How do you play your campaigns?

[Varyar]

I'm playing it more like a strategy game, managing all my settlements and auto-resolving most battles(simply because I usually outnumber/outrank the enemy so much that victory is certain). Fighting all battles would be far too tedious, I like to save my effort for the battles where the outcome is uncertain. No role-playing, I treat my generals like chess pawns, killing them left and right if it nets me(the faction) benefits. Will probably be role-playing when I get tired of the 'let's-maximise-everything' approach.

[Whoz'onE]

This is my first TW also. I micro-manage everything in the strategy part, and fight 80-90% of my own battles.

On the occasions that I allow the battle to be auto-resolved, I do so because I want to take a settlement for minimal losses. For some reason, the auto-resolve appears to be able to make the enemy abandon their settlement - shortening the campaign - whereas I always seem to have to fight to virtually the last man. Thus I take more casualties, whilst also inflicting more casualties on the enemy and leaving fewer forces to come back and fight another day. Perhaps I'm missing a trick when fighting my own battles.

[chunkynut]

I've played all the TW series and I manage all my cities/castles and play any battle with over 500 men on each side (or there abouts) or if I really think I need to play the battle to get a correct result (if I know I can win but the autoresolve may not do so). I only do this as a time saver rather than not wanting to play a specific battle.

And as there are the two elements of real time tactical battles with all the preperation for these battles done in the turn based campaign I find that there will be points when I 'steal a march' on the AI and points where the AI does so to me. I find it more enjoyable that way.