Quote Originally Posted by Talain
I'm more interested in the morale hit from missiles than the damage, usually. I'm also generally opposed to rotating troops because if I have anything but a single unit type in my reserves I can't pick which one to reinforce with, which is spectacularly annoying.
Sounds like you've given us yet another excuse to plug the VI upgrade.
The pre-battle screen allows you to set the exact sequence in which you want your reinforcements to come onto the field.

This is very handy when you want catapults for the follow-up siege assault but you don't want them involved in the battle (vulnerable to cav, static placement when you want mobility, frequently rendered useless by defenders hugging the map edge, out of range etc), so you stick them on the back end of the reinforcements queue and ensure they never appear.

If I open up with 2 HAs, giving harrassment on both enemy flanks, my reinforcement sequence will be something like

HA, HA, Archer, Archer
Sword, Spear, Archer Archer,
Sword, Spear, Skirmisher, Archer,
HA, HA, Archer, Archer,
(repeats the pattern)
Cav, Cav, Cav, Cav
Junk, Junk, Cat, Cat

The sequence basically attempts to anticipate the order in which missile units will run out of ammo as well as the rate of meleé unit casualties. For instance, there's no point bringing the third pair of HAs on until the second lot have had time to do their bit and withdraw. I'll need foot replacements in the meantime. The Cav replacements are way down the queue as I won't want them until the closing stages anyway. (These are Light/Med Cav, not knights, as I have Byz in mind at the moment).

In Shogun, there was a way to 'sequence' the reinforcements to some extent, by assembling the reinforcement stack, adding one unit at a time and in the reverse order of how you wanted them to appear. Top left in the info window enters the field first, bottom right last.

MTW defeats this somewhat by constantly reshuffling the sequence during assembly so that similar unit types are next to one another in the info window. Pre-VI, I still tried to use the Shogun trick but can't remember if it ever worked as I intended due to having similar troop insufficiency problems as you describe.