Why are reinforcements so stupid?

There were some rebels hanging out near my town but the garrison wasn't strong enough to take them out.

Soon enough the Senate was poking around so I attacked and they joined the battle.

It took forever for them to get close to my city and once they got near all they did was march back and forth over and over.

They started south of my city, I was in the city, and the bandits were north.

The Senate got to my east wall and then started marching up and down the wall over and over. I must have sat there for 10 minutes of REAL WORLD time with the game on triple speed (I turned the timer off with the historical battle trick) and all they did was pace back and forth.

I tried sending some of my guys to fight but they got killed and the Senate's only response was to continue pacing back and forth.

I was so p!ssed I quit playing and I don't think I'll be playing any time soon.

Did the rebels get the town?

Yeah, I know how you feel. In my last attack, I had two full stacks with 19 units and a general apiece as reinforcements.

They walked onto the edge of the map, stopped, and sat there for half an hour doing nothing while my human controlled army was slaughtered.

After the battle, I went back to the campaign map to find that both AI controlled armies had utterly vanished!

That's when I stopped playing the game...

it would be nice to know when certain reinforcments options occur.]

1) Sometimes you go onto the battlefield and you are controlling your army and the AI is controlling your other army in the area (of course have no way of deciding which one you'd like to control).

2) Sometimes the reinforcments wait on the edge of the battlemap and they become ready and come onto the field automatically once there is room in your stack (I don't really know how this one works, but it's the one I like the most)

I just pay them back by not helping them in battle :charge:

If your reinforcement stacks have a family member, they're controlled by the AI - otherwise (if they're led by a captain) they wait outside for your command. You control the army that initiates the attack on the campaign map.

The advantage of using a family member is that you can get larger (>20?) units on the field this way; AI seems to often try to suicide your generals, though. I've used a decent amount of reinforcements (mostly to pincer infantry-heavy or light cav AIs) and haven't encountered screwtype's problem, which isn't to say that it can't happen.