[Ironhawk]

Any orders which make units hold position extensively or move backwards instead of forwards just dont have a place in Dominions combat. While they seem reasonable to you and I, in the real world, they break the model of dom combat which is that it always progresses forward without ceasing. And I believe it does so with good reason - as Edi points about above, if you give orders which hold back or wait excessively you end up just having armies sit around and see how long they can stare at each other. This is a battle! The armies need to get in there and fight and resolve it.

To get this thread back to what the OP was about tho: I think Atredi's suggestion is a great one. Others have suggested spell lists, and selecting spells which the AI should never cast, but these are too much MM. Having a really rough tool like this tho could give the player more flexibility without much Micro.