SP - Battles & Sieges Simulated battles outweigh the need to play them yourself? WHY?

[Ariakan]

Hi Taleworlds

Congrats on a great EA.
Its so refreshing to see you hammering away at the code. It gets better for every patch you put out.
With that being said, i have a minor complaint.

Its come to my attention recently, that "Autoresolve" or "Simulated" battles, FAR outweigh personal battles in regards, to the XP gain per soldier.
I constantly see 6-7 soldiers ready to upgrade, every time i autoresolve against looters. Its like the XP it much better destributed between soldiers in that way.
If i compare this to just killing the looters my self, i get maybe 1 or at the most 2 upgrades.

Why is there such a huge diference? It kinda defeats the purpose of doing the battles your self, when you can just autoresolve and get tier 4-5-6-7 units within half an hour of beginning your game.
Besides the above, i NEVER seem to have any soldiers killed when i autoresolve against looters. They only wound. Is that by design or a bug?

Keep the patches coming. You are doing one hell of a job.

/ Ariakan

 

[Broxogar]

Think of looters as a way of training your soldiers - they only use blunt weapons and rocks so 'ideally' they shouldn't actually kill your soldiers.

As for the xp distribution, because of the way the battle auto-calculates, it looks like soldiers get a better 'contribution' than if you run the battle yourself. I know that for me personally, my archers kill WAAAY more people when I run my battles, as do my more elite unites like my cavalry.

Means that your low level units barely get the chance to kill anything. Obviously when auto-calculating, it doesn't try to figure out who killed who, it just spreads the XP amongst your units.

Overall I don't think you get more from auto battles, just a more even spread.

Edit: Also - with the exception of looters, I do significantly better actually fighting my battles - so even if there was an XP bonus (which I don't think there is) it still wouldn't make sense to auto calculate for it.

 

[sirgzu]

I think it is by design. I was wondering the same thing and I saw it written somewhere explicitly that simulated battles grant more XP to troops (could have been in the in-game wiki of tips). I'm not sure what the rationale behind that decision is, I can think of a few explanations, none of which are very convincing. Regardless of the why, I think the difference is far too big. It currently feels at least 10X harder to level troops in battle, I don't know what the exact number is but it feels too high.

This problem was exacerbated when we couldn't get fighting XP from arena but at least that issue has been tackled. Now we can at least level up our own combat skills outside of the field of battle.

 

[Ariakan]

I think it is by design. I was wondering the same thing and I saw it written somewhere explicitly that simulated battles grant more XP to troops (could have been in the in-game wiki of tips). I'm not sure what the rationale behind that decision is, I can think of a few explanations, none of which are very convincing. Regardless of the why, I think the difference is far too big. It currently feels at least 10X harder to level troops in battle, I don't know what the exact number is but it feels too high.

This problem was exacerbated when we couldn't get fighting XP from arena but at least that issue has been tackled. Now we can at least level up our own combat skills outside of the field of battle.

Hi Sirgzu

I completely agree. Im quite fine with how the simulated battles distributes the XP per soldier.
I just cant undertand why they made it SO much better at ranking soldiers up, than the normal battles.
The Mount and Blade games have always been about the personal battles. It should really be in those gritty battles that you level oyour soldiers the quickest or least in the same way that you can in simulated batlles.

I hope they correct this in one of their patches. Make it even or at least give clear explanations, as to why this system was chosen, so i dont feel cheesy for just autoresolving everytime i see looters. Heck looters even outperform toughter opponents in XP and ranking gain, because im sure no one dies while fighting them.

Think of looters as a way of training your soldiers - they only use blunt weapons and rocks so 'ideally' they shouldn't actually kill your soldiers.

As for the xp distribution, because of the way the battle auto-calculates, it looks like soldiers get a better 'contribution' than if you run the battle yourself. I know that for me personally, my archers kill WAAAY more people when I run my battles, as do my more elite unites like my cavalry.

Means that your low level units barely get the chance to kill anything. Obviously when auto-calculating, it doesn't try to figure out who killed who, it just spreads the XP amongst your units.

Overall I don't think you get more from auto battles, just a more even spread.

Edit: Also - with the exception of looters, I do significantly better actually fighting my battles - so even if there was an XP bonus (which I don't think there is) it still wouldn't make sense to auto calculate for it.

Hi Broxogar

I agree with most of what your experiencing, except for one thing. You do get WAY more XP per fight in autocalc.
I have run the battles ageinst looters side-by-side many times. If i do the same battle in personal style, i might get lucky and have 1 or 2 soldiers upgrade after the fight, and ONLY the ones that get kills. If i then autoresolve and reload, i can get anywhere from 3-6 upgades for the exact same battle.

