Here's the thing you seem to be overlooking, Heroes. If you do nothing, each of the units in the stack attacks your city (we'll assume they either don't pillage, or else everything is already destroyed). If one of them wins, you lose a unit. Unless you have as many defenders as they have attackers, even their losing will weaken you. If they outnumber you 2 or 3 to 1, then the first batch fights and weakens you, the second batch now has a much easier time of it. So, you deal with it a different way.
Say they have a stack of 20 units there. You sally out with a cannon that has Drill 2, so it's got 1-2 first strikes, and attack the stack. Your cannon faces off with the best defender in the stack. You might win, or you might lose, but you damage and weaken about 5 of those 20 units. If you attack with 4 cannons, you should have injured just about every unit in the stack. Now you can attack with, say, half a dozen cavalry. The cavalry will probably win, killing 6 of them, leaving 14 weakened troops (the weakest 14). Now the computer is going to A) attack you with terribly weakened troops, where it should lose hideously, B) retreat back to its own territory (problem solved, at least for the moment), or C) sit there and attempt to heal. In C, you've got extra time to bring more troops up to deal with them, and your surviving troops have time to heal. You don't need nearly as many units to deal with a stack when you've got a bunch of collateral damage units there.
Say they have a stack of 20 units there. You sally out with a cannon that has Drill 2, so it's got 1-2 first strikes, and attack the stack. Your cannon faces off with the best defender in the stack. You might win, or you might lose, but you damage and weaken about 5 of those 20 units. If you attack with 4 cannons, you should have injured just about every unit in the stack. Now you can attack with, say, half a dozen cavalry. The cavalry will probably win, killing 6 of them, leaving 14 weakened troops (the weakest 14). Now the computer is going to A) attack you with terribly weakened troops, where it should lose hideously, B) retreat back to its own territory (problem solved, at least for the moment), or C) sit there and attempt to heal. In C, you've got extra time to bring more troops up to deal with them, and your surviving troops have time to heal. You don't need nearly as many units to deal with a stack when you've got a bunch of collateral damage units there.
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