Whoah theres a lot of micro management in this game

[Knai]

Originally Posted by Question

Can anyone explain why my iron dragons were attacking the closest enemy troops when they were set to "Attack rearmost units" then?

Two possibilities.
1) A morale check must be made to fly over enemies, and if it fails one drops in the middle somewhere. That said, iron dragons have a very high morale, so this is unlikely.
2) It specifically targets the rearmost squad, so if there was one large squad it could have just been hitting that squad in the front.

As for pretenders, go read the nation guides. There are several types of pretenders, and its very complex, so looking at existing compiled resources is probably the best option.