How does auto resolve work exactly?

[Aradner]

I did auto resolve where i won, but lost everything except for my lord. I added one Carnosaur to that army(Rakarth's campaign) and now it's Valiant defeat instead of pyrrhic victory. How did adding a unit lower my auto resolve outcome?

[Cenwalh]

Maybe someone who took a look at the game's code can tell you more, but the inner workings of auto resolve are a mystery to most.

Maybe the Carnosaur you added was easily defeated by the enemy's anti-large. Maybe it didn't matter at all?

After almost 2,000 hours played in WH2 and 3, I still have no idea what's up with auto resolve.

All I can say is: it heavily weighs settlement walls & fortifications, up to the point where even a full stack of experienced units will be considered "close defeat" or something, even when going up against a Tier 1 garrison & walls...

Auto resolve does NOT *actually* simulate anything. It's just some type of formula that's applied and as far as I can tell it damages all of your units at the same time, and somehow runs those numbers against the enemy's forces.

It can sometimes work for you as well - numerous times there were battles that I couldn't have won under any circumstances manually, but the auto resolve would be in my favor.

Bottom line is, you want to always manually fight battles, except when you don't care about casualties or the rare occasion where you cannot win it manually, but auto gives you a positive result.

[Païtiti]

Have you ever seen the Margaritaville South Park episode?

[toon77]

its mostly about the armor piercing value of your army.

[Aradner]

Originally posted by Païtiti:

Have you ever seen the Margaritaville South Park episode?

I did now

[Captain Baldy]

Autoresolve is a mystery to me but my rule of thumb is to check for red cards. My flying units and the fast movers, like cavalry tend to be the ones that come off the absolute worst.

[Païtiti]

Originally posted by Aradner:

Originally posted by Païtiti:

Have you ever seen the Margaritaville South Park episode?

I did now

So, I meant that as a joke but sometimes it surely feels like it.

For real thou, some units fare much better in autoresolve than others. Usually units with high leadership and armor have better chances.

I came across the situation you are describing as well. I think the issue are units that are weak in autoresolve. Those are taken into account and actually decrease the chances. I just recently saw that in my own campaign with Ghorst. Reinforcing with a half-damaged zombie army for example decreased a "phyrric victory" to a "valiant defeat". Merging those half-damaged zombies together, which is actually the same amount of individual models, put it back to a victory again.

The idea probably is that weak units will be smashed during battle if the Ai did the battle because it tends not to hold these back but rather uses them as fully healed ones. That would lead to quick army losses and leadership penalties to the rest of the army leading to ultimatively to a loss.

But it might be completely different. These are just my experiences over three games.

[Elitewrecker PT]

There is a possible explanation for the zombie thing.
Having several weak units could result in them dying quickly and causing morale issues which would result in the remaining units not fighting as long as they could.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

From my understanding:
It is your units basic stats, Your enemies unit basic stats+difficulty.

It is why easy wins become ai favored curbstomps and clear defeats because auto resolve exploits.

It is all about the numbers.

[Elich]

Imho ppl who made it dont even work at that company anymore, so no one knows anymore.

https://clips.twitch.tv/SmoggyLovelyLionRiPepperonis-ap0p6gIHwsKg_ys1