I know it's been said before, but...

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I think one reason that the AI breaks its units like that is a tendancy to use a unit like another unit if that other unit is absent. It doesn't seem programmed to do the best with what it has available. It's tactics may be based around a full well rounded army even when it has none.

I don't think so, my impression is that the AI takes the easy way out and assigns individual units to attack other enemy individual units. In other words there is no co-ordination, they all behave independently of one another and that's why you get this ridiculous situation of the AI army breaking up into small or single units and then wandering off all over the battlefield to be crunched piecemeal.

It's just so silly the way the AI will begin a battle with a beautiful and quite formidable looking unbroken phalanx line, only to watch the line immediately break up into separate units all doing their own thing.

There needs to be some code written to co-ordinate units. A phalanx line should stay together and it should attack the main body of your troops. The cav and missile should stay in support of the phalanx line, not wander too far away from it. Especially when the human player is fielding cavalry.

Larger phalanx armies should also probably form up into a double line which also co-ordinate their movements. This would prevent its main line from being easily outflanked and attacked from the rear. I mean, heck, it isn't hard to figure out what needs to be done to make the battle AI really formidable. I just can't understand why after five games in the TW series it still hasn't been done.