Proposed improvements for 'auto resolve'

from Elemental Forums

I have been playing elemental with 100% auto-resolve. I really enjoy the game, and in my opinion 'auto-resolve' makes the game more challenging, because the normal battles can often become too easy.

With the experience I now have with auto-resolve, I propose the following improvements:

1) When using auto-resolve, it is important to note the order of the units in the army, because this is the other in which they will be attacking the enemy. You don't want your weakest unit to hit first, because of retalliation. My suggestion for improvement is to make it easier to re-arrange the order in the army, and to also make this order load back when you load a game (I notice that the order is changed if you save /load ).

2) Every round, a unit can hit a number of times, depending on the combat speed. The difference with normal battles and auto-resolve, is that in a normal battle, a unit can deal all his hits in a row, whereas in auto-resolve the unit needs to wait for everybody else to make a hit, before hte unit can do a 2nd hit. I propose to bring this in line with normal battles, and thus let the unit deal all its hits in a row, unless the hitpoints go below 20% of maximum (in that case wait for the other units before making another hit).

3) A tactic in normal battles would be to have some units attack the enemy, where others stay behind and use ranged attacks, or wait until they are really needed (because they may for example be on low hitpoints). In practice is is also not possible for all you units to deal a blow in a combat round, because there is simply not enough space to move next to the unit. My suggestion is to let only a maximum number of units deal a blow to a certain unit. I propose to use a maximum of 6 for this. This means that when attacking a single enemy with 11 units, only the first 6 units in my army will do a hit, where the remaining 5 might use a spell or ranged attack if possible, and otherwise they wait for a next round. If any of the first 6 units falls (or goes below 20% hp), the next unit will join the first units that are dealing blows.

4) Possible bugs: Special attacks of heroes are currently not used in auto-resolve. Also area spells have no effect.

9,250 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh, and in addition another suspected bug: I don't think retalliations are limited in auto-resolve. Units keep on hitting back.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

also it would seem that if you have the protection spell cast on a unit, it doesn't help you at all in auto-resolve.

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Ranged attackers perform much more poorly in auto-resolve, because range isn't account for.  In practice, you get at least 4 free attacks off before melee attackers close the distance, but in auto-resolve this isn't taken into account.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Auto-resolve should include a no-magic option:

  • Auto Resolve
  • Auto Resolve w/o magic

This would allow players to quickly dispatch minor threats without depleting their mana.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Good idea Edwin!

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Edwin99, reply 4
Auto-resolve should include a no-magic option:


Auto Resolve
Auto Resolve w/o magic
This would allow players to quickly dispatch minor threats without depleting their mana.
End of Edwin99's quote

Better yet would be a slider for how much magic you want the AI to use like in NWN2 for the characters you are not controlling at the moment; I prepose that the options be none, conservative (use the minimum the AI thinks is needed to win), scaled (the least it thinks is needed to not loose a unit), and overkill (no limit).

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

This would allow players to quickly dispatch minor threats without depleting their mana.
Better yet would be a slider for how much magic you want the AI to use like in NWN2 for the characters you are not controlling at the moment
End of quote

Bad example; in theory they had this, but in practice the "conservative" setting was indistinguishable from the "overkill" setting.  Both dropped their most powerful spell at the start of battle regardless of how weak the opponent was.  This lead to infuriating situations where a rat would run out of a corner, the AI would start casting meteor swarm, and then warrior would have hit it with his sword and killed it before the spell finished.  In practice, the difficulty of the game went WAY WAY down when you turned off the automatic spellcasting idiocy...

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Darvin3, reply 7
Bad example; in theory they had this, but in practice the "conservative" setting was indistinguishable from the "overkill" setting.  Both dropped their most powerful spell at the start of battle regardless of how weak the opponent was.  This lead to infuriating situations where a rat would run out of a corner, the AI would start casting meteor swarm, and then warrior would have hit it with his sword and killed it before the spell finished.  In practice, the difficulty of the game went WAY WAY down when you turned off the automatic spellcasting idiocy...
End of Darvin3's quote

It existed, regardless of whether or not it worked. The point was to have options other than on and off.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

True, but the usefulness of such a feature depends on the intelligence and granularity of the settings.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Another autoresolve option should be withdraw. This would give players a chance of seeing their sovereign and champions survive the battle where they are hopelessly outnumbered.

Example:

  • Autoresolve
  • Autoresolve w/o magic
  • Autoresolve withdraw

With the autoresolve withdraw option after the 3rd battle turn 1 champion or sovereign would flee the battle each turn and remaining friendly units would see their morale drop by 20% for each champion (or sovereign) that fled the battle.

Thus if your 200 point army is attacked by a superior 500 point army you may be able to save some of your champions by selecting the autoresolve withdraw option.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I've been avoiding autoresolve due to it not accounting for range (at least last time I tried it), meaning that an archer and a melee hit each other at the same time. All the other points brought up here are good ideas definitely, but without range I consider autoresolve simply broken, it needs that before anything else.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Austinvn, reply 11
I've been avoiding autoresolve due to it not accounting for range (at least last time I tried it), meaning that an archer and a melee hit each other at the same time. All the other points brought up here are good ideas definitely, but without range I consider autoresolve simply broken, it needs that before anything else.
End of Austinvn's quote

Ranged units are nerfed in the auto combat of every game I have ever played, so it is not "broken" but rather it holds to the common denominator rather than trying to be better.