Things you miss about MTW.

Mods, this may not be an appropriate posting. I apologize if it isn't. But we are basically talking about what we want to see in M2TW so this does fit in that spirit. And sorry for the double post.

But what I want to ask the assembled is have any of you played Europa Universalis 1 or 2? I love the historical events and how they effect the gameplay. I would love to see a lot of that in any future mod for M2TW.

For those who haven't played either of those games I'll highlight a couple things that were in that game that could definitely be in this game.

The first one that comes to mind and the one I"d most like to see implemented is the Religious preference screen.

In Europa Universalis there's a screen that lists all the religions involved in the game. Catholic, Protestant, Reformed Catholic, Moslem, Orthodox and I think there were a couple others. Beside each religion was a slider. You had 100 points to share between all the religions. You could support one religion 100% meaning you supported the other religions not at all.

Basically, if the population of your territories were 20% moslem and you supported Catholic 100% you'd have 20% of the population ready to rebel. And its likely that 20% Moslem population was all in one or two provinces. Meaning that if you didn't take some action (move in an army or change religious preferences) they'd rebel very soon. But you could choose to support Catholicism say 75% and Islam 25%. That might quell the Moslem dissent a bit. I'd love to see this feature in M2TW.

Also, in EU when you went to war, you received a message asking you if you'd like to request your allies to support you in this war. If you wanted all the glory for yourself you could refuse and suffer no penalty. If you wanted help you say yes and your allies either refuse to enter the war with you or they don't. If they don't, they violate the alliance and you get a limited term casus belli against them under which premise you could war against them without a hit to your reputation.

I'd love to see these features in M2TW.

Sorry, I couldn't be bothered to read the entire thread, so most (all?) of these will probably have cropped up already, but here's what I miss from the original MTW:

- Titles - they made your governors feel "special" and waaay cooler than they are now.
- Realistic Movement speeds :charge:
- Regional Troops and Bonuses - this can quite easily be modded via hidden_resources
- the huge unit variety - Factions just feel too similar as it is...
- more impact on battle performance by fatigue, weather, terrain, etc.
- units staying in formation for more than 3 seconds when running
- Light Cav being significantly faster than Heavy Cav
- different starting dates!!!!!

I've probably forgotten some more, but you catch my drift: there's loads missing... :no: Still an ok game, though. :yes:

Starting dates for me. It's nice to be able to begin with the top end units whereas in M2TW chances are your campaign is over or at least you're in an undefeatable position by the time gunpowder and the top end units become trainable.

This may just be me... Is is possible to execute prisoners while you're on the battlefield anymore? I can't figure out how to do it, and it's really annoying when I use a to do raids on full stacked armies with some cavalry to kill off their artillery and archers. As soon as you charge them they route so you end up capturing them all, but as you can't win the battle they all get released again. Ultimately your cavalry just loose a few horses and gain some experience.

Honestly, most of the things I miss from MTW have already been mentioned. Nevertheless, I miss:

* Glorious Achievements--The system of missions helps ease that loss, though

* Titles--I loved poring over my generals trying to figure out who the new Duke of Northumberland (or wherever) should be

* Civil Wars--For an era where rebellions by generals and other members of the royal family were so prevalent, it's a shame that the game portraying that era should have lost this

* General sense of immersion--I liked little details like the parchment scrolls that all the information was displayed upon. The new game is very slick and well-laid out. That's great, but it looks a bit modern for my taste. The whole turns vs. years and strange aging of generals REALLY wrecks the sense of immersion for me. I really wish CA could have come up with another solution for that.

* For me, the jury is still out on the campaign map. My gut reaction is that I don't much like it but, after logging more gametime, I might change my mind.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

If you did that there would be no point in having castles as you would just use all cities as they make more cash.

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Not really, because castles are stronger defensive positions. That's why I earlier mentioned increasing the difference. And these things only represent the seat of power in a region... all of these regions had far, far more cities and castles than we are looking at.

Currently, castles are lackluster defensive positions, but thats just a bug. Anyway, it's a bit silly to act like you have to use a castle to have any nobility in the area to recruit.

My idea would be to sacrifice a small amount of income over a city to have a better defensive position... that's all. It isn't all that's possible in a territory, just what center of power and defense is. I'd also bet it will lead to more interesting AI armies too...

Starting dates and titles.

That's it, I think. Oh, and working AI. :P

M2TW is much more fun than MTW. It's part of human nature to whine and refer back to the good old days, in this case Shogun and Medieval 1. Even with the faults M2 has, and oh good lord they are many, and that Rome had, each TW game has always been an improvement. But nostalgia is strong and clouds ones judgement.

