I think, gameplay-wise, it's an improvement over RTW. AI is not as quick to declare war just because you have a border. So, if I'm allied with say Venice, they don't automatically declare war if I conquer a mutual neighbor. In fact, I've kept allies the entire game if I didn't do anything to anger them. Of course, I've also lost allies when I gave them excuses (attacking their allies, mistreating their co-religionists, etc). So, the AI is much more rational than RTW.

I've found the battle AI has the potential to be quite a bit smarter as well. Unfortunately, it usually bounces between all-out charging with everything they've got as soon as the first arrows hit them and standing like sheep while the arrows rain down. Then there are those rare moments when it sends out skirmishers, attempts to find flanks, feints one part of the line while overloading another. . . TACTICS and stuff!

My biggest whine about the game is there's no difference, unit-wise between the different factions. Sure, there's going to be some similarity between units that perform the same function, regardless of the linguistic, cultural, or regional differences of the people involved, but to make them exactly the same except for their uniform color is a silly oversimplification.

Overall, it's a superior frame to build EB on than RTW, so I'm fairly psyched to see the results of the team's efforts.