The essense of your post sounds good. I myself have not played Pox Nora, so I cannot formulate an opinion on the game itself.
However, half a thousand different unit options, spefic purposes for units, crafting an army exactly how you want it, and not being pidgeonholed into a specific strat (although steel weaponed cav should *always* win the charge
) ... sounds very good.
And by that, I mean many different tactical strategies for the tactical maps, makes tactical combat more fun. Its also challenging to the AI creators, and also makes auto-combat less reliable (somewhat) .... as in their will always be a player situation where autocombat seems to do better than he, and always the player situation dependent where autocombat does far, far worse than anticipated. This is usually due to the AI auto-battles using a different set of rules than the tactical battles, although its feasable that the Auto-Battle could be using your units in a way not intended.
all that aside, its obvious that there will always be some inherent weaknesses to Auto-Resolve, and having a more fun and varied Tactical Battle, with more valid choices, will lead to replayability success at least from the level of wanting to play out different kinds of Tactical Battles against different kinds of enemy armies.