How do you get rid of lazy AI followers?...

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I have a line of scenarios where the human player is a small force helping one of 2 AI players fighting (3 player in all, player is Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil war).

AI is very reckless, so I'm having "Flak" units (MG infantry) follow the (towed) AI artillery, to prevent it from getting immediately destroyed. I do this by setting a Flak unit to follow each artillery unit (in AI settings), release distance 0 (i.e. never).

And it works, except when artillery takes too much advance. Artillery has transport (Limber, 3 hexes), but the MG units (foot, 2 hexes) don't, because else they would be useless half of the time. Given they have a movement of 2 compared to 3 they should be able to keep up, if they try. After all the artillery unit will eventually stop to fire at things.
Problem is, sometimes the artillery moves several turns and for some reason the attached Flak doesn't, and I've noticed that beyond some distance, the Flak doesn't even try to catch up anymore. It just sits there.

My question is, is there a setting I've overlooked to force those "follower" units to actually keep following, no matter the distance?


I've often used this trick, but with motorized units, so I could match their speeds and fuel capacities. It usually works quite well.
This is the first time I try it with towed/pedestrian units, and I'd say it's a 50% success (about half the artillery units lost their Flak follower at some point. Sometimes the Flak has eventually a flash of realization and tries to catch up, but not always. And it doesn't necessarily mean it follows through, or actually manages to catch up with its artillery unit, but at least it tries... It would be so much better if they tried to stay close to the unit they are supposed to follow, no matter what.

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I found a partial reason: Since the planes of that era have short ranges, I build lots of dirt airfields as I move forward. Now it happens those Flak units were on "Defensive" AI, and those idiots apparently prefer to guard my airfields instead of following their artillery!

I changed them to "Aggressive" AI, and now they do follow a little better, but still not as loyally as I had hoped for. They still sometimes fall behind, and still sometimes decide they need to guard some airfield, far in the back... Slackers...


In the same spirit, random units deciding to stay behind to guard captured VHs (even if on "Aggressive" AI) is a problem, especially when they are the better units, the ones I would like to have leading the fight... I tried to add a bunch of "Defensive" low quality units hoping they would occupy the slots, but it seems the unit which captures a VH is also the one which decides to stay there. As a result I have VHs with an "Aggressive" elite unit sitting in it, and a bunch of "Defensive" infantry units clustered around it... Not optimal. They shouldn't do that, should they? In my understanding "Aggressive" means "go capture", not "sit and protect", isn't it?

Other AI annoyance, I manage to create an illusion of a concerted collective action by giving both AI players lots of turn prestige so they can buy reinforcements, but they often don't. They can have several hundred prestige points, more than enough to buy at least 3-4 units at once, the front is collapsing, and yet they do nothing.
They often don't even repair their damaged units, despite having more than enough prestige. What does trigger the AI's "I need to repair/buy" action? It seems to be rather random. Even when down to only 1 point of health, units will relentlessly go to the front (and get invariably needlessly destroyed) instead of losing one turn to repair itself. Is that how it is supposed to work? (No, they are not on "Fearless".)