How did the suicidal Generals get past the testers?

[Khorak]

The AI as a whole is worthlessly inadequate. Especially since we were promised a good one.

Pathfinding - Units will consistently take retarded routes and flat out refuse to carry out simple orders. Unlike MTW where a formation would mash itself up against a wall or march directly to the destination regardless of intervening terrain and gaps, and it was your problem to fix, this has been replaced by units recalculating your orders to their own braindead whims. Your orders should be a command from f***ing GOD. I do not care if you believe your formation cannot fit in there. I do not care if you think your formation will not fit through that gap. If I want you to take the long way without compromising your formation, I have a waypointing system. Go where I tell you to. Go there directly. Stand exactly where I have commanded.
Conducting a battle, most especially a battle in a siege, becomes a chore instead of a delight because your units will flat out disobey what you ask of them. I firmly believe that in the development time of Rome: Total War, I could learn how to code a pathfinding AI from my current total ignorance and still do at least a job as good (ie; pants) as this one.

Strategic command - Single units all over the place practically demanding to be obliterated. Attemping to commit sieges against massive stone walls when the defenders have just as many men, who are all vastly superior. Doesn't ever hunt down an enemy who retreats, I've watched the Julii and Gauls stare at each other over their borders all the way to the end of the game because they both had massive stacks unwilling to fight without superiority, and said stacks would fail to hunt down the smaller roving bands because they back off once. Then the smaller stacks obviously won't attack the maxed out cities. It's so crap, they gave it infinite money so it could swamp you with huge armies. A computer should work out its expenditures to the very last florin with sickening efficiency and squeeze more out of their treasury than you ever could without a calculator and way too much time on your hands. Screw that, it wouldn't have a chance in that case because of crappy....

Field command - Suicidal generals. Charging headlong into phalanxes. Doggedly pursues your general if nearby to such an extent you can ambush them with...anything you like, they don't care that your general is nothing compared to what you're running round behind them. Will gleefully turn its battleline into a vast, mangled blob of units by individually targetting like a retard and will also wander about the place in front of you as it makes what is seemingly a laughable attempt to outflank YOU so you can just charge right on in and squash them. Has no concept of what happens when units get bunched up under boiling oil, will make forlorn attacks up ladders with inadequate units (Bowmen vs Urban Cohort! Get in there lads!) whilst standing there getting mown down. Doesn't even know what siege artillery is. On the defence will happily stand naked under a rain of arrows until dead. Own ranged tactics consist of 'General or closest unit', even if the closest unit is a bunch of armoured hoplites who laugh at your arrows, followed swiftly by a bunch of Spartans, who may as well commit Seppuku when facing arrows.

Rome: Total War is like the greatest battletank the world has ever known. It has the biggest gun. It has the heaviest armour. It can go the fastest. It's as fuel efficient as a BMW.

....but it is crewed by monkeys.