So i do think theres some kind of XP bonus. Maybe because you would normally loose more soldiers in a simulated battle against harder troops?

 

[stevehoos]

I hate auto calculate as a general rule for video games.

 

[left2live]

against looters i always autoresolve, if i do it against "trained" soldiers i take the field and loose 2-5 men instead of 60+ if i autoresolved XD

 

[Karl V.]

Im wondering the same. If I do the battle by myself and only let my recruits kill enemy I have maybe 1 to 3 ready for upgrade out of 40 man killing 20ish looters. Using Auto resolve I get 6 to 14 ready to upgrade every time at similar scale battles.

 

[Broxogar]

So i do think theres some kind of XP bonus. Maybe because you would normally loose more soldiers in a simulated battle against harder troops?

I mean, it's possible. But I think it's more likely that it has to do with the 'spreading' of XP. As we all know, if a troop levels, it doesn't gain anymore XP until it's promoted.

So if one or more of your units does a good deal of killing, it's XP is effectively 'capped' if it's caused to level. Similarly you might have 10 units 1 or 2 xp away from a promotion, but they get no kills and therefore no XP.

If you auto-resolve, it spreads that XP and those 10 units get their promotion, where otherwise maybe 1 or 2 would have (and then would have wasted any XP over and above the 1 or 2 they needed).

 

[sherdil]

Looters - autoresolve

All other battles, play manually as I hate losing men.

 

[Nanashi Anjin]

I once lost an Imperial Cataphract to looters autoresolve, I had recruits too, but had over 100 troops vs 20... and my top unit died xD
Refuse to auto resolve looters again...

 

[Archonsod]

Why is there such a huge diference? It kinda defeats the purpose of doing the battles your self, when you can just autoresolve and get tier 4-5-6-7 units within half an hour of beginning your game.

You can do the exact same thing without autoresolve, it's just then it entails waiting for the combat scene to load, ordering the charge and going to look at the trees for the five minutes it takes your guys to slaughter their way through the looters. It's simply wasting the player's time if you were to enforce that.
Ideally there'd be a solution that would allow you to drop early game content like looters entirely at some point, but given the sandbox nature of the map that would probably introduce more problems than it would solve.

 

[durbal]

You can do the exact same thing without autoresolve, it's just then it entails waiting for the combat scene to load, ordering the charge and going to look at the trees for the five minutes it takes your guys to slaughter their way through the looters. It's simply wasting the player's time if you were to enforce that.

No, his point is that you can't do the same thing. He's saying autoresolve gives significantly more XP as if from thin air.

 

[Ariakan]

I mean, it's possible. But I think it's more likely that it has to do with the 'spreading' of XP. As we all know, if a troop levels, it doesn't gain anymore XP until it's promoted.

So if one or more of your units does a good deal of killing, it's XP is effectively 'capped' if it's caused to level. Similarly you might have 10 units 1 or 2 xp away from a promotion, but they get no kills and therefore no XP.

If you auto-resolve, it spreads that XP and those 10 units get their promotion, where otherwise maybe 1 or 2 would have (and then would have wasted any XP over and above the 1 or 2 they needed).

Hi again Broxogar

You might be right about it. Its just that in every battle i did this test, i made sure to look at the XP required for my soldiers, and i made sure i had none ready for promotion. Its stille played out the same way. Auto-resolve = 3-6 units ready to upgrade. Personal battle yeilded only 1 or 2, sometimes it didn yield any upgrades at all.

So i really think something is askew in that regard.

You can do the exact same thing without autoresolve, it's just then it entails waiting for the combat scene to load, ordering the charge and going to look at the trees for the five minutes it takes your guys to slaughter their way through the looters. It's simply wasting the player's time if you were to enforce that.
Ideally there'd be a solution that would allow you to drop early game content like looters entirely at some point, but given the sandbox nature of the map that would probably introduce more problems than it would solve.

Hi Achonsod

Agree with it almost. I remember it like that from Warband, Perisno or Prophesy of Pendor. If your troops was a highter level or better equipped than the enemy, then you could almost certainly wait by the trees. That was very true if you outnumbered them also.

In Bannerlord a lowly recruit or even a looter, can actually **** your high tier units if you just let the battle run its course without you interferring.

Thats especially true if they outnumber you. That NEVER happened in Warband, POP or Perisno. But i think that was partly due to how armor worked vs profiencency with a certain combat style. High tier units with great armor and stats would never loose to low tier units. But they can and will in Bannerlord.

 

[metafa]

Its come to my attention recently, that "Autoresolve" or "Simulated" battles, FAR outweigh personal battles in regards, to the XP gain per soldier.
I constantly see 6-7 soldiers ready to upgrade, every time i autoresolve against looters. Its like the XP it much better destributed between soldiers in that way.

