I've been in multiple battles with flying units. There are enemy demons that jut sit there the whole battle. I can't attack them, and they won't attack me so I can counterattack. Is this a bug?

Which game?

I would say probably Caster of Magic. The AI was fixed so if the calculation make the AI think that by attacking it will lose it will no longer attack.

It does this in pre-CoM patches too, not sure at which point it was added.

If this is the intended behaviour, the demons will attack your ranged-weapon units & spellcasters unless those units are out of ammunition or mana, but otherwise will only attack a unit if they can do so safely. Much more clever than they used to be, alas.

Yeah, it was also fixed in the community patch.
If you played like I did with the original version for many years you know that originally it would attack no matter what. That was especially useful when attacking Draconian cities. Now if they think it would be counterproductive draconian units won't attack when defending a city.

I was playing the community patch. Sorry I should have mentioned I see. That is interesting indeed. It'll make attacking ranged enemies a lot more of a challenge

seems like the new AI is waaaaay too cautious.

A certain point of view: It's really unlikely a draconian could fly forever; then the foe could just walk into town and rule the place while the draconians "hide" in the sky. Or better yet the entire populace could "hide" in the sky if they could fly forever, so it's kinda silly cannon wise.

Not attacking when defending a city just makes it more destroyed. Raids annihilate a city.
So not being able to defeat the foes, and running out the timer, is very punitive to any person trying to capture said city. The city essentially won't exist anymore if this happens a few times even if it's a large one. :(

I would rather someone capture my city quickly for less damage so I can recapture it with less damage personally.

A few games make it so foes don't attack until you do. But I think MoM is the only case of "in the middle of battle suddenly nobody fights, but no parley or holiday".

In MOM's case retreating can destroy your army for w/e reasons via the retreat damage parameters even if you dominated them, so retreating from that battle would be costly. Probably because patchers thought that hit and run was too advantageous to player.
However, that draconian scenario is one where retreating without any casualty would make perfect sense. Cause anybody who could do you damage is dead, you could just walk backwards away from the city or something.

Hello!
Just so you know there is a function in the game of the more an enemy is in the actual city area of your town during the combat the greater the likelyhood of damage to your city. It may seem really great to just fly and let the enemy do whatever he wants but if he rampages through the city part of your town then for every turn he spends doing that the greater the damage to the town.

Yes, but that's the way sieges were actually done. The defenders tried to outlast the army outside the walls while avoiding combat as much as possible.

There's a lot of simplification and abstraction that goes on in games like this.

In this case, the attackers are trying to take control of the city. To do that, they need to eliminate the defending military. If they can't, then the defenders can disrupt any attempts by the attackers to actually make use of the place (assaulting attacker's tax collectors, building projects, riling up the locals, etc etc).

Attackers are the ones trying to force their way in, so they are the ones to "retreat exhausted" if their attempt to take control of the tile fails. That's certainly a possibility if the defenders can't keep the attackers from rampaging through the city. After all, city damage can occur even if the defenders ultimately annihilate the attackers in the same battle.

A city wall with a draconian sitting at the gate will keep most attackers out. Can't stop a Great Wyrm from running loose inside the city, of course, but that abstraction reflects a reality anyway. :) Personally speaking, I think it makes sense. The defenders win by default, so they don't need to engage if doing so would just wipe them out. If the attackers want a relatively undamaged city, then they need to bring whatever is necessary to eliminate the defenders. If the defenders want a relatively undamaged city, then they need to have whatever is necessary to prevent the attackers from damaging the city (whether by keeping them out or by wiping them out).

If the attackers can't get into the city or otherwise do anything to take control of the area, then eventually they're going to have to give up and leave. It could also be to simulate the commander calling for a retreat, only to lose forces because the retreating units lost cohesion, routed, and/or vanished as individuals into the countryside instead of retreating in an orderly fashion. Or a combination of that and the attackers catching some of the defenders and eliminating them during the retreat/rout.

*shrug*

Safe fleeing doesn't exist because it requires way too much detail and CoM is made without source code by exe hacking so it's very difficult to add new complex features.

Safe feeling is already part of CoM II alpha, but it has some strict conditions, basically it's only allowed in cases where your entire army can fly and the enemy has no way to damage any of your units by any means (including spellcasting).

I am having this exact same problem with MoM community patch 1.52.02. Both in attack and defense, the enemy flying units sometimes they just stand there and nothing happens