Europa Universalis - great games. Part 3 is out and should be in stores later this week or next week, depending on where you live.

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Originally Posted by seneschal.the

Even with the faults M2 has, and oh good lord they are many, and that Rome had, each TW game has always been an improvement.

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I think this is a matter of personal preference. Of course, the graphics have certainly improved over the years, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the game itself is "better"! I care a great deal about immersion, and even with it's far inferior graphics, MTW managed to captivate me more than the eye-candy of M2TW. The titles, the huge variety in different units, the option to win the campaign via Glorious Achievements (see, I knew I'd forgotten something... :laugh4: ) instead of rather dull "capture X provinces" objectives - it all advanced the game to a level of immersion M2TW can't even dream of reaching, IMHO. A game isn't only about graphics, it takes much more than that to make it "great".

As someone with MTW still installed, a lot of you are over romanticising how difficult the campaigns were or how hard the battles were. The AI wasn't better, it's just that we were all newer and less experienced.

I miss: regional units, dismounting units before battle.

Two neat things that made the game slightly more complex, and thus slightly better!:yes:

I don't really miss titles all that much, TBH. It was fun at the beginning but later on I just couldn't be bothered.

I also don't miss re-emerging factions at all. Many people have fond memories of them, but that's because it was the only part of the game that was actually challenging, due to the AI's inability to build tough armies on it's own. It was a silly and gamey mechanic, and I'm glad it's gone. Factions should be stronger *before* they are eliminated, not magically 10x more powerful.

I vastly prefer the new campaign map to the old map: at least now you can choose your defensive positions.

MTW2 also seems to have a more expansive unit roster.

Seiges in MTW just looked horrible. In RTW and on they are awe inspiring (barring AI mishaps)

Oh yea....

And being able to sail accross the Med (the short way) in less than a decade

SHEEESH! :furious3:

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Originally Posted by seneschal.the

Starting dates and titles.
M2TW is much more fun than MTW. It's part of human nature to whine and refer back to the good old days, in this case Shogun and Medieval 1. Even with the faults M2 has, and oh good lord they are many, and that Rome had, each TW game has always been an improvement. But nostalgia is strong and clouds ones judgement.

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I couldn't agree more.

As for what I miss in MTW1... I miss the regional units, and the ability to do the whole treason thing with spies. Great fun assassinating family members. I also miss the ease with which you could stop a naval invasion. In MTW2 it's too easy to sneak an entire stack of troops past the enemy, no matter how impressive their navy. Civil wars were also rather cool. Most of all I think I miss Glorious Achievements. I really prefered that style of play to just taking over the world.

In a sense I miss the epic battles too. But on the other hand, they were too epic in the late game in MTW. In MTW2 I still find the end game fun, while in MTW it really became a grind of endless epic games lasting hours. And I HATED the reinforcement system in MTW. It got a bit better once you could pick the order, but the system of changing the reinforcement order was frustrating and time consuming.

But many of the comments here I don't understand. People complaining about all the factions being the same now? Total rubish. MTW1 was far more bland in that respect, with virtually all the catholic factions being the same. Spears on the front, men at arms on the side and archers at the back. Yawn. I find myself having a far more varied army now in MTW

And also people complaining about the new mercs? I love how they're regional now. They were totally screwed in MTW. You'd end up getting all kinds of crazy troops from all the way across the globe which were totally out of place. And you'd always get advanced siege equipment and gunpowder weapons available a century before gunpowder was even "invented"!

Likewise I hated the titles in MTW. I usually ended up giving them to some random unit with good acumen and then forget about them. It was such a pain stripping people of their title too, if you wanted to change it. Much prefer how it works now.

And just to list one thing I HATED about MTW1. Sea trade. I hated how trade between your own provinces made sod all money. So if you had no friends you were screwed. Vastly improved now.

Overall I think MTW2 is a pretty hefty improvement over MTW1. It just needs a bit of patching and maybe a few features added (Glorious Achievements!) and it would certainly be the star of the series in my view.

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Originally Posted by econ21

M2TW has at least as extensive a unit roster as MTW did. Take England, for example. Urban militia and militia sergeants are covered by town militia and heavy bill militia, while sword-armed MAAs are covered by dismounted feudal knights and armoured swordsmen. Plus this time you can recruit dismounted knights in the SP game. And of course, there are many more kinds of English archers in M2TW. Indeed, M2TW has more unique units for each faction and leads to less generic ("Catholic") armies.

