Automatic battle | Battle Total War: Attila Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
A dangerous option, if it is used in wrong way. In other case, it might greatly increase game speed.
Most of all, when calculating the battle outcome, computer considers only numbers, not the actual battle. It means that after a victory losses in your formations will be spread more or less equally. You won't feel it in an easy to win battle, but a hard one might end with twenty formations with five warriors each. Or eighteen, as frequently one or two formations are destroyed. So solving battles automatically should be used only in battles that you will definitely or almost definitely win. In other cases it is better to go to the battlefield yourself and decide which formations will have more casualties than others.
The amount of losses depends on battle difficulty. Watch the colored bar that can be found under the characters representing armies. Its color, similarly like on the diplomacy screen, shows the strength of both sides. The more advantage on your side, the lesser the losses of your formations after victory. The less advantage, the more casualties. And the chance for losing a whole formation or few of them increase as well. If you want to avoid that, always send larger forces. Although all formations will have some casualties, none of them will be completely destroyed.
Quality of units have some impact on the outcome of battle as well, which is easy to see if forty weak and twenty strong formations face each other. Not always computer will consider larger army as better and more worthy of victory. Because of that creating large armies that consist of cheap units might not always work, as they will be regularly defeated by smaller, but mote elite armies.
Because of that, to use automatic outcome well, it is best to send two armies to battle, both having around twenty various, good quality formations. Such force should break any enemy army that doesn't have more units, in worst case losing one or two formations.