I knew you were wrong from 1000s of hours of game play so thats why i didn’t respond to you the first time. You seem so sure of yourself so I decided to give you the benefit of the daut and try it out in scenario editor
First I tried it with scouts because the issue is most noticeable for me in feudal wars with low numbers when I tell my scouts or militia to attack the weak vils and they attack the closest ones instead. Here I tried it with multiple different stances and every single time they take that command as a order to the death without defying my will, thats what I like 
Second I tried 40 vs 40 Champions to see how they would act. First I pick one champion and right on it. It seems like as soon as the champions realize there is too many of them to surround him they pick their own closest targets or there is a number limit to when they take attack commands as “patrol attack command”. I tried in smaller numbers and they behaved as expected taking attack commands as order to the death. So I ran the test again to see if there is a number limit but this time I picked the champion in the back to see if my army starts taking attack commands as patrol attack and the answer is no. None of them attacked anything close to them and they all headed to that one champion like we would expect an attack command to be like. AI is trying to scout the map since im not attacking him im not sure how to command the ai to attack me instead but it doesnt matter for this test since I clearly proved that in the old version of the game an attack command was an order to the death no matter how silly it might seem to the units.
Final note: I still can’t believe HC3 is going to be played with this broken core game mechanic. And yes it has been around since I bought the game which was very shortly after it released on steam.