I never auto-resolve so I don't know. But if this is true it needs to be fixed.

 

[Ariakan]

No, his point is that you can't do the same thing. He's saying autoresolve gives significantly more XP as if from thin air.

Yes exactly that. At least thats what ive been working out from the tests. I might have to get all calculative on this one, and add the numbers from every soldier gaining XP in the battle and compare both scenarios.

 

[Archonsod]

No, his point is that you can't do the same thing. He's saying autoresolve gives significantly more XP as if from thin air.

Which simply means you'd need to put up with even more loading screens and five minutes of admiring trees to see the same effect. That's kind of the point - autoresolve is primarily there to avoid tedium of either 'there's no possible way I can lose this battle' or the hopefully rarer 'I'm completely screwed'. Given the AI will scarper if it feels it's outmatched the only time the former will usually happen is because the player is looking to grind up troop levels; better at that point to simply upgrade the troops and let them pretend they did something (see also perks to train up the troops) than force them to grind out less than compelling gameplay.

You might be right about it. Its just that in every battle i did this test, i made sure to look at the XP required for my soldiers, and i made sure i had none ready for promotion. Its stille played out the same way. Auto-resolve = 3-6 units ready to upgrade. Personal battle yeilded only 1 or 2, sometimes it didn yield any upgrades at all.

So i really think something is askew in that regard.

The simulation tends to evenly distribute the XP based on an 'average' award from the battle. Fighting it manually doesn't give the even distribution and may not give an average result (note experience is gained from more than simply landing the killing blow for example).

 

[Wolfsblut]

I don't think this is the way it should be.
Both autocalc and self-fought battles should provide roughly the same amount of exp for the troops.
Gameplaywise it provides nothing to favour one over the another.
That way players who like you lead their troops themselves would have the same amount of fun than the players who like the "managment" aspect of the game more.

Which simply means you'd need to put up with even more loading screens and five minutes of admiring trees to see the same effect.

If this is what some players like to do, where is the downside of providing that option?

The simulation tends to evenly distribute the XP based on an 'average' award from the battle. Fighting it manually doesn't give the even distribution and may not give an average result (note experience is gained from more than simply landing the killing blow for example).

Which would be easy enough to solve by count together all exp but the player one and share it between the troops.

 

[durbal]

Which simply means you'd need to put up with even more loading screens and five minutes of admiring trees to see the same effect. That's kind of the point - autoresolve is primarily there to avoid tedium of either 'there's no possible way I can lose this battle' or the hopefully rarer 'I'm completely screwed'. Given the AI will scarper if it feels it's outmatched the only time the former will usually happen is because the player is looking to grind up troop levels; better at that point to simply upgrade the troops and let them pretend they did something (see also perks to train up the troops) than force them to grind out less than compelling gameplay.


The simulation tends to evenly distribute the XP based on an 'average' award from the battle. Fighting it manually doesn't give the even distribution and may not give an average result (note experience is gained from more than simply landing the killing blow for example).

It's not about loading screens or why people like to use autoresolve. It's about autoresolve providing significantly different outcomes and seemingly more XP than manually-fought battles. I heard (would have to confirm) that autoresolve actually provides an XP boost -- as in, it provides more XP than could possibly be gained by fighting the battle manually. That make no sense.

 

[Archonsod]

If this is what some players like to do, where is the downside of providing that option?

You still have that option.

Which would be easy enough to solve by count together all exp but the player one and share it between the troops.

It's not that simple. The simulation abstracts things like the XP bonus for headshots, fight it out manually and your troops could score more or less headshots than the simulation assumes, so even if you redistibute the XP gain evenly you'd still get inconsistent results between the two.

It's not about loading screens or why people like to use autoresolve. It's about autoresolve providing significantly different outcomes and seemingly more XP than manually-fought battles. I heard (would have to confirm) that autoresolve actually provides an XP boost -- as in, it provides more XP than could possibly be gained by fighting the battle manually. That make no sense.

It wouldn't grant more than could possibly be gained by fighting the battle manually. Unless it's been changed since the original M&B though autoresolve basically works along a principle of lining everyone up and having each unit 'roll to hit' one of it's opposite numbers and apply damage, which tended to result in certain units outperforming while others underperformed (usually low level and high level, respectively).

 

[Ariakan]

It's not about loading screens or why people like to use autoresolve. It's about autoresolve providing significantly different outcomes and seemingly more XP than manually-fought battles. I heard (would have to confirm) that autoresolve actually provides an XP boost -- as in, it provides more XP than could possibly be gained by fighting the battle manually. That make no sense.

This. If this is true they need to remove it, or at the very least buff the personal fought battles, so they would give the same outcome.