The most stupidest thing you ever saw the AI doing

[CMcMahon]

Anything involving bridges and/or town gates.

[Enderel]

Not sure if this counts or not, probably more route finding rather than AI being stupid..

Chariots ------ Pikemen--Pikemen---Pikemen---
---------------Archers---------Archers-------Phalanx

I left a unit of scythed chariots on my flank with a nice big open path for them to charge into. It came to the point I needed to have them rush forward, gave them the command, only for half of them go through my ranks of archers and Pikemen. This consequently split the phalanx formations and allowed the enemy to charge into them destroying them, as they weren't in a proper formation.

Highly unimpressed.

[Rodion Romanovich]

How about when you bring an army of archers and onagers, and start bombarding. The AI just stands still trying to endure the barrage instead of retreating or attacking, and when I'm nearly out of ammo for the onagers I move my archers forward and use them to kill around 3-5 enemy units. Usually, the clever enemy decides to then launch a full-scale charge - giving them both the disadvatange of ENDURING the fire and ATTACKING my position, instead of them making the more clever decision of either ENDURING then letting me attack, or ATTACKING without enduring the missile fire first... It happens all the time... In a campaign, your first unit of archers put into an army is a milestone in the campaign because you know you have 2-3 free enemy units killed at the start of every battle.

Some other stupid things I've seen AI do:
- Spanish 10-15 units large army consisting almost entirely of war dogs
- An enemy trying to flank me with half his force. The force intended to hit the front of my lines hits and soon routs, but the flanking force just stays on the flank indecisively, neither attacking nor withdrawing. Eventually I just turn around my line of footmen and pin the enemy flankers (most of them routed instantly because they had their back to me), and then charged in with the cavalry I had behind my line.
- Enemy army getting harassed by my cavalry until they've lost 33 percent or more of their army while I've barely lost 2 percent. When they've lost enough men, they withdraw all of their units but one - usually a low-morale unit that they charge heads-on into my lines as a "rear-guard", but because the R:TW morale and battlespeed is so low, this unit routs instantly and doesn't bog me down in my hunt of the withdrawing units. Usually when an enemy withdraws, I can just charge my cavalry into the rear of the nearest unt - it routs instantly - then continue moving right through the routing men in that unit and into the next unit. I can continue that way until around 90 percent of the withdrawing enemies are dead. Quite shocking how bad the AI is at orderly retreat. Sometimes they can turn around a unit to stop me from doing this chain-rout thing, but it happens very seldom and because of their column formation I can quickly go around the flanks of that unit and proceed down the line, then when all others are down turn around and surround the unit that turned around, waiting for the right moment then charging from all sides but the front.
- How in defensive battles you can make an enemy army split up in half to chase my harassing cavalry, then keep moving half their force towards my footmen, only to get pinned and charged to the rear by my cavalry that, faster than the enemy footmen, can get to the position and assist, thus making the one big battle into two smaller ones with much better odds. What disappoints me is that it happens 90 percent of the time an enemy is attacking me.

[PseRamesses]

The only faction that puts up a decent, unified and coordinate resistance is the senate. Therefore I argue that every faction should be applied with their behaviour for better gameplay. Occasionally a 9-10 star general seems to be more "in control" over his troops so modding in higher command levels is a viable approach too.

One of my most baffling encounters was the last king of the Iberians who came at me with a full stack. I had only 6 hast, 4 vel and 2 equ def a hilltop.
He marched his whole army in a nice formation, parked it some 50m from my lines, waited for a while like he was saying goodbye to his men. Then.... he charged will full force into my ranks and got killed instantly. His whole army now got very homesick and ran for the hills. I didn´t even bother to chase them down.

[Conqueror]

Spanish 10-15 units large army consisting almost entirely of war dogs

That's not really stupid, just annoying like hell. When the AI is the attacker in a field battle then massed wardogs work better for them than most other units they could use. Unless you have either HA or phalanx units, then those doggies are going to inflict some real casualties, while any AI army with normal infantry/cavalry can be beaten with barely any casualties to your units.

But if the AI is on defensive then dogs are no problem since you can just missile them to death from a safe distance. But that's the same story with ALL units in that situation...