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You´re right, in a way. However, I would have much more preferred if I could get Dismounted Knights by dismounting on the battlefield and have a non-knightly sword infantry to kill enemy spears. I know a lot of people nowadays hate it, but I do like the rock-scissor-stone principle of MTW, where spears beat Cavalry, Swords beat spears and Cavalry beat Swords.
My battles so far (turn 60 with the HRE) have mostly been fought by spear infantry forming the center of my formation, pinning the enemy infantry down for being charged in the flanks by my Knights. It feels a bit like a game of Warhammer with the Bretonians, as a matter of fact, just that the Knights are a bit less impetuous.

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Originally Posted by Ciaran

My battles so far (turn 60 with the HRE) have mostly been fought by spear infantry forming the center of my formation, pinning the enemy infantry down for being charged in the flanks by my Knights. It feels a bit like a game of Warhammer with the Bretonians, as a matter of fact, just that the Knights are a bit less impetuous.

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As a Bretonian player, I see the analogy - it's good one. Rubbish infantry and uber cavalry. I find M2TW swordsmen do ok for what they are supposed to do - cut through spears and assault walls. It's the spears that seem weak in M2TW. It's the one thing I mentioned currently missing from MTW: decent spears. Fixing the shield bug may solve it.

I can accept the current M2TW game as offering one model of Medieval combat - that of the all powerful knight. I don't really subscribe to that model, but I can see it has its advocates. My contentment is undermined, however, by the discovery that in part it may be due to a bug in the handling of the shield stat.

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Originally Posted by Barry Fitzgerald

I agree with most of the comments so far...

MTW2 thrashes MTW to death in the looks dept....but on the battlefield gameplay wise...MTW is the better game..by some way. (at the moment)

I miss titles...for people..
Dismounting units..
Assassinating your own people
Regional troops/Variety
Diplomacy was better in MTW too..
Deeper gameplay and better tactics

In fact I rate MTW on gameplay alone as the best TW game to date...sure it looks a bit old hat now...but it really did play very well indeed.

Eye candy cannot cover up the weak points in MTW2...I hope the address some of the issues if not all of the above...

If CA had done the eye candy to MTW and kept the tasty elements I would have been happy....

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Oh that would be a dream come true, MTW gameplay fused with the M2TW game engine (or should I say RTW game engine) or even better a whole new spanking game engine1:)

Another aspect of titles which I loved over having present governors now is how a region would have greater public order if the lord/baron of that region had a particularly high level of dread. They didn't even have to be physically in that region but if it was given to say Baron William, the Butcher and Maimer you'd find the people there to be pretty quiet and content with their miserable peasant lives.

Also, great was how much the unity of an empire were held by the name of a great King and when he died there was always a chance for rebellion as someone beside the heir thought themselves more deserving of rulership. It made you watch more carefully the cultivation of family members and you had to make plans for the continuity of your empire lest it split in two.

Regional units were also great and made particular regions more valuable than simply another town to churn money or produce identical troops. Some of my favorites were the Gallowglasses from Ireland, the Huscarles from Scandanavian, Swiss Armored Pikemen, Spanish Jinettes, and Welsh longbows.

I miss the huge stacks that the Mongols brought in MTW 1. I would have to prepare like 20 stacks and the ensuing battle would take a very long time. That was fun.

I miss choosing my own heir.

I miss the greater range of navies but how realistic was it to have at least one ship in every waterway?

Not that the Mongols are easy by any means, but they should still arrive with about 20+ stacks in MTW 2 IMO. Or at least 10. :laugh4:

Just my 2 florins worth.

I'm with Orda:p

And if I'm to list...:

