Hmm... no one paid me to do it while i paid for a game. Conclusion?

No offence but it's is their job not my. It not like this game cost 5$.
That is not true. It is fact that homm3 has better ai and homm4, and homm5, disciples 2, age of wonders, fallout 2 i don't remember any more games with turn based combat :/
I am watching carefully ai while playing kb:l (i don't think there is any difference in difficult level) and i described few examples even. Today i conquer for example ork's embasy and ork you fight there was using magic halabard (155 damage) every turn, he dry out of mana very fast, why he was using it dunno (only one spell in the poll?).

That's true but I didn't see "Amazing AI" anywhere in the advertisement either. ;)

No, the A.I. isn't perfect and does have several flaws.

That being said, it still is generally quite competent and could be a whole lot worse.

Basicly to make the job easier the devs usually make combos (in every combat game) so the AI tries to find a known pattern at the battlefied and this triggers the respective combos.
So far the combo the AI likes most is to cast "sleep" on the archers and to hit them ASAP with their ranged attack:-)

Well - AI units use mostly all of their skills - and that is better than many other games (other games had problems using "wait" or abilities/ spells...)

Developers are well aware of the AI level of their game - that is why your enemies have much more units than you do.... would be AI brilliant as you would like it to be - you would never win battles like "fighting your own double army" etc.

So actualy it is what I like so much on this type of single player games - players skills improve but AI skills do not - so longer you play, better tactics you can prepare - so you can demolish and clear nearly any battlefield you like and enjoy it as well...

while there are problem with the AI, none of the OPs arguments againt it are valid...

Generally speaking, the higher the level and HP of a unit, the less damage it does per leadership... so 3000 peasants do WAYYYY more damage then 4 dragons. But every hit by the enemy kills many. The enemy is playing to win, not to piss you off by killing unique units, you just happen to have a more powerful hero.

pigmy decreases damage and health of stack, by a percentage... as well as those other spells, they are all "scaling".. that is, their effectiveness depends on the amount of units and their power.

Depending on your build it can make chaos magic best, or worst. I find it really awesome with a chaos magic oriented mage. But when using large enough stacks a 2000 damage fireball (17 mana, level 3, well placed) becomes a drop in the ocean compared to, say, making all your units inflict max damage for 5 rounds. (bless, level 3, mass effect). Because it increases the total damage of your units by more then its own damage. A stack of 1000 units doing 2-4 damage each will do an average 3000 damage(2000-4000). Bless increases that to 4000, always. I found all the buffs to be useless compared to direct damage until I found out that SOME of them become mass (affect all units on the battlefield) at level 3. Not to mention that you save a lot of runes that would otherwise be wasted on certain skills, runes that can be used to increase your units power... like nighttime operation with its +2 defense +2 attack during night, or inside, or in caves... (where all the tough opponents are in other words)

Now I am wondering -> would it not make sense to balance the magic skills?

(if you want chaos level 3, you will can't take any level of order... if you want each magic -> you can take only one level of oposing magic schools - order/chaos and you can have only 2 levels of distortion, if you want distortion level 3 -> you can have only one other school of magic, but this can get to level 2... )

Like this:
O/D/CH
0/2/3
0/3/2
1/2/2
2/2/1
3/2/0
2/3/0

This will give even more "feeling" for Palading - I wuld go for Level 3 Order if being a paladin, that is for sure.. that means I could not use chaos (only from scrolls... so I would keep the few scrolls I find for final battles - this would make the "how many scrolls you can bear at once interesting after all)

Just a thought

dear god, I am a level 70 wiccan priest, i spent 30 years studying wicca magic, and I still get taken down by any other class... last night i was beaten by a police officer, i asked around and he just graduated police academy! he is a total noob! Yet one hit of the taser and i went down... tech is way overpowered in your game and needs serious nerfing, i mean... seriously, air planes? space ships? I certainly can't use magic to fly... heck i can't even compare it to bullets! if something isn't done right away i am taking my business elsewhere!

PS... there is no reason to rebalance SINGLE PLAYER games... Why do you care and who are you to tell me how to fight and win my battles? people are winning games on impossible with 0 units lost the ENTIRE GAME! and without using ANY magic AND not recruiting a single unit (only getting them through eggs and the like)...

So forgive me if i don't weep at your feeling that magic/warrior/unit X is overpowered. don't like it, don't use it.

If enemies with high intellect behaved like red gremlins it would be quite impossible to finish the game without any losses.