AI army composition any better in 1.2?

[Zenicetus]

Why can't the AI think along the lines of: "Ok, we've got three catapults. That should be enough of those. Lets have four spear units next and then we'll need a few militia crossbows, so we'll need to build the city watch before we recruit anything else. Meanwhile, the neighbouring fortress will give us a couple of units of heavy swordsmen and a couple of units of heavy cavalry. They'll be with us in a few turns escorted by Prince Bob the Nob, and then we'll have our balanced stack."

Unit combination from different settlements is definitely part of the problem. The AI isn't very good at planning past the current turn. If it can't put together a well-formed stack from different settlements in a single turn, due to distance or economics, it just goes with what it has. And that's why we get all those half stacks, or all-catapult armies because the army came from a "catapult town".

It's a little better at forming armies when it's on the defensive, as you drive depleted stacks into recombining, or drive them back into settlements. But that's more by chance than anything else.

If the limitation is that the AI can't think past the current turn, then maybe the next game should be changed to more of a centralized recruitment pool concept, instead of on a per-settlement basis. The AI would still have to plan past the current turn for the overall strategic use of the armies, but streamlining the actual creation of the armies might help, if it could be done in a way that still feels somewhat realistic.