Got the game

[Maniacal]

The direction your camera is facing when you first get ot the battlefield (and your troops) is NOT north or south, nuless you happen to be facing that way. I don't know abotu Empires as I have only played the demo and it has the interception radius, but in the previous games they had to be adjacent to your unit on the map (in Rome and M2).

 

[Rub'Rum]

But still, if two armies are in front of me and I engage them, it's really weird that one of them ends up behind me. The way the game puts it, it's as if I'd slip past the first army so that I can get sandwiched between them just for the challenge. But it's actually the second army that ends up in my back so no... It's almost as if they'd maneuvered their way behind me.
(BG = bad guys)

On map:
Me ---->BG1........BG2

On battlefield

(ah AH!)..... (WTH!)
BG2........ME-->.....<---BG1

And Bad guys 2 is often split in 2 groups too for some reason.

 

[Maniacal]

Well they probably screwed it up in Empires.