I cant give you a good reason why that happened, but I do know this, when you go into battles I notice that your "weaker" melee units are almost always in front.  Now maybe, they were taken out first, and they could have been casters, so then you were down to just your melee, and they were picked apart by the enemies caster, archers, catapults, or what not.  I would really like for this bug of putting the weaker melee types in front fixed and Id like to have the ability to set my formation, at least if im attacking.  If im attacked, then I can understand there might be some confusion and my people being our of formation.

Sorry I cant give you a better reason, but this is something Ive noticed in all my games and maybe this played out...then again, maybes its just a bug.

Why auto-calc the final epic battle

Im pretty sure that it's not a bug. You just end up with the same tac battle AI as the enemy, and as you can see from any combat it's retarded. All it ever does is rush head in. All your troops including your ranged ones and channelers rush in. With bad luck you stop right in front of of your enemies front line and they get first strike next turn.... So ya don't auto calc any fight that is anywhere near close.

What I do is let the enemy move twice so that they stop right in front of me and then auto calc. Makes a fair difference.

yeah, i hated it till i realized i could set the auto-calc threshhold to never trigger.  Got sick of constantly needing to load after losing what should have been auto-wins and were when i loaded and played them myself.  I think you can only auto resolve if your armor is so much better than their attack that you can not be damaged by their units.  Then you may win most of the time.

This.

I think you either might have overlooked the fact that your Sov was in the army as well and he or she got killed or

it was the army / weak units 'issue' like discussed above. Messages do get displayed instantly often, even before the game is done calculating everything and letting you take control again.

It does come across as sudden. Quite the anti-climax in your case!

Ooh, clever... I'll have to remember that.

Its nice when your OP seven hero army encounters a bandit/wolf early game and you autocalc and then 20 turns later realize your spouse died in that battle somehow

Tactical battles need massive improvement but I still recommend it over autocalcing all but the simplest battles where no enemy has attack higher than your armor.

Pretty sure there's a green arrow or red arrow + the change in stats shown in your hero's little bit at the bottom for the store when you select an item. Gonna fire up the game to check, but pretty sure it's in and just not very visible. 

edit: Verified. When you select an item, look at your hero's stats down at the bottom. Changes have an arrow (either green or red) and a number indicating the amount of the difference between the equipped item and the store item. UI issue, it should definitely be more visible. Meanwhile, the massive and completely irrelevant shopkeeper is also definitely still there.

Easy answer, auto-resolve can not be trusted.

I was going to say, no, just don't trust it!!

Or it could all play out exactly the same way.

I've often been destroying an enemy only to run into a unit that is difficult to handle.  For instance, I ran into an enemy champion that had 80 attack and around 50 armor.  My sovereign at that point in the game was 40/22 or so and this guy was a beast and just chewed up everything that I had.   I ended up having to develop better/larger troops and this one jack-ass added 100+ turns to my game.

Oh, I should also mention that there is a spider mob that is a real pain if you run into.  It is 38/20 or so and has a web attack that leaves you unable to attack or counter for quite a while.   I think he appears with a level 3 adventure site, so if you see something about battling the spiders, you might want to say no, save the game, and then check it out.

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I only autoresolve when:

1. Facing lonely Pioneers (0 attack...)
2. Meatshields against less powerful enemy meatshields.
3. Stuck in tactical battle (I have not being able to play much 1.1 yet so still haven't experienced that if it's still there).