That's a great idea.

My biggest issue is the way autoresolve with have my casters needlessly throw off spells in fights they could win without even attacking, wasting huge amounts of precious mana when I'm saving up for a summon or enchantment. Need to be an autoresolve without using magic option.

"My biggest issue is the way autoresolve with have my casters needlessly throw off spells in fights they could win without even attacking, wasting huge amounts of precious mana when I'm saving up for a summon or enchantment. Need to be an autoresolve without using magic option."

this.

though i am surprised to find it was using magic at all; i was having the opposite problem in that my sovs magic abilities seem to be ignored...?

Yes I have also wanted a feature like this, but I would like to have this option per "unit" so I can turn on all the mindless boring units I have that I dont care about. Also this would solve some players who only want to control the casters to use mana there own way.

* Computer controled ?
Have Computer auto attack button on/off per unit.
By having this on each unit, then it is you can let the computer control all the archers and mindless units

--

* Spells ?
Allowed to use spell/abilities on/off

---

* Behavior ?
This could be many differnt settings, boxes and settings.

** Cowardly = always try and stay 2 squares away from enemy, Good for ranged units, and actully use tactics, instead of mindnumbing stand and shoot tactics.
Forcing players to play strategic fights just because the Auto resolv is bad deisgned is not a good game.

** Berzerker = Full charge towards enemy.

** Stand ground= Stand ground and attack enemy close to you.

--

* Target mode ?
Who do you want the target to attack
HP Weakest enemy, HP strongest enemy, closest enemy, furthest away enemy, casters


Ofc a game with these option would prob need alot of programming and shit, but a game with a feature like this would be "NEW" and really kick ass impressive.

I just wish we were allowed to setup our formation before the battle, be it tactical or auto resolve. It's annoying jumping into tactical and 3 units are standing there alone in the middle of the field!

Also autoresolve seems to ignore your spells. I can win a fight with just my sovereign spells, and having everyone else protecting him. But hitting auto, and it only uses ONE spell once....sheeesh.

A tactical auto resolve where you can see the battle unfold would be great. SD could use the same AI that the enemy uses in the tactical battle.

In the short run, I would offer players choosing tactical auto resolve two options to guide the the AI;

1. Magic Strategy

a. No Magic

b. Use Magic against strongest units

c. Use Magic against weakest units

2. Battle Strategy:

a. Target all

b. Target strongest enemy units first

c. Target weakest enemy units first

Example 01: Magic Strategy (No Magic), Battle Strategy (Target strongest enemy units first)

Example 02: Magic Strategy (Against strongest units), Battle Strategy (Target weakest enemy units first)

While it would be nice every once in a while to be able to sit back and watch your army pound out the enemy in an automated AI vs AI battle, and despite the many things wrong with auto-resolve and tactical battle as it stands, I would be satisfied if there was just an option for changing the animation speeds (both on the world map and tactical map). In HoMM3 I ALWAYS duked the battles out (since you can pretty much always outperform the AI results), but thats because you could make the battle very fast. In this game, the tactical battles are currently unreasonably time consuming and there is little-to-no strategy involved (making them very boring), which leads me to auto-resolve all battles even if it means I lose more health or more units than I could have in tactical battle (which, because of the current bugs and differences in the way auto-resolve determines the battle results, is generally not the case anyways).

Auto does counter the moral lock talent some sovereign have though. Auto seems to totally ignore moral.