- what I was talkin' with a friend last evening over a beer - when the ai was moving his dang formation and the archers(who we know move faster) reached his infantry line, they'd stop and wait to reenter formation. No more sweeping of the archers in 1 charge when they're miles in front of everything else;
- I miss him actually defending his missile troops(I just come from a battle where his cannons were happily butcherin' me while his line advanced, only to go around his line and charge his cannons... needless to say the ai couldn't care less... he kept advancing, despite his cav. being close enough to intercept me)
- dismout was cool;
- the speed! Anyone remembers that it was needed something more then going at him and making "boo hoo" for 15-20 secs. in order to make him rout(and that's on vh, mind you)?!
Anyone remembers how they almost didn't rout when you were playing on vh? And all those 10s of thousands of lines which learnt the poor ai to support his overwhelmed unit were actually used, since actually infantry could actually reach the bashed flank before his unit routed?
- roosters were 10 times better; I'm sick and tired of dismounted feudal knights, mailed knights and spear militia right, left and center. They even all have same stats... how fun is that?!
Wth, they all got their armour from M&S? Was globalization present back then and I missed that part of history?
- regional units, even if not extremely useful(as musashi pointed out). But since you could actually move in that game(not like now, when it takes years to reach the neighbouring region) you could reinforce them easier then it might sound.
Btw... why is all of W Europe full of merc. crossbowmen?! Heck, I could make an empire with merc. crossbowmen... talk about imagination in design...
- reemerging factions; now, if you blitzed the guy next door, you know one of your flanks is forever safe... how nice... not!;
- a decent building system!
- the fact I could actually run out of cash even after the 1st 40 turns!!!! IMAGINE... the miracle right there! Which now it's impossible, bar playing Russia. Ah, right, that would be the most important... since all of the above(mostly the reemerging thing and no cash flood) the game wasn't over after the 1st 40 turns..
- the fact that vh meant vh! Not starting with less florins and the ai trying to zerg you in such a laughable way it's hardly medium... The fact that vh in battle meant vh, even if he was cheating with his morale... couldn't care less, at least it was challenging, not like now... Making new customers is great, but how about caring about the old ones too?

ah, right... and the fact that you didn't have to waste hours upon hours when you got the game in order to... actually convince pikemen to use pikes, actually make spears useful against cav., trying to decide what option is better to adopt in order to make a shield work, read about who fixed the 2handers and in the end search around through the work of some poor sobs(who prolly spent hours on testing and to whom I didn't thank enough) who did CAs job of actually balancing prices after all the above fixes...

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Originally Posted by castle

I hate the fancy map in mtw2 it takes too long to move anywhere. plus you have to wait an age while the animations nod at at each town. I find mtw2 tedious to play. They should have streamlined it as it is the only game I know that takes 11g of disk space and comes on 2 dvds.

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vanguard takes almost 20 gigs :/

What I liked about MTW:

Titles - you can make any average joe general into a pretty good one with these, but mostly I liked them because it immersed me more deeply into the game. It just made me appreciate fights more when instead of being commanded by General ho-hum, my army is commanded by Duke ho-hum of Constantinople, Grand Admiral of the Fleet or whatnot :2thumbsup:

Travel by sea - I am getting tired of spending years sailing across the MEDITERRANEAN. The boats in MTW2 sail at the speed fingernails grow. Although travelling to any port on the map shouldn't take more than a year, since MTW was based on 1 year turns you can't really complain about that other than to say you want them to make more turns in a year.

Dismounting - Would probably ruin gameplay but the option would still be nice. Its really up to the player whether one would play historically or not.

Civil wars - Because you'll get to the point in your campaign where the only challenge is to fight......yourself :laugh4:

Regional units - Gives more flavor to the game, plus gives you incentive to take specific provinces for specific troops or bonuses, thereby making the game more strategic.

Re-emerging factions - These were great because they would pop out with some pretty decent armies you can fight. The only thing I didn't like about this was they could re-emerge anywhere on the map, I agree with whoever said they should have limited it to traditional provinces.

Eras - I liked how no matter how fast you teched up you can't have late units roaming around the map in early. MTW2 killed a part of the historical aspect without adding this in.

What I like about MTW2 over MTW:

non-immortal characters - With MTW, by the time I hit high period, Almost all of my generals commanding armies had 8-9 stars. By late period, I had more Jedi generals than Yoda :dizzy2:

Mongols - Not as many stacks come out, but they're a lot better than the MTW Mongols. With MTW, I used to remember using 1 stack of Janissary Turks to wipe all 25,000 Mongols from the map (that 1 stack has to be my best army and it is practically destroyed in this 1 battle) whereas in MTW2.... well, lets just say they're tough customers :laugh4:

Campaign map - With MTW map, you can hold entire provinces as chokepoints that anyone attacking you will have to go through. I don't like this as much as being able to go through an unguarded pass or bridge and outflank the AI armies, making them attack you before you hit their city. More choices for strategy = good :yes:

Castles/cities - Great system, but I wish every province can have both a castle and a city, the placement of each on the campaign map will have a significant effect on which way to attack certain provinces.

Unit formation - not so much that I like the unit formations in MTW2 (which for some units are a real problem), but stretching your heavy infantry types into two-deep line formation and having it do better than a block formation in a cavalry charge is weird for me (even though it made sense as far as pure gameplay).

