Auto-resolve Battles

[Haaayyyzee]

As far as I can tell, there's no feature to automatically play out a battle for you. Is there any chance such a feature could be implemented?

Personally I'd love to be able to start a fight, position my units, then hit auto-resolve and actually watch them fight. Saw a post from Nov 2022 about this same thing, but no dev response

[Råb!d]

You would probably lose a lot more than if you played out each battle yourself. If you want to re-watch a battle then that might be cool.

[Haaayyyzee]

For me (and probably everyone asking for this feature) it's not about min-maxing rewards/losses, it's about the tedium of playing out the "same" fights so frequently.

I'm still having fun right now, but after a few dozen hours the battles have gotten a bit monotonous. There's a reason nearly every 4X game with turn-based tactical combat (every Total War game, Spellforce: Conquest of Eo, Age of Wonders) puts this feature in: at a certain point you just don't want to fight the same enemies over and over again.

[Ovrlord Etna]

I foresee the button being added, and then 30+ posts people complaining about their archers with 30hp and 15 armor dying.

[Oboi]

My main play right now is a 20+ band and I'm telling you I'm really choosing my battles these days :D it's a good 15 - 30 min every little grind. I honestly think most of the tedious bits could be solved by having formations(which I think would be game appropriate as well) as half the time for every battle is basically reorganizing each starting position.

[Steevodeevo]

Originally posted by oskar.klaren:

My main play right now is a 20+ band and I'm telling you I'm really choosing my battles these days :D it's a good 15 - 30 min every little grind. I honestly think most of the tedious bits could be solved by having formations(which I think would be game appropriate as well) as half the time for every battle is basically reorganizing each starting position.

Just to clarify (for me): you mean your main save has a Warband of 20+ members? I've recently started a new game post r1 release and I'm into the swamplands and experiencing tier 8 mob battles which can have around 15 opponents. I'm doing ok, but I have been toying with increasing my war band size up from 13 (8 human and 5 animals) as battles are getting pretty spread out and my 13 guys are covering a lot of lines of attack.

It hadn't occurred to me to go that big on the war band.

[Silva]

You can increase willpower and force a retreat sooner thats what I do in boring fights

[Faszetalaltamkiilyenhulyenevet]

Can someone explain to me the advantage of a big team?

When I finished the game on hard back in early access, it was typical to adapt the game to the number of team members. As I read the posts, it's still about the same now, and I don't see that there is an upper limit.

Then again, the more members in the gang
- the more food you need
- the more money you need
- you don't earn significantly more after a fight
- the slower a battle is and it doesn't help anything because the opponent has more members anyway.

I'm just messing around on normal setting right now, but I've maxed everything out with 9 members and no animals and typically fight against 12-14 people, very rarely 15. 12-14 is no problem in 2 turns with the right gear, in truth you don't even need everyone to fight (I only need 7, 2 tank, 1 tank/damage dealer and 4 damage dealer), and it's much more efficient.
Because of the different jobs on the go, 6-8 people doesn't hurt (although angler is completely out and woodcutter is redundant as soon as you have someone master something, bard is there because why not, but it's no concrete use, and scholar is not needed at the beginning of the game), plus in battle 8-9 is effective because it gives you enough space to position well, but that's it.

What do I not see?

[Doom_Cookies]

Originally posted by Faszetalaltamkiilyenhulyenevet:

What do I not see?

Nothing. That's a good summary.

The reason to increase the size of your band is simply because you want to, not due to any tangible benefit. If you want another character for a build you have in mind, you can grab one without meaningfully effecting game difficulty aside from a marginal and linear increase to resource costs (Food, Wages, the need to gear up more units, etc.) I guess you technically increase item drops per battle as well, but that's countered by battles taking longer.

Basically, there's no mechanical reason to increase your party size beyond a certain point (one of each profession or enough to fill all camp tools without captives). But the option remains if you feel like doing so, and it'll only minimally affect the game's balance.

