Campaign pace

Anyone found it to be too slow? It's probably partly because the factions are more balanced due to the period the game takes place in. However, I don't think that fully accounts for it.

I first tried a Portuguese campaign. After building up my cities and destroying the Spain faction, I was unable to do anything. Public order simply became uncontrollable. I'm not even sure why; I had taken every measure to ensure high economic growth and moderate public order, whilst trying to keep population growth low. I gave up on this campaign at about 50 turns. Also, including my own expansion and enemy invasions, I had only fought about 6 battles. Basically, the campaign had degenerated into a tedious grind.

I tried again with a Milanese campaign, with the same results. What happened? Am I using too much of a Rome TW manner of thinking, when in fact the campaign mechanics have changed? Or am I just an idiot?

If this is true, then I can't wait to get the game in the mail this weekend. I have played since STW, and I have always taken my time and enjoyed the long tedious campaigns. I always feel abit foolish when I see people on the forums saying that they conquered the world in 4 days, I can't fathom that. It is just a different style of playing. For example, my brother and I both started an English campaign in Early on MTW VI once. He conquered all of Europe and North Africa within a few days of playing, while I had only conquered the Isles and had beefed my defenses and worked on my economy and infrustructure the whole time.

Thats funny, many people are saying the campaign is too fast. Would that mean that the campaign is balanced? Funny thought. :)

The thing about unrest seems to be generals causing it. I have at least one family member in each city and almost all of them have negative effects on public order. Take them out and suddenly everything is fine. I keep all the city taxes on high, which was the ideal setting to keep it on in RTW for good governing traits, but I guess it might not be the case here. I'm sure more info will come along regarding these things. What makes it especially difficult to figure out is that there are no "management" or "influence" traits like there were in RTW.

Another big factor in unrest is spies. I have some cities that go from being completely happy to revolting because of pesky French spies. You might want to keep a few around yourself to see what's going on with that, and maybe a few assasins. Their effect of decreasing public order seems to be a lot more in M2.


-edit-
Oh, and I'm loving the campaign pace, which is pretty slow the way I play. About 90 turns in, I've only had a few major battles, awesome! I only got betrayed once by my allies, the Danes and French simultaneously which was my first real war, not counting taking out the Scots. Overall, great stuff. I love playing defensively and taking everything slow, and now I can because of the improved alliances and factions not attacking every time you border them immediately.

Hmm, I prefer the pace in STW, in which I fought a battle every third turn or so. I also liked RTW's, in which I fought one every 3 or 4 turns. M2TW is a grind by comparison, and much intervention is required despite the general simplicity of strategy in the campaign map. Essentially, I find it a waste of time.

One thing I should note is that in strategic games of any kind, I prefer them to be more analogous. A focus on allocation of funds and controlling social policy provides more interesting gameplay than merely constructing buildings, IMO. If the pace were as slow as it is and M2TW's gameplay was like this, I would surely stay interested.

That's a huge shame for me. I really like the slower battle pace, superior general balancing, many of the new small features (such as 0 upkeep militia), among other things. But personally I find a M2TW campaign unplayable.

I was unaware about the spies. However, I had thieve's guilds in many cities, and spies were discovered often. Perhaps it contributed. I think that maybe a long period of high taxes alone angers your people; this was a common feature of both campaign attempts. The lack of management and influence characteristics confused me somewhat, and I don't see why they were removed or replaced.