AI, economy, unit size and missile attack questions

[Cortex]

Hey everyone, I used to play the original RTW back when it was a brand new game and I've been told about EB by a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. Well, definitely a great mod, but I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind -

Does the AI actually care about finances? It seems to me that the economy is pretty harsh, I can hardly afford a bunch of the worst units and still have to wait incredibly long to be able to build something in the city, while the AI happily spams units and probably builds. So, does the AI "cheat"?

And something relating to it - is there any point in sacking cities? I tried to "sack" Antiocheia and Seleukeia (i.e. enslave the population and raze all building that can be razed) and it didn't seem to have any effect.

And in other words - am I doing something wrong or is the economy really a harsh mistress? I cannot imagine having a cataphract unit, I would have to disband everybody else.

Is there any reason why everybody in the AARs uses huge unit size? Does it affect the unrest? I mean, is the unrest penalty relative or absolute? Or any other reason or is it purely an aesthetic choice? Oh, and while I am at it, if you use the huge size, does the AI reflect to it and does it therefore use less units or does it plunder the population? I wouldn't like to a) fight unequal battles as I would recruit only as much as possible to have my cities grow and b) I wouldn't want to have every newly conquered city populated by 400 citizens or whatever the minimum is.

I vaguely remember from the original RTW that when attacked by a missile weapon, only the shield protection counted. Is still true? I also equally vaguely remember that being shot to back or to the side with a weapon (i.e. the other than with a shield) was much more devastating. It seems to me that in EB shooting the phalanx in the back works quite well, but it has no effect whatsoever to shoot them from (my) left.

And the last one (for now :-) ) : the description of the mines says 2000 and 5000 respectively while the income scroll in a settlement says it is only 600. A bug? A mistake? Which one of them is true? I had the mines in the beginning and can't destroy them to see the difference in the faction budget.

Thanks in advance for eventual answers and sorry for my poor English :-)