I started a Spanish campaign last night and got to turn 12. I am blitzing about as normal and have taken 3 provinces. I cheated and used "character_reset" to get my Princess over to meet the Pope and get an alliance. She also made an alliance with the Portugese with whom I even have military access. The characters move farther and so do the armies - it must be scaled to the bigger map which is so huge that I am getting a slight delay just before the characters and armies stop their moves. The combat is some of the hardest I've had in M2TW. The armies I started with are small and weak and the AI's are good. The castle assault on Pamploma was a very close run operation and my spearmen really performed poorly against even archers. It was a good thing that I had 2 generals and 5 mailed knights and a jinete. The stats have really been modified, apparently. I didn't bother to check but it seems mailed knights didn't have just a 4 attack before did they? Their charge seemed to be larger. The mercenary spearmen are going to be my schwerpunkt (sp. ?). My wife remarked immediately that the strategic map look much better. Building stuff takes so long that I do not have a cash shortage, which is highly unusual. The added announcements are great. I really like the added ancillaries/titles and added buildings like the school. The Argonese tried to take Valencia but el Cid must have trashed them good as I saw their stack retreat. I think they hurt him enough that as soon as I finish building a ballista maker in Toledo I shall go over and pay him a visist. I guess there is no way to bribe him. I'd really like to take him over to capture Cordoba. I haven't had any generals get sick whilst besieging yet - all the vitamin C and sterile face masks that I furnish all my troops must be helping. This is so much more fun than my last campaign which was a Retrofit HRE that I can't believe I wasted so much time finishing that one. SS is so good that I don't care if Empires doesn't come out until 2010.