Autobattles

[ReluctantSamurai]

but at this time Parthia should have good economy and can throw masses of cathaphracts into Roman legionaries (here I would point out that Romans are easiest factions to play with autobattles

I have serious doubts whether one can auto-resolve all battles against Roman factions or Egypt on VH with the insane bonuses given the AI (+7's across the board for morale/attack/defense). I've never empirically tested auto-resolve, but I can cite two examples of how AR works in favor of those two factions.

First of all, on VH setting for campaign map, the starting composition of all stacks other than your own get some (or mostly all) elite troops. As an example, the SPQR "doomstack" at easier settings will be mostly Principes/Hastatii, a few Triarii, Velites, and a few Equites. On VH, that stack becomes mostly Cohort II, with a few Praetorian and Urbans thrown in, along with Praetorian Cavalry, and Archer Auxillia.....not something one can win on auto-resolve, even at later stages.

In one of my Armenian campaigns, I fought a series of consecutive battles against the Scipii with a Cataphract army (mixed Heavy Cats & Cat Archers) out in the Libyan Desert. IIRC, there were five full stacks of post-Marian troops thrown against that army by the AI on the same turn. The first four I fought on the battlefield and the result was complete annihilation of the Romans. My own losses were extremely light (I play the battlemap on H setting, the campaign map on VH), maybe 150-200 Cataphracts. Being bored with the game at that point, I opted to auto-resolve the last battle. The result was a close defeat while losing well over half of my army and getting my 10-star general killed. Seriously?

If one could play the game with the AI controlling all the factions, my guess would be that virtually every time the Romans win the game because all AI battles are auto-resolve. Even the Egyptians lose out rather quickly despite them dominating the Middle East the majority of the time, and even with their elite troops like Pharaoh's Guard/Bowmen, etc.

Anyway, with some factions it is pretty fun and challenging. If you like hardcore you should try it. In this mode your economics and strategy must win for you, especially if your faction have weak troops.

If you have weak troops, you'd better be prepared to create endless stacks to throw against the better armies because your troops are going to die by the thousands before you defeat one of those

But....if you have fun playing the game in this manner, more power to you I just think you miss out on the epic battles that are the backbone of TW games

BTW, there is an old thread around here where a player, on VH/VH, captured 50 provinces playing as the Greek Cities in 50 turns playing the game by fighting every battle....

The old link here at the ORG doesn't seem to work anymore. Too bad....there were plenty of screenies showing the players progress. The quickest I've ever seen it done

(and he didn't fight the SPQR doomstack either...he landed a weak army near the Julii city of Ariminum and lured them far enough away that he could land a second army right next to Rome and take it by assault the first turn)