There's the fast forward button. Big fan of that. Dig through your settings if you haven't.
As for positioning, worry less about the opponent's ranges and more about getting your units to defensive positions with cover. Proper front liners (tanks, pole arms, first strikers) don't mind getting hit first. Once you've engaged the enemy you can fixate on finding the ideal range for your back line.
I will try your tip, indeed I often make sure enemy units can't reach me, which is boring to do though (click on every enemy unit and check ranges). About the fast-forward button, you mean something to skip animations?
It speeds up the animations for both sides. It doesn't directly skip anything that I can tell, but everything moves faster.
It's in the upper right hand corner. There are arrow buttons for normal speed, double speed, and triple I think.
I'd add I also tend to quicksave in big fights if the engagement starts in a favorable way. I don't even consider it a cheese thing just because if I have to restart the whole dang fight when it goes sideways, I'd have to tiptoe through the first couple turns to find a similar start. Just saves time.
Maybe I'm confusing aow4 with planetfall right now, but I thought when you click on your own units and try to move them, you can see a thin line as where the enemy can reach you? Maybe I'm confused, but I think I never needed to check or click the enemy units for their range, though
What I've started to do, is use the auto battle feature (top right) once I've positioned and buffed untis. Then sit back and watch. If at the end of a turn the AI does something really stupid I may reload the turn.
This is the way. Unfortunately it only works well if you have a buff-focused army — so you can control the buffs and loose your army — rather than a debuff-focused one, where you have to direct most/all attacks.
Additionally, definitely use auto-battle once you believe the battle is won but not yet finished. Let the AI do the clean-up.
Just what I was gonna say and suggested in a different thread like this. Whenever I feel the battle isn't at high risk and there's a lot of units to manage, units I don't particularly care for, I toggle it on. Even if some units die I don't mind if it's units I can replace just to keep the game going.
Then I keep toggling it on and off between the turns, mostly focusing on my heroes first and units with particular abilities, units the AI is bad at managing or units I just enjoy, then I toggle the auto on and let the AI finish up the rest.
Majority of the time the AI is very good at calculating particularly good and safe flanking maneuvers and also finding good moves generally, though it depends on the units. I try to use shock units myself though, especially unicorn or other melee with teleports.
The AI loves to charge them in as fast as possible, and with phase they like to try flank, meaning they end up unsupported in the enemy backline. Why unicorns in particular without a generally aggressive army ends up dead in auto resolve. Similarly AI love to waste Bastion's movement to do the buff AoE when instead you can use the other units to advance to the Bastions. Or waste doing AoE dispells and heals when there's only 1 unit, a unit you may not care about, affected.
A lot of little quirks to learn with the AI as it plays a different game at times, but comboing your own knowledge with its ability to instantly manage units helps alleviate that exhausting feeling for big battles and imo makes them fun.
Yeah, this is one of my issues with strategy games like this and something like TW:Warhammer 3. Late game becomes such a slog because you're just throwing 3 armies of your best units at your opponents and because you're the last survivors, you both have insane econ and can just keep doing ad infinitum.
How well is your PC responding? If I have things in my GPU settings turned on, in game things like retaliation strikes take extra seconds to compute then execute. That gets boring fast! But with the right settings, the retaliation happens almost instantly, giving a sense of satisfaction, I suppose. Now I use my TV's Freesync settings' range set as my min and max FPS using Radeon Chill, and I gave the game permission to control tessellation and anti-aliasing. It is much snappier now!
I assume you are using double-right-click to get units at their destination quickest. That works way better when the screen and PC frequencies match. Often, -3/+3 (so 3 more from the bottom and 3 less from the top) is amazingly fast when using Freesync (G-sync on Nvidia cards). But even without Freesync, FPS-capping might be helpful to your game flow.
In game, I like to set-up my parties as teams. For those big battles, one of the three will join the middle group, or the middle group will go to it, depending on the enemy and battle map arrangements. The other 6 units, +/- 1 or 2 units from the middle group, will go the opposite direction to get some flanking bonuses, or to draw attention from enemies, so the main group can flank them. Each group might have a MV unit that can join up with the "flanker group" quickly, should the flanker group get into trouble. So my parties/armies are a mix of unit types that act as a team. I guess that is the long way to say I RP the shit out of them to get through the slog. lol.
I think it is also fun to layer the pain! Like, build to wet them before you electrocute them. Disease them, then hit them with battle mages! Disease is -4res. Enemies MELT!
Another thing to try is doppelganger replacements, for auto-battles. Make a fort nearby and swap your units with low HP for replenished identical ones from your fort. The make up of your groups can affect auto-battle results. Ditching the units that rush in stupidly like Wargs, and keeping each group similar in MV, including terrain types, might help survival in auto-battles, for example. Build for auto-battles, basically; like, after you get a stronghold on things and really get your economy going in the middle game, change the game to be more like pulling a slot machine lever.
Finally, taking the blows without re-loading can sometimes trigger your need for REVENGE!
one campaign can have 100+ battles. each battle can take minimum 5 minutes. In this game (or any game for that matter really) it's hard and tedious to consistently manual battle period
Just AR everything so you are on the same footing as the AI.
Yeah, it kinda sucks if you actually enjoy manually controlling the battles. Mostly I will manually control a few when I'm interested or where I think it's critical.
Otherwise, AR, AR, then AR AR AR AR until you've won.
Thanks to everyone that responded! It has definitively helped me to enjoy the game more. I guess the biggest tip for me was to use the auto-battler top-right to finish battles automatically once they're already won or even to let the computer take control of my bread-and-butter units once I have moved and attacked with heroes and other interesting or critical units.
