I wish attacking had a cost of like 2 movement points, so that when mounted late game, I could use 2-3 stacks to "control" an AI army of 1000 bajillion junk troops.

I'll say again, if you are attacking an enemy stack in a square, you should move into that square automatically, BEFORE combat.  Especially where units intermingle during combat.  Since we can't retreat anymore (scrolls aside), it's do or die anyways.

Movement can still end when you attack, but this resolves the 'stack on top of city' issue and the 'everyone else stealing my loot' issue.  Having to set aside a hero in a second stack to run in and grab the spoils after the battle is won is really just silly, and doesn't make much sense, especially where you are attacking a monster lair, not the land next to it.  The enemy has no reason to 'come out and meet you', as their hardened positions would be part of the lair itself.  Unless, of course, you want to simulate fortifications in the adjacent squares, which would need to be reflected on the map.

This does bring up a good point, and thank you for bringing it up.  You could be pushed back to the square you entered from, or you could continue to fight the remaining stacks until you win or die.  Of course, this would necessitate a dialogue box (do you want to continue to fight or retreat?).  Really, taking out multiple stacks in a season should be no big thing, as a season is a long time.

This would also balance against the 'making multiple small stacks in the same square just to slow down the enemy' exploit.

duplicate post (?)

I've decided to quit my current game over this issue.

The AI I'm at war with has a couple stacks of one-unit micro armies opposing me. I can either take one unit-army down, one a turn, OR split my army into one-unit micro-armies themselves, which while solving the time problem adds a huge micromanagement and tedium problem to replace it.

So, I think to myself, I'll just ignore these micro-armies, and press on, take the next city, right? Well, the micro-armies then move into my territory, where they are now a threat to either merge into a big army and attack a city, OR stay as micro-armies and destroy my improvements.

So now, I realize there really is no 3rd option, at this point I really have to split up a couple armies into micro-armies, to chase down his micro-armies. Utter game-killing mind-numbing, unit-chasing tedium.

So yeah, this totally needs to be done away with, there really is no strategy addition here, as some people here seem to think, just small army micromanagement hell. It has got to go!

I think I prefer the current system.

It doesn't seem everyone agrees on what is fun, as it should be.  I don't like this recent change to movement at all as it just adds tedium and makes the game less fun to play, as far as my tastes go. 

As some people like this change and some don't, couldn't we just make this change optional?

I think this game needs more start-up options to tailor the game to play as we, as individuals, like to play to have fun play.  Xp point splitting and Xp point scaling by map size are other things i'd like to see being made optional.  Sliders would also be great.

City razing by monsters could also be optional, and so could road building and the list could go on.  I would assume it would be wise to set certain limits as to what could be optional in the game.  As to not sound to demanding, perhaps some of the issues that seem to polarize the opinions of the community the most could be looked at being made optional.

Important game mechanics like road building should not be options.

But heck, technically the "option" is already there, in that you could make a mod in which a unit called "Engineer" had the road building talent.

Yeah, being able to mod this would pretty much please everyone.