Another different battle. Screamers of Tzeentch seem mostly useless.
WHat am I doing wrong? I am sending anti large against large, shielded warriors of chaos front, horrors in the back etc.
All by the book. Lizardmen just somehow melt my gold chevron armies with basic units.

https://puu.sh/Jz8mN/a6dc3c9b8c.jpg

Explain this to me now. How can this army which is mostly basic saurus warriors kill so many of my units? I used spells as much as I could. I have 400 hours in Warhammer 3 and 900 hours in Warhammer 2.
Since when are Saurus Warriors that strong? What's killing all my units? The salamanders?
Since when is the AI so smart anyway? Too much micro!
What is wrong with the Tzeentch units? How did my Horrors fail so much?
Why did my Soul Grinders do nothing at all? Why did they die so easily?
Fix Tzeentch! This isn't normal. What the hell am I missing?

Saurus Warriors ARE really strong in SFO. They are almost elite infantry level strong if you add bonuses from lords and tech. They are also INCREDIBLY bulky, missile resistant (hence horrors being useless), and have enough weapon strength to deal some serious damage. And as you can see they scored the majority of the kills against you, which makes sense. Which lore wise makes perfect sense, lizardmen ARE incredibly tough and strong.

And since majority of the force you fought against was those elite infantry saurus warriors, your army composition looks like it would definitely struggle against it. I feel you should've done way better than you did all things considered, but without seeing your battle I can only speculate. Clearly that flamer was the MVP, I have no idea how did you lose the second one but it seems like a big error, if one scored over 200 kills then the other should've done that as well if you took care of it. Same case with soulgrinders, they barely seem to have done anything AND they have died in battle, seems like a miscalculation. Also

In terms of strategy, from my own experience when you're fighting SFO lizardmen it is KEY to not try to outlast them, because you cannot. They are made to win against you in a battle of attrition, saurus warriors can hold the line forever, while slowly killing even the most elite infantry. So if you want to win against an army of saurus warriors, your best chance is to avoid melee (especially with a faction that doesn't do melee well) and try to kill as many of them with magic and powerful ranged units. What I would've done in your case was try to gang up on kroq-gar with most of your heroes and focus him down with all the firepower you can, then after you dispose of him have your heroes clump as many saurus warriors as possible and blast at them with magic and flamers, while using the rest of your units to protect your high damage ranged units so they can do damage.

I have played a campaign as lizardmen myself and, when fighting against Tzeentch my two biggest threats were always magic and flamethrowers. As long as I made sure to take care of those two, the rest of the fight was pretty easy.

As for Bastadilions with stalk, I don't remember whether that comes from a tech upgrade or a lord passive. Also yes, if you allow them to have LOS they will demolish you, as they should. It's artillery, duh. But if you deny it LOS, which is easy since it literally shoots in a straight line, then it's next to useless. And Razordons, yeah those are lovely. If you just let them be they will shred things with their AP missles. But if you send a single cavalry unit into melee with them they will become pretty worthless. That's where you probably should've sent those screamers so they are not useless.

There is too much micro. I lose every battle that autoresolve just lets me win with like 1 or 2 units lost.
The AI feels like on very hard (It's all normal, btw) overwhelming me.
I can't do anything. Flamers just stand there and die if I dont babysit them.
But I have to babysit EVERYTHING.
It's not just the lizardmen. Something is wrong with me or the faction becauase Dark Elves are the same.

https://puu.sh/Jzbb4/276304e20c.jpg
The horrors do nothing, they just stand there.
What am I doing wrong? Wrong formation? Melee front, horrors behind melee. I expect them to melt enemies but they dont.
The AI just melts me down with ridiculous micro where I can't do anything.
The chariots seem useless, the chaos knights also didnt do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Completely different from Vanilla. These tactics WORK there.
I sent Kairos and the other hero first btw and used magic in an attempt to thin the enemy out.
Didnt help. Exalted Flamer didnt manage to kill a single 'Sea Dragon' either.
I remember in Vanilla, Exalted Flamer melts large entities.

Doing a melee front and ranged units at the back is an extremely basic tactic and it's only really going to work if your army is strictly better than the enemy. If you want to win battles against tougher armies, I'm afraid you WILL have to pay attention more in battles and indeed micro your units better.

When I am doing a tough battle I pause a lot. It helps you assess the situation, form a plan and then execute it. As to what you could be doing better? It's really hard to say, there are A LOT of things you can do well during battle: choose better engagements, don't let the enemy flank you and instead flank them, position your missile units so they can hit more targets and ignore shield bonuses, use magic more effectively (especially when playing as Tzeentch, that's like 50% of your killing power).

Also, you should not expect the things that work in vanilla to work here. SFO rebalances a lot of things. Some things that worked previously will be less effective or straight up no longer work as well, meanwhile others will be better than they used to be. You just have to figure out what works and what doesn't. Or if you don't like the balance changes in this mod, you should play the vanilla game instead.

I have since won the campaign, but most of it was via autoresolve and cheesing with corruption/attrition and changing of the ways.

I don't like that I don't know what I am doing wrong, when I am using the units in a way that makes sense (to me).
No idea what other tactics or formations are viable. Flanking only works if the enemy doesn't have cavalry.
I used magic a -lot- it's very efficient. Didn't save me in some of the battles though.
And I try to not have any unit die. Which is often impossible.
Or at least play better than Autoresolve Result. But so far, the autoresolve each time was far superior to playing it manually.
Normal/Normal difficulties.
The AI is going crazy with their micro, flanking , using spells and so on. Not sure if thats a SFO thing or WH3.

Maybe I need to find another faction that fits my playstyle more in SFO.
I tend to make lines and keep flanks safe and advance steadily... while using my hero to cast spells

flamers can kill all lizardmen infantry with ease, just don't let them get hit at least not alone
group flamers inside pink lines or have some frontline units in front of flamers

halberdiers don't have to get close, their job is to defend and kill anything that comes to them

screamers are for harassing backline or light cavalry, lizardmen don't have that
best you are gonna do is harass razardons, salamanders and terradons with them its a cheap unit
if its buffed enough it could even kill some ripperdactyls but always good idea to bring multiples to outnumber the enemy

your spawn can take care of those skinks and razardons also, but they wont beat saurus alone because half the saurus are anti large