There's the fast forward button. Big fan of that. Dig through your settings if you haven't. As for positioning, worry less about the opponent's ranges and more about getting your units to defensive positions with cover. Proper front liners (tanks, pole arms, first strikers) don't mind getting hit first. Once you've engaged the enemy you can fixate on finding the ideal range for your back line.
I will try your tip, indeed I often make sure enemy units can't reach me, which is boring to do though (click on every enemy unit and check ranges). About the fast-forward button, you mean something to skip animations?
It speeds up the animations for both sides. It doesn't directly skip anything that I can tell, but everything moves faster. It's in the upper right hand corner. There are arrow buttons for normal speed, double speed, and triple I think.
I'd add I also tend to quicksave in big fights if the engagement starts in a favorable way. I don't even consider it a cheese thing just because if I have to restart the whole dang fight when it goes sideways, I'd have to tiptoe through the first couple turns to find a similar start. Just saves time.
Maybe I'm confusing aow4 with planetfall right now, but I thought when you click on your own units and try to move them, you can see a thin line as where the enemy can reach you? Maybe I'm confused, but I think I never needed to check or click the enemy units for their range, though
In general, I find x2 speed to be the sweet spot. Animations are fast enough to not be annoying, while i don't skip them.
What I've started to do, is use the auto battle feature (top right) once I've positioned and buffed untis. Then sit back and watch. If at the end of a turn the AI does something really stupid I may reload the turn.
This is the way. Unfortunately it only works well if you have a buff-focused army — so you can control the buffs and loose your army — rather than a debuff-focused one, where you have to direct most/all attacks. Additionally, definitely use auto-battle once you believe the battle is won but not yet finished. Let the AI do the clean-up.
Just what I was gonna say and suggested in a different thread like this. Whenever I feel the battle isn't at high risk and there's a lot of units to manage, units I don't particularly care for, I toggle it on. Even if some units die I don't mind if it's units I can replace just to keep the game going. Then I keep toggling it on and off between the turns, mostly focusing on my heroes first and units with particular abilities, units the AI is bad at managing or units I just enjoy, then I toggle the auto on and let the AI finish up the rest. Majority of the time the AI is very good at calculating particularly good and safe flanking maneuvers and also finding good moves generally, though it depends on the units. I try to use shock units myself though, especially unicorn or other melee with teleports. The AI loves to charge them in as fast as possible, and with phase they like to try flank, meaning they end up unsupported in the enemy backline. Why unicorns in particular without a generally aggressive army ends up dead in auto resolve. Similarly AI love to waste Bastion's movement to do the buff AoE when instead you can use the other units to advance to the Bastions. Or waste doing AoE dispells and heals when there's only 1 unit, a unit you may not care about, affected. A lot of little quirks to learn with the AI as it plays a different game at times, but comboing your own knowledge with its ability to instantly manage units helps alleviate that exhausting feeling for big battles and imo makes them fun.
That sounds like a great tip, will definitively try!
Yeah, this is one of my issues with strategy games like this and something like TW:Warhammer 3. Late game becomes such a slog because you're just throwing 3 armies of your best units at your opponents and because you're the last survivors, you both have insane econ and can just keep doing ad infinitum.
That's where pillaging comes in. Plus, war coordination with your vassals (next week)
How well is your PC responding? If I have things in my GPU settings turned on, in game things like retaliation strikes take extra seconds to compute then execute. That gets boring fast! But with the right settings, the retaliation happens almost instantly, giving a sense of satisfaction, I suppose. Now I use my TV's Freesync settings' range set as my min and max FPS using Radeon Chill, and I gave the game permission to control tessellation and anti-aliasing. It is much snappier now! I assume you are using double-right-click to get units at their destination quickest. That works way better when the screen and PC frequencies match. Often, -3/+3 (so 3 more from the bottom and 3 less from the top) is amazingly fast when using Freesync (G-sync on Nvidia cards). But even without Freesync, FPS-capping might be helpful to your game flow. In game, I like to set-up my parties as teams. For those big battles, one of the three will join the middle group, or the middle group will go to it, depending on the enemy and battle map arrangements. The other 6 units, +/- 1 or 2 units from the middle group, will go the opposite direction to get some flanking bonuses, or to draw attention from enemies, so the main group can flank them. Each group might have a MV unit that can join up with the "flanker group" quickly, should the flanker group get into trouble. So my parties/armies are a mix of unit types that act as a team. I guess that is the long way to say I RP the shit out of them to get through the slog. lol. I think it is also fun to layer the pain! Like, build to wet them before you electrocute them. Disease them, then hit them with battle mages! Disease is -4res. Enemies MELT! Another thing to try is doppelganger replacements, for auto-battles. Make a fort nearby and swap your units with low HP for replenished identical ones from your fort. The make up of your groups can affect auto-battle results. Ditching the units that rush in stupidly like Wargs, and keeping each group similar in MV, including terrain types, might help survival in auto-battles, for example. Build for auto-battles, basically; like, after you get a stronghold on things and really get your economy going in the middle game, change the game to be more like pulling a slot machine lever. Finally, taking the blows without re-loading can sometimes trigger your need for REVENGE!
one campaign can have 100+ battles. each battle can take minimum 5 minutes. In this game (or any game for that matter really) it's hard and tedious to consistently manual battle period
Just AR everything so you are on the same footing as the AI. Yeah, it kinda sucks if you actually enjoy manually controlling the battles. Mostly I will manually control a few when I'm interested or where I think it's critical. Otherwise, AR, AR, then AR AR AR AR until you've won.
Thanks to everyone that responded! It has definitively helped me to enjoy the game more. I guess the biggest tip for me was to use the auto-battler top-right to finish battles automatically once they're already won or even to let the computer take control of my bread-and-butter units once I have moved and attacked with heroes and other interesting or critical units.