I would not recommend putting the crusade on auto. The super easy difficulty setting is quite fine, and you don't end up missing out on some important quests or having stupidly damaging crusade outcomes. Plus, crusade management in WotR is sooooooo much better than kingdom management in Km.
I hate pre-buffing as a concept. Period. In all cRPGs including the old IE games. Just absolutely hate it. So the way I choose to play these games is to never pre-buff (other than in very rare situations where a specific pre-buff is mandatory to get through the encounter) and to just dive right into the combat, but offset this by lowering the difficulty level (in WotR I play custom difficulty with "moderately easy" enemies). I also only very rarely use offensive spellcasting and limit myself in combat to melee and missile weapons and support spellcasting. This is my standard cRPG playstyle, and perhaps why I so strongly prefer RTwP and not TB.
