[Bug 1.12/1.19Frog] Auto-resolve battles don't use unit abilities

Ya it's pretty bad, you'll also notice only the last unit in a stack ever takes damage. Some champions occasionally use specific spells, but it doesn't seem very consistent. Needs a ton of work.

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You learn pretty quickly that you can almost never use auto resolve reliably to win anything, unless the enemy have some nasty ability that auto-resolve don't know about.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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I am actually more concerned for the AI... does this put them at too big a disadvantage?

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Another reason to never use auto-resolve is the sometimes profligate and unnecessary use of mana. I auto-resolved a battle where my troops greatly out-classed the AI, where it was just a matter of my strong troops meleeing a few weak skeletons, and the battle used ~250 of my ~500 mana (when I was gaining ~15/turn, so ~250 was a considerable amount). How/why spells were cast by my troops I have no idea, there was no reason for that.

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Quoting Nick-Danger,

reply 5

Another reason to never use auto-resolve is the sometimes profligate and unnecessary use of mana. I auto-resolved a battle where my troops greatly out-classed the AI, where it was just a matter of my strong troops meleeing a few weak skeletons, and the battle used ~250 of my ~500 mana (when I was gaining ~15/turn, so ~250 was a considerable amount). How/why spells were cast by my troops I have no idea, there was no reason for that.

Yep, I find myself doing every battle by hand for that reason and the AI's tendency to dispose of my units instead of retreating them to the rear.

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Agreed with all posts. Auto-resolve needs work to use free abilities whenever possible (assuming beneficial) and there needs to be an option for the player whether to allow spell casting or not. Usually if I'm auto-resolving I don't want my side to cast any spells... if spells are required to get a comfortable win then I'm usually going to play it out myself.

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Quoting Kongdej,

reply 2

You learn pretty quickly that you can almost never use auto resolve reliably to win anything, unless the enemy have some nasty ability that auto-resolve don't know about.

It's actually quite the opposite, to an easily exploitable extent. If you do the actual battle enemies tend to target the weakest unit, and against ranged units this means your back line squishies are probably going to take a lot of damage, you might even lose a unit or two. Stick a tank in the last slot and they absorb all the attacks in the auto-resolve, no stray shots, no weak units going down in one hit, it's easy mode. Once your tank starts to get low health just move them around and stick another tank in the back while the first one heals, easy levels as you clear the map without downtime. I auto most of my fights.

I have not experienced the mana eating problem, quite the opposite. I've only noticed them using spells a handful of times, which is actually really annoying with a caster sov who ends up hitting things with her staff in most battles. Seems to be only specific spells they cast, I think the only one I've really noticed is Chaos which will be spammed some times, may have seen a champ that spammed burning hands too.

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Good point Sanati.

Just confirms the overall opinion though which is the auto-resolve needs major, major work.

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Perhaps auto-resolve should stop using the algorithm it has and proceed as if a tactical battle take place, only without any graphic update and at the fastest speed possible.

For the player vs AI at least, I can understand this would slow down AI processing otherwise, but for the player, I believe that would be ok. At worst, just add a progress bar if in this case AR needs 5 seconds.

Last, there must be a checkbox in player vs AI auto resolve where you prevent the use of any mana. That's a big issue too.

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I don't think the tactical AI is good enough where that would actually be an improvement. I've set a few battles to auto-play and watched the AI control my units, and pretty much every time I *facepalm*ed and had to reload the save. There's just no intelligence or awareness there at all, it's like every action is simply weighted without any regard for circumstance. One enemy unit left, 5 health, a sov with a good bow and no spell power, instead of shooting it the sov instead decides to waste a turn hasting itself, then next turn it starts channeling the biggest spell it has, all the while the near dead melee units I had moved to the back decide to run forward to die. You've never seen a certain victory turn into total defeat so fast, all because I accidentally hit auto-play instead of auto-resolve.

I think the current method is reasonable if only it was tweaked so instead of the same unit in a stack always taking every single attack it was spread out intelligently based on unit stats/role, IE melee being upfront and taking more hits but the back line still taking a few blows. Then just fix the countless traits and skills that do nothing in auto-resolve, and split the function into "hold back" and "all out" buttons, with one using no mana and the other using efficient spells on sovs/champs with appropriate spellpower. The whole simulated back-and-forth thing it does is currently superior to the "AI" by a few miles.

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Quoting Sanati,

reply 8

It's actually quite the opposite, to an easily exploitable extent. If you do the actual battle enemies tend to target the weakest unit, and against ranged units this means your back line squishies are probably going to take a lot of damage, you might even lose a unit or two. Stick a tank in the last slot and they absorb all the attacks in the auto-resolve, no stray shots, no weak units going down in one hit, it's easy mode. Once your tank starts to get low health just move them around and stick another tank in the back while the first one heals, easy levels as you clear the map without downtime. I auto most of my fights.

Hm, I did hear this once a few times, but I never really tried it, quite sad really , the damage should not be relevant to how I set up my units outside of combat.
I do know that even though that might be true, I would always get better results if I managed the battle myself, might be due to the way I set up my units and/or play the tactical combat.

Sincerely
~~ Kongdej

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