How to build a useful army & deal with doomstacking

[Arkane Jaguar]

So I recently bought this game and I have hundreds of hours on similar 4x games mainly TW Warhammer (2 & 3) but I really just cannot click with this game. I need some tips on what I'm doing wrong.

I know I am doing well when it comes to expanding, exploring and exploiting on normal difficulty as I can frequently get high ranks on those. My issue is the extermination side of things.
I will construct up about 6 armies full of T3 armies and send them as one to stronger enemy cities. I will then go into a 6v4 situation where the enemy is of similar hero levels and has a variety of T1, T2 and T3 units.

So I have two things from this:
1. Does anyone enjoy this 6x stacking way of playing a game, I cannot fathom how people micromanage (without autoresolve) a turn based game with 36 units per fight. I cannot bring myself to fight it by hand as I know it'll take near to an hour. Is there a setting to make armies cost significantly more so there are less but more valuable units?
2. Why on earth does my full T3 6x armies (with heroes) have a significantly lower army power than the 4x mixed army with similarly levelled heroes?

I'm not saying this to complain, I am genuinely trying to understand how I am so bad when it comes to this aspect of the game despite seemingly having the advantage.

[Zak]

I typically do better fighting a tough battle manually than by auto-resolve. Figuring out good tactics for a battle is a rewarding part of the game to me. (With the over-world tactics being the other part)

A first turn adjusting troop placement, healing and buffing before advancing can be a big help in some cases.

I would rather fight one good tactical battle than rush through several battles fought by the AI.

[Astasia]

I tend to only use 2-3 stacks in my offensives. Strong synergistic enchants/transformations with the culture tends to allow you to make much better units than the AI so taking 3 of their stacks with 2 of yours is pretty trivial even on autoresolve. A third would be sent just to minimize downtime or because they have nothing better to do. I only do manual combat if the auto loses or suffers extreme casualties I know I could prevent, but I'm playing this more for the 4x and less for the combat.

There is exactly what you are asking for in the realm traits though, one of the traits doubles unit upkeep so there are fewer unit stacks on the map.

[melkathi]

2)
Possibly it is the unit enchantments and race transformations on the mixed army that adjust the power. AI will use any transformation and enchantment it can unlock.

[Aeon]

I autoresolve most fights involving more than 1 stack, otherwise I would never finish a map.

I use stacks that contain 1 hero and 5 t1-t3 units and after early game always keep 3 stacks together, the maximum number of stacks that can join a fight at a time, to avoid being overwhelmed by AI.

The AI is as dumb as a doorknob so I have best result with simple armies, spells and tactics.

Heroes are specced for support with passive skills that buff the entire army, the rest of the skills can go in anything but most of the games I pick physical defense and melee.

Units are usually units that can have transformations applied to them, transformations and enchantments are priorities.

My favorite unit in the game is the phantasmal warrior, it can be summoned anywhere, it's dirt cheap, can have all transformations applied to it, with some buildings and imperium perks can be summoned directly at to maximum level, it can supplement existing armies it in case of an emergency or my empire can field nothing but phantasmal warriors :)

[Snow]

1. This game is about turn-based battles. Autoboy here loves to kill your soldiers, even if you have a 2x strength advantage. And he considers the strength of armies very crookedly - the numbers can be more powerful than the potential of the army itself.
It’s more depressing that the developers are making the game more against AI, and not for battles between players (evidence of this is the lack of balance, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ diplomacy, etc.)
Another plus is that battles don’t take an hour, if you had an idea, there was a build that you followed. Usually, this leads to a certain idea where you just break the faces of your enemies and turn into a bulldozer that clears the map. If this is not the case for you, think about the build

[Snow]

2. The game calculates these numbers crookedly - sometimes even the number of items the enemy heroes have is affected. Another point - T3 units are mid game, but not the final game. For many races, T3 units are garbage, or must be used correctly. If you make a stack of only bastions, it’s no wonder that you lose/experience difficulties

[Aeon]

Originally posted by Snow:

2. The game calculates these numbers crookedly - sometimes even the number of items the enemy heroes have is affected. Another point - T3 units are mid game, but not the final game. For many races, T3 units are garbage, or must be used correctly. If you make a stack of only bastions, it’s no wonder that you lose/experience difficulties

Don't agree with your example, bastions are one of the best units in the game and armies containing only bastions do fine against AI.

