Yeah, I didn't even realize that was happening until I got ready to cast a strategic spell and discovered that I only had five mana left--less than my 7 mana per turn income--when the last time I had deliberately cast anything was over twenty turns previously and then I still had about 100 in the bank.

If the auto-resolve cannot be easily calculated to leave mana use out then the player would have to fight out ridiculously one-sided battles just to conserve mana, which is definitely not fun.

I also have had to use the autoresolve to finish battles, and the dumb ai used up all the mana(approx 50) that I was accumulating at 3 per turn in the battle and the CAUSE of the force to autoresolve was when an attacking enemy died due to a counter-attack from my sov in a five unit army(army rating was 'EPIC' against a total at start of battle of four shrills(rated 'weak') and had killed one by advancing to just in front of them and attacking one, the others then attacked my sov(health was approx 200, st was 300 attack was 20 (demon sword) lots of abilities including counterstrike sov was level 22), shrill died from counterattack and the battle just stopped with at least two attackers still alive, but waiting for the dead unit to do something, then used auto-resolve to finish the battle, but the blasted autoresolve burnt the ENTIRE mana stock I had built up just to kill two shrills that the sov could have simply sliced with the sword.

harpo

Can anyone confirm whether or not Brad's Friday slipstream patch addresses this issue?

Yeah, this is an issue. Should just not use magic on autoresolve, since presumably if the battle's close enough to be worth using magic, you'll want to do it yourself. That's not necessarily true considering how unfun tactical battles are at the moment, but that's a separate issue which should be addressed separately.