Total War: WARHAMMER II

Total War: WARHAMMER II

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Advanced Autoresolver
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Tags: mod, Campaign
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479.286 KB
Dec 31, 2019 @ 2:17pm
Mar 28, 2023 @ 6:26pm
4 Change Notes ( view )

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Advanced Autoresolver

Description


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*Compatible with SFO

Inspired by both other's posted observations of the AR's inability to keep artillery and monsters from spontaneously combusting, as well as my own experiences with the same, I set out to better understand the Autoresolver's system.
Months of testing and tweaking later, and having roped at least 2 other people into my madness, I feel like I have a decent handle on exactly what the AR system MIGHT be doing behind the curtain.
So, we are now releasing the mod we've been playing with and working on.

You can find a full accounting of the implemented changes the mod has below, but the tl;dr version is that your lords and heros should have more representative results in battle, and get killed and injured less frequently. Your artillery should perform better and die less often, and the casualties your army takes should be better distributed and be more likely to damage lesser units while saving your elites for the future.

Terms:
  • Combat Potential / CP: This stat seems to be used by the AR to determine the overal balance of power, which units target which units, and which units it 'protects' from injury by moving kills/damage from that unit to other 'surrounding' units and removing the injured unit from combat. Base CP values are set in the land_units table, but modifiers to this are applied using 'ai_usage_groups' defined in the main_units table. Overall, it's a pretty blunt instrument that is hard to make specific unit-to-unit changes with, without drastic modifications to the data.
  • Kills Per Second / KPS: KPS is a stat we've assumed to stand for 'kills per second' and seems to map directly to the damage output the AR assumes for a give unit. There are modifiers that can be applied based on some VERY basic unit_class keys, as well as matchups between different unit_class keys. Again, this is very hard to target changes at specific units, or even at unit types more specific than "melee infantry" without substantial changes to the tables containing base unit stats.

Our Findings/Hypothesis/Wild Guesses (Apply copious salt grains)
  • It seems like the AR initially breaks units into 'groups' via the ai_usage_group key and the autoresolver_battle_result_battle_complexity_max_units_for_scale value (default 10)
  • Once it has these groups it matches them up against each other in fairly basic ways. From front-to-back each force seems to comprise of:
    • Melee frontline
    • Ranged units
    • Artillery
  • Units generally target the front of the enemy 'formation' until that group is dead before they move to the next group. I.E: Your ranged infantry will take little-to-no damage until your melee infantry are all wiped out.
  • Special cases like cavalry, chariots, flankers, harassers, fliers, etc, seem to make targetting decisions separate of this lineup. Harassers and stalkers, especially, seem to target units in reverse order, starting with your artillery, unless there are enemy harasser/flankers to fight first. As such, a strong harasser/flanker/stalker/flier group in your army can (even with our changes) destroy an enemy's backline if they're not protected by their own.
  • Once unit matchups have been generated, the AR determines a Kills Per Second value for each unit based on their target(s), and resolves a timestep (default 5) in seconds(?) worth of kills for each unit.
  • IMPORTANT! Once kills have been generated, they aren't necessarily assigned to the unit they were actually created against. The AR seems to use the targets' modified CP value(s) to determine if they will take that damage, or if that unit will be pulled out of combat and the kills will be assigned to another unit. If a unit is 'pulled' it doesn't seem to contribute anything to the AR for the rest of the battle, but it may still be targetted later if there are no other units left to protect it.
  • Effects like morale, balance of power, chasing down fleeing units, etc are all considered to some degree at this point.
  • If the battle is not yet decided, the AR just loops until it is.