Stacks of archers or magi fare far worse.

Autobattle results are not just calculated based on army strenght score, the fights are actually simulated, you can watch the replay, but the AI is not that good at using spells, unit abilities or synergies.

[Black Hammer]

You want either quantity or quality.

Quantity means throwing in stacks of garbage and watching them die to soften them up before your real army hits. Options include Skeleton stacks from necromancy, cheap summons, and Chaos T1 spam.

Quality means focusing not just on higher tier units, but more importantly on enchantments to boost those units stats. As Aeon pointed out above, part of the power of phantasmal warriors is that they are cheap, but part is also that they benefit from almost all enchantments and racial effects. Rolling out similar units but with 3 or 4 more defense and damage than the enemy means you are going to win.

Also, currently balance is a little weird. High-rank low tier units are performing extremely well right now.

[Arkane Jaguar]

I expected far more of a 'Git gud' response but got quite the opposite.
Perhaps my approach of hordes really isn't a good one in this game considering how unfair the autoresolve is. I got this tactic from WH3 where the autoresolve is so bad you are forced to overwhelm enemies but I guess that simply doesn't work well over here.

I think the best approach would be to split up 6 armies into 2 or 3 groups and just divide up the enemy troops into manageable fights. Tbh I want to enjoy the fighting but end up autoresolving purely out of laziness to endure moving so many troops so this may be the answer.

I'm going to give some deeper consideration to traits, tomes and use of spells in a new game and see how I fare. Thanks all.

[donut32]

if you actually play out the fights you can with like 1k power disadvantage. other people said it. the AI is stupid, including your AI. but yes, if you are facing 5, 36 unit battles in succession it will drag on. youre lookin at like an hour of just combat there. maybe more, given the game "physically" slows down unless you got a beast rig

[Aeon]

You only need 3 stacks in close proximity, that's the maximum number that can fight simultaneously.

[Snow]

Originally posted by Tau Mantis:

I expected far more of a 'Git gud' response but got quite the opposite.
Perhaps my approach of hordes really isn't a good one in this game considering how unfair the autoresolve is. I got this tactic from WH3 where the autoresolve is so bad you are forced to overwhelm enemies but I guess that simply doesn't work well over here.

I think the best approach would be to split up 6 armies into 2 or 3 groups and just divide up the enemy troops into manageable fights. Tbh I want to enjoy the fighting but end up autoresolving purely out of laziness to endure moving so many troops so this may be the answer.

I'm going to give some deeper consideration to traits, tomes and use of spells in a new game and see how I fare. Thanks all.

GLHF ))

[Cindeerella]

Yes I hate huge battles aswell, they're tedious, long and laggy at times, so I just use 1 stack and fight off all the enemies. I have more stacks to autro different worthless stuff, but overall I'll make one doomstack of some heroes and units and will have my fun.

So far plenty of options how to build this one super doom stack, so O'm not tied to specific culture, tomes or ruler types.

[Syrris]

It's not just enchantments and transforms: level also counts. If those T3s are newly-built then they won't have the rank-up boosts of veteran units on the other side, and that can make quite a difference.

Also, while bastions are generally good in autoresolve, you're still liable to get better results with a more balanced force mix, especially with manual control. At the very least, consider getting the Tome of Winds (T2 Materium tome) for the Zephyr Archer; they'll go very well with those bastions.

[Herr Gutentauben]

Originally posted by melkathi:

2)
Possibly it is the unit enchantments and race transformations on the mixed army that adjust the power. AI will use any transformation and enchantment it can unlock.

Also many people tend to underestimate how powerful tier 1 units can get with good synergies, enchantments and the fairly easy to get legend medal. Specially since now the mystic patch buffed both tier 1 and 2.