I liked RTW battles better than MTW2. In rtw units tended to stay in formation and not go blindly charging, and get spread out across half the map. World conquest was not as fun for me in rtw, however, unless I played a civilized nation with better building options. Spreading barbarian culture and squalor didn't appeal to me. It's more fun to play the barbarions defensivly and fend off attacks from armoured and disaplined troops.

Micromanagement is one of the reasons I am attracted to strategy games. I like to improve my empire and economy. The TW Series are the best strategy games in terms of letting me defend the factions, empires, and economies that I develop. In similar strategy games, all my time spent on micromanagement can be lost in a dice roll. I gave up the Civ series because I cant control the defense of my cities. Too much micromangement and not enough control.

Still, there are many things in mtw2, that drive me nuts because I don't have control over them. Controling population/squalor, generals traits, diplomacy, naval battles, agent sucess chances, rebels, etc.

I hope that Empires allows more economic options. Then instead of world conquest, my game goals could be to become self sufficient and just defend my boarders from the enemy. I could use diplamacy(warscore) to bring peace instead of having to invade and elimanante all my neighbors. Its much more fun to stay small and fight off larger enemies, then to be large and fight smaller enemies.