I've totally given up on ETW. As it stands now it was a colossal waste of money to buy the game at all. In effect, the complainers got their way, exactly as I had feared. They wanted more aggression, and they sure got it. It's not smart, it's not reasonable, it's not historically accurate or even politically productive, but now we can all be sure that the AI will declare war on anything that's even remotely alive. Great job guys, the game is a whole lot better now!

Of course I'm only being partly sarcastic, over on total war center, lots of people seem to be pleased with the changes; bringing up the fact (ad nauseum) that this game isn't Total Diplomacy or Total Balance of Power. So be it, that's obviously all well and good for some, but I was hoping for a more complex and refined gaming experience for ETW, instead we seem to have taken a big step back. I think now more than ever it was a mistake to choose the 18th century as a backdrop for a Total War title. The only way to make the game acceptable or interesting to many is to obliterate the historical underpinnings and simply make the whole affair a free for all. A situation that has no connection, whatsoever, with the political and diplomatic wranglings that characterized conflicts of the era like the War of the Austrian succession.

At any rate I suspect there is little reason to anticipate improvement in this situation in the near future, so I'm just sitting things out and waiting to see where the patches go. Perhaps if the modding tools ever come out, that will make things more tolerable. It's a big disappointment for me, but least I can fall back on EU3: In Nomine, it's not an exact substitute, but it's not bad at all.