How does Stack Attack work?
1. I assume the game chooses the attacker order the same way it chooses defenders: in order of best odds.
2. e.g. If attacking with a mounted stack, are units with best survival chance (withdraw promos) or victory chance selected first?
3. if the latter, then I would need to manually select the can-opener withdrawers first, right?

4. is bombarding automatic? i.e. could I just stack attack with a big stack and computer would bombard cultural defnse first (I don't think so)
5. when bombarding with a stack, are bombarders chosen in order of effectiveness (i.e. with accuracy promo first) ?
6. is game smart enough to bombard with wounded units first?

7. does game automatically suicide seige units before attacking with others?
8. usual order of attacking a city: a) bombard defenses (prefer wounded units and accuracy promo) b) seige sacrifice to weaken all defenders c) withdrawing promo'd unit(s) attacks top defender(s) d) rest of stack cleans up
- should (c) proceed (b)?
- does computer do any of this automatically? i assume player needs to take these four steps himself

9. what else should i ask? what else do i need to know?

yes, "it depends"

and btw, Many thanks to PieceOfMind and TheMeInTeam for all your answers to many posts. :goodjob: well, Thanks to everyone that posts on the CFC forums,
I singled out PoM and TMIT because they have posted a lot on combat mechanics

You must manually bombard, and I'm fairly sure it just attacks from top to bottom (in the order the units appear from left to right on your screen) so its highest str unit to lowest str unit. Usually this means collateral units go last unless you are in a cannons before riffles situation.

The way to use it best is to use mini stacks by Ctrl-Shift-Clicking a unit type to select all of that type of unit, then Shift-Clicking wounded units or other units you don't want attacking to remove them from selection. In that way you can quickly get a stack of cats, then a stack of tribs, then send in the city crackers.

Choosing flanking units is a little more complicated if they are well promoted, but in general flanking units all appear after combat promoted units, so you ctrl-shift-click a calvalry unit, hover your mouse to see which is the first flanking one, and shift-click the combat promoted ones to create a stack of flanking only units to go first.

This is a little easier if you assign unit stacks to a # key.

The thing is that stack attack is not handing your unit stack over to the AI to choose the best attacker, its just throwing all selected units at the tile in the order they are automatically arranged.