Reinforcements : you or the AI?

[sapi]

I'll never let the AI control my armies, firstly because i dont trust them but more importantaly because my armies are heavily specialised and the AI doesn't deal with that very well (they fall to pieces with an all missile army, for example)

[Forward Observer]

The one or two times I have let the A.I. control one of my two armies it was a mistake. I forgot to uncheck the box and the result in both cases was a distaster.

Together my two armies were equal to and could have beaten the enemy in a combined effort, but instead in each cases the A.I. army made a suicide charge and got wasted.

Never again.

[madchoochter]

I've only done it once so far and the AI was as dumb as a brick. I was waring the enemy down with archers and waiting until they had reduced numbers. That was going OK, until I saw part of the friendly AI breaking away from the rest speeding to the enemy. Turns out it was a bunch of archers. Great I thought, they're coming to help thin the enemy. The AI might actually be smart!

The archers got there, started firing and the friendly AI caught up. What happened next was unbelievable. Friendly cavalry including the general charged the front of the nearest unit of enemy spearmen at an angle. Then the friendly spearmen jumped in too. All on one unit. Part of the fairly large enemy swarmed around the friendlies. I moved infantry forces outside and beat crap out the enemy. Surprisingly my ai assisted general survived being surrounded by enemies, but had far more casualties than I did.

The stupid beggars army didn't even reform when they got to the enemy forces. Just ploughed in like morons. Prince Rufus the moron.

I have never tried it but the manual refers to giving the ai orders such as defend or attack of the troops they command. Might be useful.

That might help, but how exactly do you do it? I looked but couldn't see anything.