Change Notes
  • Bugfixes
    • Fixed Doubled Missile Unit Modifier in Sieges by Changing one into a Melee Modifier that was Missing
  • General Improvements
    • Increased Unit Complexity to Consider up to 100 Units (from 10)
    • Lowered Battle Timestep from 5 to 1 for More Granular Results
    • Removed Modifiers for Naval vs Non-Naval Units, as Naval Battles aren't REALLY a Thing
    • Increased Displayed AR Prediction Uncertainty, as AR is Always Somewhat RNG
  • Protected High-Priority Units
    • Removed 'Ensured Unit Loss' Damage Multipler Bonus
    • Increased 'Ensured Unit Loss' Combat Potential Weighting
    • Lowered Unit Wipe-Out Damage Threshold from 20% to 10%
    • Added KPS Penalty Against Characters
    • Added KPS Penalty Against Artillery
    • Adjusted Combat Potential Modifiers Based on Units' Existing Base CP and Player Tendencies w.r.t. Protecting Units
  • Adjusted Chariot Effectiveness vs Infantry
    • Added Melee KPS Bonus for Chariot vs Infantry[REMOVED]
    • Added Melee KPS Penalty to Infantry vs Chariots
  • Adjusted Cavalry Effectiveness vs Infantry
    • Removed Melee KPS Bonus for Cavalry against all Targets [NEW]
    • Added Melee KPS Penalty to Infantry vs Cavalry [NEW]

Notes with explanations of each change here.
Popular Discussions View All (3)
6
Jul 3, 2023 @ 4:48am
PINNED: Annotated Change Notes
Reithan
1
May 22, 2023 @ 9:06pm
Large number of poor quality autoresolves
angelar
1
Sep 12, 2020 @ 5:45pm
possible bug?
Floffel
227 Comments
Reithan  [author] Jul 10, 2024 @ 1:55am 
This mod was specifically designed for TWWH2, since TWWH3 dropped, I haven't updated it very often, and not for a long time. I can't guarantee it's still working as intended, however, all modifications that were made are listed in the description.
mr.napop Jul 5, 2024 @ 2:04am 
Hello, I'm having garrisons under perform when heavily outnumbering the enemy, where their lord has most of the kills somehow, and sometimes successful ambushes result in the army's dragon and LL taking heavy damage when none of the other units are, and somehow losing the battle though it shouldn't.

are garrisons and flying units nerfed?
Reithan  [author] Jan 10, 2024 @ 1:38pm 
@pepe_silvia This doesn't add any more randomness, it just makes the result more "sane", that being said, there is no randomness at ALL in the auto-resolver as-is. The only randomness is the display. The balance of power bar just has an "uncertainty" zone, that's all.
pepe_silvia Jan 10, 2024 @ 6:38am 
So in WH2, to me the auto-resolve option always seems predetermined with no wiggle-room on the outcome of a battle. I've long thought that this is the reason why campaigns in WH2 feel less interesting that those in RTW and M2TW, where the same battle when auto-resolved multiple times could result in a variety of different defeats/victories so long as two armies are of somewhat comparable strength. Does this mod make auto-resolve more "random" like in previous titles? If so, have you seen any noticeable difference to the way campaigns play out? :D
Reithan  [author] Jun 29, 2023 @ 8:47pm 
@Valour yes
V Jun 29, 2023 @ 1:54am 
Does this mod work for the AI vs. AI battles?
Echo Jun 19, 2023 @ 4:19am 
I ended up using another autoresolver mod, Autoresolve redone, which does address some of these issues, but doesn't have as exhaustive an approach as your mod did in WH2. Still it's a major improvement (at least from my subjective pov) over vanilla and gives a fighting chance to factions like VCs and Greenskins, which otherwise get destroyed outside of Waaghs.

Well, WH3 is going to have a long life, and maybe eventually we'll see more comprehensive autoresolve mods appear.
Echo Jun 19, 2023 @ 4:19am 
Hey Reithan, I've now played several full campaigns in IE and can definitely state that the vanilla autoresolver in WH3 is quite bad.
There are a few critical issues:
- Armies are always wiped out
- Lords have a disproportionately high value
- Sieges have a disproportionately high value
- Certain units are far better in AR then they should be (Dwarfs are especially guilty of this, and VCs are on the opposite side of being wiped out 2-3 armies to 1)
- SEM suffer a lot more than their multi-entity counterparts
- (Some) Artillery is still trashed by the autoresolver
Reithan  [author] Jun 18, 2023 @ 8:14pm 
@Legatus It 'should' this mod works fairly broadly and uses unit categories in places, rather than referencing specific units. Best I can say is try it out and see if it works for you.
Legatus Jun 17, 2023 @ 2:51am 
Is this mod works with units from mods?