So there was a neat little moment in the demo where the AI pulled a clever, if minor, move that I'm not sure -I- would've even really thought about for a while. (yes yes, feel free to collectively say "well duh, of COURSE you should do it that way! it's obvious!" once I explain, but it seemed clever to me at the time)

I'd crushed everyone in the land battle except for one last unit of Long Rifles that had been on the other side of the map. They marched half way over, but then took advantage of their defensive perrogative to stand and wait for me over by the town hall.

So I started all my cavalry walking out towards them.

They had been in a standard formation about 4 ranks deep. Now, they respond to my advance by spreading out into a single rank, as wide as possible, and THEN lay stakes at this maximum width. Then they return to a more standard formation, now safely behind a really wide barrier of stakes that also happens to block off almost the entire valley (though I'm still not sure whether they were intentionally standing in the narrowest part, or just happened to be there...until they spanned it with stakes there was still plenty of room to have encircled them anyway)

I must say I was rather pleased. Sloppy AI would've just tossed down some stakes in front of rank 1 of 4, missing out on the opportunity to create a much wider barrier. But instead they very deliberately spread out for the sole purpose of laying a much longer stake line, and then condensed back into the middle of it with their flanks safely stake-protected.

Of course, then I just brought up my artillery and started bombarding them, and they realized that they couldn't just stay there and get torn apart, so they left the protection of their stake line in a desperate attempt to advance on my artillery, and I ran them down with cavalry anyway.

But it would've worked great if not for the cannons. :)