You put 90% of your troops on the left flank, and 10% in the center. I put 30% 40% and 30% on the left, center, and right. My 40% ends up fighting your 90% (newly designated into the center), and my left flank ends up fighting your 10%, while my right flank automatically starts moving toward the center. I'll take the odds that my 40% will stand up long enough for my right flank to show up with a bonus, and further that they'll keep you occupied long enough for my left flank to trounce your 10% and join the fray as well.
Given Tom's idea of the largest force being your center, that's not possible. The smallest your center could be is 34%, and then only if both sides are 33% each.
Of course, any kind of tricky maneuver is a crap shoot, since you won't be able to tell how your enemy is going to line up. It is entirely possible that your enemy will also try something tricky, like putting 50% middle, 10% left, and 40% right, or something. The both of your left flanks get wiped, and both rights get a flanking bonus when they smash the middle. Or each front meets equivalent troops, etc.
I disagree. I even outlined a scenario where I thought a smaller army would work better than a larger army, where you bank on fighting hard on the flanks rather than the center and thus want to minimize the troops you lose in the center. You could "lose" every battle and still do disproportionate damage.
You're depending on a couple things:
1) That you will be able to control things down to the level of which noble lines up where, or that you will have extremely fine levels of control. I view this as ending up something like Marshal formations, where you would pick from a list of predefined formations like "Strong left", Cavalry Sweep Right" or something. At most, defining percentages of troop styles that take a particular flank.
2) Risky trick formation. You can't count on that.
