Quote Originally Posted by amritochates View Post

But the AI chooses its units purely on the basis of stats leading to unit mis-matches that were detrimental to the AI.

And unit balancing as anyone will tell you is an integral part of the BAI.
I'll agree unit balancing is important but I don't think you'll convince many that its integral to modding BAI. There are too many other variables other than stats and animations that affect how units perform. Cohesion, mass, formation, etc. I follow many of the modding discussions in 3 or 4 MTW2 mods and there are interesting things being done but the AI won't simply be fixed by balancing stats and animations. For instance you can create a 2 handed spear unit with long spears rather than pikes and if give them decent mass and cohesion they will defeat units with much higher attack animation speed and better stats because the longer spear length and decent mass allows more spear animation attacks along the frontline. Now if you take the same spear unit and face it with a unit with identical stats and attack animation as before but give them looser cohesion and mass it tends to spread out around the spear unit and inbetween the spears and more parts of the unit are in contact and then the faster attack animation wins.