AI troop building/army balance

So, any thoughts on the matter of how AI balances out its armies and troop production buildings?

I find that the AI still has an annoying preference for crappy troops. Especially the French crossbow spamming is annoying as hell.

I suppose it could be partially caused by the AI having early buildings to build crossbowmen, and at that time they are somehow the most cost effective units based on the AI behind the troop training. It seems that the AI will raise the troops with little regard for having good infantry to back up the missiles.

Any other odd balancing issues regarding army composition and buildings?

I have Venice building nicely balanced armies in my current H/VH HRE campaign.

Mix of italian spearmen/armored sergants, peasant archers and mailed knights.

I have to admit I lost against the AI from time to time.

Fought 4 stacks of italian spear and 2 peasant archers with 3 spear militia, 1 peasant, 2 1/2 peasant archers, 1 mailed knight and a 3-star general near vienna.

Had to march uphill in winter-wood-wonderland being peppered with arrows. The speamen hid in the woods, so i couldnt get off the cavalry charges against the retreating archers due to trees, snow and those damn vanishing spearmen and got my general killed that way.

Afterwards my exhausted troops started to rout. :oops:

I think the AI is spamming whatever troops he can build, and thinks having massive armies is more important than making buildings to have better troops. In the early game, you will see a lot of militia spearmen & peasant / mercenary archers.
When a faction is powerful, it tries to build balanced armies, except for the "artillery aberration".

I've noticed that about 1 in every 2 stacks produced will contain just seige engines and missile troops (for some factions). These tend to be more annoying than a threat but they never attack me with those stacks ... it's like the AI is transporting these units around or something. When i'm attacked there are at least a couple of heavy infantry in the army.

The missle armies are more annoying than anything else. But I've found it to be more HRE and the French that have them, the Spainish seem to be much more infantry heavy.

In my H/H English campaign, milan and france both showed this tendency once i took a few of their bigger forts. They just started pouring out stacks containing 10 crossbows and 10 catapults. While they were "undisturbed" they were producing much better rounded armies. I was assuming the AI is having a hard time adapting to losing its key troop producing areas.

I think the AI doesn't know about relative unit power (relative to situation, opposition, rest of the army), only absolute value. I think a crossbow + catapults army would do well against a light cav army on autoresolve, which is the factor the AI would use I guess.

Well for 1 thing the new recruitment system doesnt require as large of a standing army as much it used to. But it doesnt seem the AI practices it well. Whats sad is seeing a full stack within range of your besieged city that has been idle for many turns. And the besiegers only have enough to barely take the city with usually 7 units or less. So why the AI keeps training when they are not at war is beyond me, this is after they have built a decent size army.