Archers don't shoot friendlies - I remember in MTW and RTW, I'd kill more of my own guys than the enemy would kill due to friendly fire. Not so much a problem in MTW2.

Morale - I like that fact that playing on a harder level just increases the effect of morale instead of giving the AI a higher morale.

And so:

I'm more of a "historical" player as far as TW series, and I missed the changes in MTW that immersed you into the historical aspects of the game. Likewise, I like features in MTW2 that give you the same effect.

I just wish 1 turn equaled something like 3 months or something (with respective changes to construction and recruiting times as well as movement points per turn for both land and sea forces).

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Originally Posted by Chosun

I miss the huge stacks that the Mongols brought in MTW 1. I would have to prepare like 20 stacks and the ensuing battle would take a very long time. That was fun.

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Those three-hours battles? Thanks, but no thanks, I found them tedious, I like the multi-stack battles much more.

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I miss choosing my own heir.

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That´s RTW. In MTW your oldest son is the heir, no choosing. And yes, I´m sure of that, I´ve played MTW1 just a couple of hours back.

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Morale - I like that fact that playing on a harder level just increases the effect of morale instead of giving the AI a higher morale.

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Interesting, that might explain why on Medium my mercenary spears and spear militias always fight to the last man while even Dismounted Knights rout at only a few losses when under AI control.
What I miss from MTW 1 are the battles where your whole army already is routing, but you still can manage to rally them and turn the tide. I´ve never had that happen in RTW or MTW 2, once a unit is routing it´s basically gone (not to mention that there´s usally not muc left of the unit in question worthwile to rally anyways).

And I miss the building tree. Getting the high-tier units is way too simple, when considering what you have to do in order to get even Feudal Knights in MTW 1. It makes getting those units feel like a real achievement (although some units have way over-the-top building requirements). In this aspect MTW 2 is even inferior to RTW, where at least you had first to upgrade the city and then the building class. In MTW 2? Uprade your castle and you´re done. YOu don´t even really have to build the stables/barracks, all they give you is a somewhat bigger recruitment pool, which you can´t deplete in one turn in the first place and refereshes every turn anyways. Plus the fact that battles actually affect the infrastructure of a region by really destroying buildings. Constant warfare can reduce a region to unproductive wasteland. In MTW2 and RTW all you have to do is click on "repair" and all damage is dealt with.

I miss what was said when you won a battle. "portrait of a royal milk sop the enemy ruler flees!" and "The enemy ruler flees may he burn in the thousand fires of hell." These just made me feel good inside rather than the somewhat bland sayings of M2TW.

@ Claran: What's meant by "Choosing your heir" is something you missed. Yes it was the oldest son... but back then, it was much easier for him to have an unfortunate accident...

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Originally Posted by Ciaran

Those three-hours battles? Thanks, but no thanks, I found them tedious, I like the multi-stack battles much more.

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I would like the stack battles, if they were epic, more troops and multi-faction. Right now it is almost impossible to battle with your allies.

And if the computer does no act like a monkey when comanding my troops. I have 100 peasents, the enemy 1000 soldiers... Enemys... Charge!!!!

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Interesting, that might explain why on Medium my mercenary spears and spear militias always fight to the last man while even Dismounted Knights rout at only a few losses when under AI control.
What I miss from MTW 1 are the battles where your whole army already is routing, but you still can manage to rally them and turn the tide. I´ve never had that happen in RTW or MTW 2, once a unit is routing it´s basically gone (not to mention that there´s usally not muc left of the unit in question worthwile to rally anyways).

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Never tought about it, but now that you mention it... Yes... In MTW the units rout with 30%, 50% loss. Now they rout with 80% loss, even peasants and artillery just do not rout. There is no regroup and fight.


Fabiano

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Originally Posted by lars573

I only miss titles.

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Yes, I miss the title system, too.

It was a nice part of MTW that you could promote and dismiss your important generals...

:-(

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Originally Posted by fabiano

Never tought about it, but now that you mention it... Yes... In MTW the units rout with 30%, 50% loss. Now they rout with 80% loss, even peasants and artillery just do not rout. There is no regroup and fight.

