Well, in a few hour's play today I got "Man of the Hour" twice, and it worked both times. I vaguely remember what the original poster describes happening once, though.

As for saying that it's impossible to catch bugs....we don't know what size CA's testing team is or was, or how long or extensive the playtesting was. The Total war series has been badly balanced as far back as MTW as far as I can remember. I remember playing the campaign for a bit and thinking "Did they even play through this once?", but, well, that didn't stop me from getting addicted to it....hehehehe.