Quoting Unicorn McGriddle,
Quoting GhostKingGeorge, reply 13Dont make the instant resolve too good! Or people wont wana play tactical battless cause it does the job for them. You still hota give actualy playing the battle the edge.
The key, I think, is an autoresolve that isn't a substitute for fighting serious battles with a chance that either side can win, but IS predictably successful when attacking a weak force with a strong one. A mop-up autoresolve, if you like. If autoresolving hurts me in a challenging fight, that's reasonable, but it's autoresolves that slap me with casualties for a fight I ought to win without a scratch that really get my goat.
Exactly - I've been playing Age of Wonders Shadow Magic lately, and this is the exact problem it has. In AoW SW, one can beat an army even three to four times larger than yours with proper spell/abilitiy usage and clever fighting and tactics, especially if you're defending a well-fortified city (it's still possible to beat overwhelming odds outside of a city, it's just a lot more work). This is never possible with autoresolve (rightly). However, Autoresolve, vs weaker units, sometimes the computer does incredibly moronic things, like sending the single, fastest unit in alone, having it get mobbed and die, then sending in the rest, when all could have easily survived. They also tend to not pull back wounded units, and charge straight at the dragon with your half-dead fully equipped high level hero. Thankfully, they added a skiparound for it - if the attacking force is TRULY overwhelming, there's a third button that pops up sometimes - accept surrender, in which the enemy unit just vanishes without incurring wasteful damage or losses from autoresolve.
This happened a lot in Master of Magic, too, with Auto-combat but it was much, much worse... nothing worse than watching them try to solo all 9 enemies at once with a hero simply because he's faster than everyone else.
