2. Individual troops leave the formation to attack nearby enemies. Three or four horsemen just riding by a formation can totally take it apart as troops move away to attack.
My campaigns seem to have the extreme of this. The AI will lead the entire formation astray. In multiple battles, my faction's overwhelming infantry line (I'm talking 100+ vs 30) will run
away from an inferior force in some kind of skirmish behavior?? Sometimes there seems to be no enemy cav unit behind them at all--they just turn to consolidate with reinforcements(??), despite the odds of the front line troops being overwhelmingly in our favor. An entire line of hundreds of men will back away form a favorable engagement against an inferior force in order to... integrate the 15 empire peasants coming in to help... from the other side of the entire map?
The AI clashes for a few seconds, then backs away from the main fight like its trying to target the averaged center of mass of the enemy that is skewed by the reinforcements coming in. So they end up dancing around in no-mans-land between the enemy's infantry blob and their reinforcements. The cav trying to remain on the flanks of their infantry blob rather than make legitimate attacks/defenses doesn't help this either. Everything is moving to adjust to the location of everything else rather than just fighting.
The enemy reinforcements run through our men and get slaughtered, spawning more reinforcements... rinse repeat. If the AI would simply engage in combat the battle would be over faster, with less running around and exposing their backs to archers, and with a more natural flow for a melee combat engagement--with two consistent lines beating each other until one breaks--
not until one decides to back away then go backwards and forwards in 10 to 15 meter increments for the rest of the battle until the enemy trickles in enough to get killed in small groups. Massive melee engagements aren't epic like they could be--they're odd and hard to follow. If you try to flank around the side, by the time you get to the backs of a flank, your entire line has shifted to the left 30 meters (which is not the direction the line came from... its towards the enemy's reinforcements, but ins't really facing either enemy position directly) and you're left out to dry. Your line is turned weird, enemies are spawning slightly inside your own line, and the main enemy blob is shifting oddly off to the side.
The archer behavior isn't helping either because they run more than they shoot. Constantly back peddling or turning to adjust to whatever is closest instead of just shooting...
I get that the flow of battle is back and forth, that positioning is important, and that utilizing reinforcements for a better push can change the outcome, but the AI seems to be over-prioritizing the non-killing/battling portions of these engagements like positioning or unity of force. It would rather allow itself to be killed than to move in a way it deems non-optimal.
Correct me if I am misunderstanding what is going on here, but I'd like to have a consistent melee engagement with my foot lord--not a jog where I am mostly trying to figure out why my faction's infantry isn't running towards the main enemy line.