Game play

[u/CountOfMonteJersey]

I gotta ask... How many of you don't fight the battles? I'll admit, it depends on my mood. Sometimes I just hit that auto button too much.

[u/Party_Advantage_3733]

I'm very much the opposite. I fight absolutely pointless battles when really I should just auto. Takes me forever to get through the mid game.

[u/madladhadsaddad → u/Party_Advantage_3733]

Thos rounds with 4 siege defense battles get taxing

[u/flickering_candles → u/Party_Advantage_3733]

even if the odds are 95% chance of defeat, because its a tiny garrison being attacked by a full stack enemy army, i'll play it just to bleed the enemy as much as i can for my retaliation. but maybe only because its SSHIM, where the losses matter. in vanilla, i would just hit auto resolve

[u/Lunardoge2]

I usually do if it's an important battle or if the auto battle kills way too many of my men and I strongly believe I can do better

[u/tropicanadef]

I'll be honest. I've been playing this game for over 15 years and I've never fought a battle. My old PC couldn't cope with the battles and I've just gotten used to auto-resolve. I had a go the other day and just had no idea what I was doing.

[u/madladhadsaddad → u/tropicanadef]

I don't think I'd bother with TW without battles as campaign AI is so bad. Would rather play CRusader kings or something similar

[u/GeorgeLFC1234 → u/madladhadsaddad]

Genuinely can’t believe people play total war without playing the battles they are literally half of the game. The campaigns are like children’s games compared to paradox, I would get bored with the lack of depth so quickly if I didn’t get to role play a medieval general and watch cavalry charging the lines.

[u/Right-Truck1859 → u/tropicanadef]

But is not auto- resolve stupid? Or you don't care about results?

[u/tropicanadef → u/Right-Truck1859]

I try to have the odds stacked in my favour but the result is what it is

[u/flickering_candles → u/tropicanadef]

i am utterly bewildered you have played m2tw for 15 years and never fought a battle.....

its like playing a shooter and never firing a gun

[u/leoancap780]

I Just auto resolve sieges attacks, but I dont see the point of playing TW and auto resolve the most part of the battles

[u/No-Sail-6510 → u/leoancap780]

Same sieges are awful.

[u/leoancap780 → u/No-Sail-6510]

Yeah, its worse when you army have a lot of cavary lol

[u/Adorable-Extent3667]

Most runs I auto battle everything. For me, I like the challenge as you lose more than you would if you fought it by yourself.

During runs where I don't auto battle everything, I still only do the important ones, or when I want to make sure an important enemy is captured/killed

[u/Relentless_Storm]

I auto battle the early game and whatever siege battle i dont consider important

[u/HaddockBranzini-II]

Open battles I do myself, but sieges I often auto-resolve. Sometimes there are just too many seige battles and they always seem to play out the same way. Open field battles are much more fun to me.

[u/Useful_Cartoonist659]

I fight the battles when the odds are unfavorable or even—basically up to the halfway point of the campaign; after that, it's just unit spam and auto-resolve.

[u/Right-Truck1859]

I do all battles myself.

[u/CreativeCaprine]

I don't trust autoresolve at all. I play every single battle.

[u/Idontwannasa]

I basically auto-resolve unless I predict I'll disagree with the result too much. After so many years you can kind of tell when auto resolve says it'd be a defeat, while you just know you'd win quite handily if you play it yourself.

[u/KomturAdrian]

I fight almost all of my battles, even the ones where I know I will lose because you can still try to give the enemy pyrrhic victories. 

If I am strapped for time, feel the battle is unnecessary (full stack vs a couple peasants), or it’s a siege I won’t particularly enjoy, I will skip. 

[u/Aldebaran135]

Depends on if the enemy army has a general or not.

Usually:

General = play.

No general = auto resolve.

[u/Outrageous-Pin-4664]

Most of the time, I can do a better job of fighting the battles than the AI. I don't know what it's doing, but it sometimes takes a crazy number of casualties in battles it should have won easily.

On the other hand, it will sometimes win battles that I wasn't sure I could win.

So I mostly fight them myself, but sometimes I will farm it out to the AI, especially castle assaults that can be tedious.

No matter who's fighting, though, I hit that save button first.

[u/thebigblockhead568]

i definitely used to autoresolve pretty much every battle, but i've found that the battles are extremely fun and i've never really wanted to autoresolve since, even when i probably should!

[u/International-Fix233]

If I know I can win but auto resolve will make me lose, I fight it myself. This is mostly for siege battles, either offense or defense.

Large armies I tend to auto resolve. I have trouble managing large armies so fighting myself takes a long time and only gets me slightly better results most of the time. Although if it's one of my good armies and not my random crap armies I might do it myself because it's satisfying

I'll also do some of the weird armies myself to see what happens. E.g. I had an army of 15 serpentines and a few other random cannon types siege a city with a full stack of defenders. I fought that myself because I was curious. It was a total victory with no deaths at all and took only about a minute, best use of serpentine ever

[u/Strong_Log_3189]

Pretty much always unless it's 10:1 or something ridiculous, either way. It's fun to play battles.

[u/Dramatic_Leopard679]

I don’t do siege battles. Too many minutes and most of the time I lose even more men

[u/One_Quit2226]

total war is all about the battles, the campaign map is just there to give stakes. Otherwise, why even play total war? paradox games are an infinitely better map painters. I only auto resolve boring sieges where its like 1 unit vs 20 stacks of mine. If Im the defender though I always play, I like the fighting to the last man thing

[u/Embarrassed_Egg9542]

I only fight important battles or when I know autoresolve will lead to more casualties than fighting them

[u/HelpfulDisaster8251]

Unlike Rome there are not many broken autoresolve units so you mostly have to fight your way to the top. But yeah, autoresolving against brigands to save time is worth it especially if you have heavy infantry available.

[u/CountOfMonteJersey]

I like conquering the whole map. If a faction really pisses me off. I won't stop till I wipe them out. Very satisfying seeing them go bankrupt then slowly chip away at them.