Quote Originally Posted by Quietus
It seems to me the computer is preserving a ratio where the enemy won't overwhelm the player.
Well the computer sent 4,500 men (3 armies) against my single army of 2,379, delaying all my 6800 reinforcements, and to cap it off, one of their reinforcement armies came from behind, thus a slaughter was in order. I was certainly overwhelmed. Although in an epic battle I did pretty well I thought. The AI certainly wasn't preserving some kind of 'play-fair' ratio towards me.

Also, I just had a siege battle against the Scipii. 9,100+ men against 1,942 of their's. As all four of my armies had siege equipment, everyone started in the battle (no delayed reinforcements rubbish). It's also the last siege battle I will probably play on a large scale, not just because of speed issues, but because my AI friends used just 1 piece of their siege equipment between them and let themselves get slaughtered whilst they messed around with the rest of their siege equipment in front of towers for the entire battle. Unbelievable. It was the worst display of shockingly poor AI I think I've ever witnessed in a computer game. I felt like either crying in disbelief or smashing the computer in frustration. Or both. It didn't help my annoyance level when my spear warband decided to use swords whenever I asked them to attack even when in phalanx formation and in a nice line. I'm sure I saw a smug grin on the faces of the enemy cavalry as they sliced through my idiots.