Tactical Battles

You're not.

I'd like that too.  Plus, if they were actually played out, they are probably more likely to reflect an outcome closer to that you would get if you played it through manually.

Best regards,
Steven.

the only difference I see between manual and auto is a failure to retreat on auto resulting in a death to low level heroes or non-combat units, like pioneers.

There is a world of difference between auto-resolve and normal tactical combat. Units don't appear to need to move, for one thing. This can cause a high combatspeed unit to attack and wipe out every enemy unit in one turn (or archers to become completely useless). Another big difference is units aren't limited with their counter-attacks, any attack against them will cause a counter-attack. This makes auto-resolve dangerous on high difficulties, where you can go up to a guy with 3x the force and still lose because of that (15 counter-attacks in one turn? NO PROBLEM!). A third glaring issue is that noone seems to use abilities or spells in auto-resolve, they just chop away (makes any special units useless, like dragons).

There are also major issues with how damage vs armor is calculated in autoresolve combat. For example, a 4man lord hammer unit can completely fail to damage a 12man leather-armor-wearing unit (all damage gets "absorbed", whatever that means).

I don't use it ever, except against monsters in late-game. It is practically cheating.

absorbed=blocked/dodge I think, I agree the lack of magic in auto, is bad

I would love to see that.

I am playing Age of Wonders right now and you can start the battle and put it on auto and watch them fight. You can also take it off of auto any time you want. It's kind of cool watching how the AI does.

I always use manual, because if you use auto-resolve you lose a movement point (or two if the enemy was in a forest). For some reason this doesn't happen when you perform manual combat.