Comment by Pannoniae

There's an element to that, but also, the more QoL you have and the smarter unit AI is, the less you have to do that. Yes, unit AI obviously won't ever play as good as you do but if you control a few units at key locations you'll outperform someone who's trying to control everything and do a mediocre job at it. You might say "how about they control every unit then" - works in games with a few units, way less so when you've got unit counts in the hundreds.