If you want size of your group to matter, then Adaptive mode is antithetical to that. Yet Regioon-Locked mode also locks regions to particular levels. I saw a suggestion on this forum recently to decouple region level scaling and enemy group size scaling so that you can set them individually, and I like that idea.

[Haaayyyzee]

Originally posted by Doom_Cookies:

If you want size of your group to matter, then Adaptive mode is antithetical to that. Yet Regioon-Locked mode also locks regions to particular levels. I saw a suggestion on this forum recently to decouple region level scaling and enemy group size scaling so that you can set them individually, and I like that idea.

Yeah I'm 14 hours in to my first real playthrough (first one lasted like 3 hours cause I tried ironman mode lol) and just realized how annoying it is to have a large party.. huge battles, more expensive upkeep, more expensive to upgrade everyone. I just dropped six members and the game is actually fun again now lol

[Ruinous]

I have each character covering all the professions, two bears because they are great meat shields and three ponies. No real need to expand the company beyond that, imho.

As for auto-resolving, perhaps letting the AI take over your characters is an easier to implement compromise? Obviously its not going to give you the results you as a player could achieve, but it should be competent enough for an auto-resolve if using the same logic as the enemy AI does.

[Constans]

Originally posted by Faszetalaltamkiilyenhulyenevet:

woodcutter is redundant as soon as you have someone master something

Please explain this as I'm new to the game with only a few hours.

I currently have a team of 5 specialised as miner, cook, tinkerer, woodcutter, and blacksmith. I decided that fisherman was unnecessary, so it seems I made the right call there! I'm on adaptive difficulty and I want to keep the party as small as possible so the battles don't go on for too long. So, 6 to 8 you say? Is 6 viable to do a complete play through?

[Ruinous]

I'd swap woodcutter for thief, if I were playing the same way Constans. Much much more bang for buck with that. Unlocking chests, pilfering high value items like a stack of skill books. It is so very useful and missing out on the Crime & Mayhem progression would make a playthrough more difficult, imho.

[Faszetalaltamkiilyenhulyenevet]

Originally posted by Constans:

Please explain this as I'm new to the game with only a few hours.

I currently have a team of 5 specialised as miner, cook, tinkerer, woodcutter, and blacksmith. I decided that fisherman was unnecessary, so it seems I made the right call there! I'm on adaptive difficulty and I want to keep the party as small as possible so the battles don't go on for too long. So, 6 to 8 you say? Is 6 viable to do a complete play through?

First of all, I basically prioritise jobs according to how useful they are in battle and how essential they are to the progress of the team. You clearly need a tinkerer to produce the necessary camp items, a miner to have the resources to make equipment, and a blacksmith to have someone to make it. Without these you can't really get started in the game, and they're all such that a lot of things only become available as you level up in skill (tinkerer, blacksmith). Also, I think a thief is very useful because there are a lot of chests in the game, a cook because you save a lot on food, and you need a scholar later on because of the tombs and an alchemist is very useful.
So I think
-what is essential: blacksmith (perfect for combat w/ str), tinkerer (perfect for combat w/ dex), miner (goes for combat), thief (goes for combat)
- what is very useful: alchemist (good/perfect for combat w/ dex), thief (goes for combat), cook (unnecessary for combat), scholar (unnecessary for combat)

I left out woodcutter (there are much better for fights), bard (unnecessary for fights) and angler (unnecessary for fights). I'm not saying it's bad to have them, but because of the above, they are of secondary importance for me, they will be added sooner or later, but...

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

It all comes back to the devs decision to have "region locked" mode and players using very big warbands.
I am playing on adaptive, Hard Hard and 90% of battles end on the first turn and i playing with 4 mercs.
And i have someone for every proffesion, i dont miss any content, i just have a much easier time to maintain and invest in my warband to the point where even my tanks can deal 300 damage per turn and have insane combos

[Ruinous]

How do you have someone for every profession with only 4 mercs?