How do I run in battle?

[gollum]

Nice list BB; some comments on it:

1. Existent but overestimated in my opinion. The reason for this is that the advantage is temporary. Of course it can make quite a difference by kickstarting a faction to a local power - however after that, once other factions have also strong navies, it simply becomes a drain on the treasury and a necesasry one in order to guard from invasions. Even after the player becomes really big, navies do not add to his wealth - even when sea lanes are open there are few ports to trade with most of the time. However, navies are required to make felt the king's presence across a superstate.
2. An absolute killer for the AI. Mercenaries needed to be very few, select local units (Alans in Khazar, Armenians in Armenia etc) having common units as mercs in relativey large numbers is a superexploit for the player.
3. Another killer. It can be tackled in three ways: one is not to raid. Two by hardcoded means to allow only autoraze. Three by spreading hapiness bonuses and fixed income over the many buildings of the building roster, so that the player actually loses more time and money by razing than by keeping. However, even then it is still a potent exploit.
4. Another biggy. Fun but crap for gameplay. You can win the camp as a catholic by making only chiv knights and use half of them or so dismounted. SOlution is take out the dismounting and make the dismounted units available for training.
5. Crusades are ok - the main reason they hurt the AI is that he overuses them and oversuffers the influence penalty that comes with a failed crusade. Switching faction personaities for catholics from the CRUSADER personalities, goes quite some way to alleviate that. Jihads however acn be spammed and win infinite influence to an exploiting Muslim ruler. Only by iron man rules or hardcoded means can this be sorted. This is because only one active crusade per faction is allowed, while multiple active jihads per faction are actually allowed.
6. Somewhat disagree with this. Its true however that the player can be far more methodical and consistent in that.
7. Although an exploit it comes with a battle and some risk - so, as long as rebel forces can be sorted to somewhat decent via modding could be ok.
8. Absolutely. JHI and varangians in particular are way way too good. varangians all the more because they can be very early and widely available. With half decent tactics they can win you any battle against any foe if in decent numbers (generally tree units and above).
9. The Ai can't retrain units but that's ok because the player is wasting a turn to build a fraction of the unit he retrains when he could be training a new one and get more men for the same time. That's because unlike in RTW/M2, there is only one retraining slot.
The only thing that disadvantages teh AI is that the player can keep his royal family and line alive by retraining hair units. However the battle AI somehow compensates for that with the clever addition of withdrawal of very small units in long battles - especially general units.
The Ai can and does merge units, because his stacks are autosorted ie they are put together and in that action depleted units do merge. Not in the most intelligent or fruitful manner of course, but better than being pittiful remnants like in STW sometimes.