Happens all the time for me. I just had a "weak" quest to clear out a barn, the enemies were three of those panther things and a plaguestalker. That's an attack total of 63 on some of the fastest units in the game against my 2 hero 18 attack total. That was an instant rage quit, which is why I'm now here...
Yup, the worm won't do anything during his turn and you have to auto it. All the elemental lords are messed up in some way or another.
Pretty much agree with everything on that list, OP. I would also add that the weapons are horribly placed in the research trees, with plenty of useless things at the back of the tree and a long distance to many decent item combos. The wands are completely uselss with their low damage in combination with the high initiative hit.
All of the quests stuff is bugged. Quests keep disappearing and re-appearing when re-loading the game; quests can't be completed because objectives aren't flagged as achieved; quests suddenly appear and disappear; rewards aren't given. The list goes on. In my most recent game, from what I can remember: Pyre of Man: Attacked his stack, he did not appear on the tactical map(His army did), when the battle was over he disappeared from the
In my games the AI Pioneers get slaughtered by monsters all the time, so it's not a feature.