[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
The AI should pay more attention to supply lines and the risk of strategic encirclement.

If it's going to risk being cut off, it really should make an attempt to forge supply items and bring them along (which requires nature magic; perhaps AIs should make more use of indy druids et al). This is particularly true when using troops with a low base morale, because of the 4 point penalty...

e.g. Last night playing the demo solo as Jotunheim (Utgard theme), I found and attacked the Machakans. At one point, they attacked a forward fort of mine. Their sieging force, mostly Machakan light foot with spider knights, was adjacent to only one Machakan-held province, which in turn was adjacent to their only castle (Machaka itself). In this single-province bridge lay another Machakan force led by the spider lady herself. Next to this bridge lay my main force.

The next turn, my main army (led by my Son of Niefel, fairly small but composed mostly of giants and with a number of Skratti and Godes et al) attacked -- not the besiegers, but the bridge. The Machakan force on that bridge, before the attack hit, joined the besiegers. That meant that the besiegers, while they were now making decent progress against the walls, were completely surrounded -- and I annihilated them the following turn, as the morale-4 troops were trivial to rout. Well in excess of half of the total Machakan armed forces, including a decent national hero, were obliterated at little cost since they had nowhere to run... That made it far easier to take Machaka a couple of turns later.

Also, if it is caught in that situation, it should attempt to cut back to friendly lines. Usually in such a situation there are several directions the beseigers could have gone where they would have encountered little or no resistance and could have reestablished their supply lines within a few turns (although of course it would have meant abandoning the siege, this is surely far preferable to having your beseiging army wiped out).

An inferior force (and while they may have had decent force, they were definitely inferior while starving) should almost always try to avoid battle. (The exception is when they are in a desperate enough situation that avoiding battle will do no good - for example, if the entire army was already diseased, then making it back to friendly lines would be of little value.)