Without a diary, there's not much we can tell you. I've grown lots of autoflowers under 24/0 and theyve been quite happy. Perhaps your lights were too close to them which means they didn't NEED to stretch to get the light? Maybe nutes would have helped give them the food they needed ... maybe the temperatures were too cold and that stunted them... maybe the pH was off... there's a lot of different things that could have resulted in your issues but without a diary, we can't know what those causes are...
Good luck - next grow, start a diary!