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Actually the AI's do regroup and fight. Way, WAY too often. I really shouldn't be having 75 man enemy teams reduced to 8 and decide they want back in the fight. It's getting ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by FrauGloer

Sorry, I couldn't be bothered to read the entire thread, so most (all?) of these will probably have cropped up already, but here's what I miss from the original MTW:

- Titles - they made your governors feel "special" and waaay cooler than they are now.
- Realistic Movement speeds :charge:
- Regional Troops and Bonuses - this can quite easily be modded via hidden_resources
- the huge unit variety - Factions just feel too similar as it is...
- more impact on battle performance by fatigue, weather, terrain, etc.
- units staying in formation for more than 3 seconds when running
- Light Cav being significantly faster than Heavy Cav
- different starting dates!!!!!

I've probably forgotten some more, but you catch my drift: there's loads missing... :no: Still an ok game, though. :yes:

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and religion working better :P you allready said all myne :(

the biggest loss for me is that because the unit rosters is so simple ( no more really specialized regions ) and although it is more realistic of being able to build more than one unit in a year it makes it so much less devastating when you or the ai lose a army because a battle front is left open as you can quickly build a new army up to replace the loses like it doesn't matter that you just got your butt whooped therefore making victories all most meaningless.

But what i truly missed is that their is no big price you pay for failing a crusade as i remember in MTW if i lose a crusade/jihad i could expect a civil war which made them a calculated risk as to whether risk your current empire for a really rewarding piece of foreign pie rather than just a historic element implemented into the game.

So I guess this is way late but I'll weigh in.

Really miss (in no particular order) -

- Dismounting units @#*$@# :wall::wall::wall::wall::wall::whip::whip:
- Assassinating my own faction characters, include generals/family/agents.
- Bigger rosters and more unit variety, and more commonality for certain basic unit types across the board.
- Eras. Three distinct eras. I always started on early except once, but I can still appreciate the time progression and differentiation, esp. for tech progression and custom battles which I really enjoy.
- Non-interlocking concentric castle wall defenses that don't require unit proximity to fire. Having all the walls interconnect in M2 is lame as all get out. Also non-capturable towers is really really lame, I really miss that from RTW.
- Faction owned Inquisitors for the catholic factions.
- More building/construction variety and tech depth.
- Titles and honorifics, and being able to strip them from generals I didn't want to have them.
- Effective assassins.
- UI graphics. I think M2TW's unit cards and building cards are a sharp turn for the worse, they were much better in MTW and RTW, much clearer and vivid. They look really washed out and low res in M2TW imo.
- Somewhat better handled diplomacy.
- Much better control over unit statistics (specific unit movement speeds, turning rates, depth bonuses, etc) and CA actually TELLING us how the friggin game works in terms of certain calculations and parameters.
- The 300 hojillion different varieties of castle maps to pick from for custom battles. I realize there's something like this in M2TW but I think a meld of the old system and the new would be more ideal and give the most flexibility.
- Much more control over crusading. I think there's some great new features implemented in M2 that were missing in M1, but the overall difficulty of making a crusade in M2 vs M1... I think M1 was better.

Things I don't miss -

- Insanely long unit/building production times and the forced 1YPT timescale. 2TPY is optimal imo.
- Only being able to crank out 1 unit per year (in general)
- Risk-style map. Once I got used to the RTW style map, and I went back to play MTW again, I almost couldn't do it.
- Civil wars. :furious3:
- Wierd diplomacy quirks and the "everyone suddenly hates you after you own x amount of the world".
- Province specific units. Sorry I'm with Musashi here. I'm all for faction specific units, but not province specific. /shrug
- Excessive province loyalty problems that came with distance from the leader and capital. I think it's been toned down to near-acceptable levels in M2TW, and was getting there slowly in RTW/BI.

That's all I could think of off the top of my head for now. Cheers!

I want to add my 2 cents worth and agree with the need for more unit variety, both within any given faction, but also add regional specific units. (I want my Swabian swordsmen!!!)

More than anything else, this is what I miss and hope it's added to a patch.

Why on Earth would you regress and remove units in a sequel? It almost seems like there are only 3 factions (in terms of units). European, Muslim, and Byzantine. They all seem to have essentially the same units. Why bother playing beyond that? Perhaps I'm missing something, ignorant of unique units or something.

I've won with England and nearly finished with Moors... As it is now, I really don't feel like playing with any other factions! Maybe Byzantine and Danes, for the (barely) unique units, but otherwise, I'm somehow almost tired of this game already!!!

This may go down with EliteForce 2, Stronghold 2, Age of Empires 3, and Civ 5 as one of the biggest video game sequel let downs I've experienced. Maybe I'm just changing tastes.

Poland, Hungary, and Russian also have pretty unique unit lineups too. Most factions have a few unique units, but they also tend to have a fair few, (especially spears and DFK), units they share with other armies.