-resolve minor battles, like mop-ups of small stacks after a major battle, or clearing out rebels, especially when my forces are ridiculously outnumbering the enemy. I don't consider that cheating.

I do think that auto-resolving sieges are a bit of a cheat when you're the attacking army, because it seems to me that auto-resolve doesn't factor in defensive fire from wall towers. That's a major source of losses for the sieging army now, compared to RTW, so you'll end up with a much larger surviving army if you auto-resolve as the sieging army and win. At least that's been my experience so far. It makes a big difference in whether I have to sit for several turns rebuilding or reinforcing my army, or whether I can quickly move on to the next target. It really encourages steamrolling the map. So I try to resist the temptation to auto-resolve sieges, even when I know I have a superior army and will win the siege. I don't want the pace of the campaign to be too fast, or too easy.

[foop]

Like many people here, I've seen surprisingly favourable results using autocalc in sieges. I don't normally even try, but I was just about to shutdown for the night and decided to see how well it worked. There's no way I could get that few casulaties assaulting stone walls without autocalc. Not only that, but I had no siege equipment built and it still won (although I assume that my spy let them in the gate).

Rather distressingly, autocalc also seems to give me better results than fighting manually in normal battles. Just goes to show I'm not used to combat in MTW2 I guess. Or maybe in autocalc billmen do something other than standing around uselessly when in combat with cavalry.

[KARTLOS]

the problem with resolving seiges is that it doesnt seem to take into account the seige conditions- for example you wil notice that you actually dont kill that many of the beseiged army- as would be the case if you autoresolved a field battle.

the assumption being that you gave them a bit of a pasting, they routed and ran away. however with a seige it is a battle to the death for the defendants, so although the autoresolve calculates a battle in which not too many from either side where killed, the entire army ends up being obliterated.

[Fearless]

I only auto resolve when I besiege a Castle/town mainly because the AI is bugged. Look forward to the patch then I won't auto resolve.

[geala]

As long as one cannot use some troops correctly in the streets because of the cohesion bug and the cavalry bug (or feature) and certain balancing problems I will autoresolve every siege without bad conscience.

Defending a town and battling in the open I normally don't use autoresolve. But it is part of the game and there are no rules against using it. Play as you want.

[Reapz]

I have saved the game before battles and tried autoresolving compared to fighting the same battle out about 6 times now on vh/vh. If you have better than 3:1 advantage it doesn't seem to matter except you will probably not inflict as many casualties with Auto. If it is close you will do much better fighting it out yourself as opposed to Auto. I have had crushing defeats on Auto that I was able to win myself. I think Auto under rates the value of missile units like horse archers, that can decimate spearmen and militia, particularly with the passivity of those units under fire. (I think this will change with a patch?).

As far as whether it is cheating or not I don't see AR as such. Cheating is something you do to gain an advantage. AR just saves time but is likely not to give you the same advantage as fighting it out.