Americans, how is Kingdoms?

i can't believe some american shops don't have it when my game and woolworths had it on release (31st)

I got it on Thursday. First Impressions:
Pikeman no longer walk like old women with walkers
Varangian guard are insane now
Greek firethrowers o_0

Well, I just had an extremely enjoyable evening.

My 10-year-old son is playing a hotseat game with me where he is the Teutonic Knights and I was his ally, the Danes. When why saw him enjoying himself so much and said he could stay up until 10 p.m., he cheered.

He had to autoresolve his fights and I help him with his economy, but it's been a great night.

Thank god for the retrofit mod. I had no idea this expansion did squat to the grand campaign, I couldn't really care less about the added ones.

I would recommend the Retrofit mod without reservation, for little more than the balance changes. You will be overjoyed to find that peasants are now the entirely useless cannon fodder distraction they should be (the next lowest unit, Town Militia, will mince them), and while cavalry are still relatively powerful, they do not simply chew through anything and everything they can make a charge against.