Not necessarily a bug as such, but I have the AI's decisions on when to run and when to commit armies to a fight frustratingly questionable. Essentially, in a defensive war, the AI needs to learn when it's ok to lose most/all of its forces if that allows it destroy enough of the aggressors' troops to stop the attack, at lest temporarily. As opposed to losing them piecemeal anyway when they retreat armies bit by bit.


To illustrate, I uploaded a save from a recent game. Before that turn, I had already destroyed some AI armies. If, with my 2.5 stacks of armies you attack either the AI army to the left or the bottom, they will run. However, from having played that a few turns, I think they have several more troops in the vicinity. It would have been much more impactful to pull all available troops together and engage in one big battle. Maybe they still wouldn't have destroyed all of my troops or avoided the inevitable. But they would have killed a lot more than they ended up with allowing me to pick them off army-by-army (I think I took zero losses thanks to such localised numerical superiority).


And this isn't a one-off. I observed the same behaviour in another game, several turns apart.


Basically - and more experienced players may correct me if I am wrong - retreat is only useful: 

   a) in an offensive campaign, if you miscalculated the strength and/or position of enemy forces; or

   b) for forces in "neutral" positions; or

   c) early front lines in a defensive war

AND you can expect to join up with reinforcements and fight then.


Retreat is not a good strategic move if:

  1. All the forces you can reasonably commit to a battle are already in the area.
  2. The enemy has a second line or other additional forces that will just pick off retreating armies anyway.
  3. You are going to have to fight that battle sooner or later anyway. Even surrending the city to save the armies won't help long-term. And especially if you are defending your capital city. If you lose that fight, you are probably knocked out of the game for all intents and purposes.


 Poles Turn 132 - army commit.ctr