unexpected action (not firing a crossbow)

[Pocus]

hi there,

I have a guy equipped with a vision foe. Its first round and the script is Fire on first round (he is still alive so I'm sure!).
Defender move, and some of his flyers attack my main force.

Then, to me. First round too, but on the attacking side. My main force surround the 5 enemy flyers, but dont attack yet.
Then my xbow guy move toward the rear of the enemy, and strangely dont shoot at anything!
Next action is that my main force dispatch the 5 enemy flyers.

So I wonder why he didnt fire on the 5 flyers. They were in range, all lights were green! The only thing I can think of is that the AI supposed (correctly) that it was pointless to fire on the 5 flyers because either they would be disposed, or that the risk of friendly fire by my XBowman was too great. Then the AI moved my crossbowman to a better position, toward the rearmost enemies.

I would like to know if it can be a bug or if its a behavior that can be expected. I dont remember seeing that before though.

Well thats not for a lost quarrel on a won battle, I think you can understand that. I rely on some items for my defence against some uber combattants, and if they dont works, bad things can happen to my units.

[Kristoffer O]

IIRC Archers can decide to move closer to the enemy (in order to get better chance of hitting) if there is a high possibility of friendly fire casualties.

I'm not sure to what extent the friendly / enemy casualty ratio affects this behaviour. I can imagine that the blinding effect of a visions foe is not evaluated near it's actual value in supercombattant circumstances. High precision is probably the best cure for this behavior. In most cases I would not call it a cure, but in the case of magic archery attacks the reposition might have unintended effects. This behavior is restricted to archery attacks only. Mages never move in order to get better position (unless they are out of range). So raise the prec of your your magically armed crossbowmen to ensure that your plans are sound.

[BigDaddy]

If you use the eye of aiming don't and have more than 1 crossbowmen in the army, don't forget to give them a second misc item, or they'll find the lost one off the dead x-bow man and lose both eyes!

[PvK]

I've noticed in other cases some archers deciding to move up rather than fire for a turn or two. The improvement to the friendly fire situation in the last couple of patches (from both AI improvement and reduced dispersal of misses) has been really very good. It used to be my only serious gripe with the game. I'm quite happy about it.

PvK

[Chazar]

But there still seems to be something wrong with quickened crossbowers, anyone else?

[Pocus]

mmmh ok, it can make senses. But truely in situation where a SC appears, you really want to fire on first round (because the opposing side will cast mass enslave unless hit before he acts)

I still think that there is situations where the AI has no possibilities of guessing right. This is where the handy (and quite often asked can i add? ) checkbox "dont override orders for this leader" would close the debate. If its goes wrong because of player's fault, nobody will feel ressents.

Related to this, does a possibility exists that a battlefield enchant is overriden if the opposition is only composed of one single (albeit rather powerful I must say) leader? That would screw an army of mine in fact.
Perhaps in the case of powerful leaders the AI never override? I hope so and I will know soon.